Trip to America IV: Where was I?

Got a little side tracked, there.
Anyway, here, let me go look at my pictures folder and see where exactly in America I was when I finished my last post.
Oh yes. So we'd gone up and down the state of California. We kicked about the town a little more and, a few days later, my parents hit the dusty trail back to Ireland. 

Few photo opportunities first, we're a ferociously good looking family, y'know.

Ferociously.

I stayed on with Donal and we got down to planning out trip to Vegas. I've said it before. America's a big country. Ireland can easily be covered with one decent sized map. America, no chance. So we'd to sit down, google stuff like there was no tomorrow, load maps onto me kindle and figure out the best way to Vegas while taking in Area 51, Death Valley and where the Undertaker lives.

Paul Bearer lives two doors down.

We tipped over to Costco, which is like Lidl on STEROIDS. The place sells six packs of RUM, washing machines and flipping CANOES. We already had a canoe, so w bought a pallet of water, enough cereal bars to feed eighteen bullocks for the winter and an extra tank of gas. Got up early one morning and headed south towards Los Angeles.
We turned north onto the 14 and then the country really opened up. This country... fuck me. I've never seen road so straight. They go on and on until, well, until you can't see any further.

The gallon drum of gas (I'm calling it 'gas' for this whole series, calling it 'petrol' when discussing America seems a bit wrong) in the trunk (or 'boot') didn't seem so silly all of a sudden. You could break down and be easily seventy, eighty miles from anything. You take a wrong turn, you could end up down some canyon with no reception, an empty tank and a fierce thirst. Respect the wilderness, folk.

Donal paying respect.

Anyway, we got a little lost at one point. End up in California... City (which is much less glamorous than it sounds).

We pricked about a little more, figured out which way was North, ended up driving half an hour at a time just to find a roadsign to tell us what highway we were on and found our way again. Next stop, Redrock Canyon.

Fucking Hell. One of the driest places in the country, but mother of mercy, it was impressive. Shut up until I load a heap of photos onto you.

Seriously.

Fucking.

Hell.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Photos are horrendously poor at showing the scale of these things. Not just the beauty, but the... hmm... the feeling. The dry heat. The moment you turn a corner and realise how easy it would be to get lost, how people must've ended up here on their way across the country hundreds of years ago. How not everyone would've made it. If you didn't have water with you, you wouldn't make a day. If you put a foot wrong, you tumbled down a 45 degree slope and cracked your head off a rock.
This didn't happen. After an hour of taking artsy photos of stones we got back in the car and continued north.
We stopped, early enough, in a town called Ridgecrest. It was four, maybe five o'clock and we'd a lot of driving yet to do. We decided to leave it for today, finish the drive tomorrow and find a place to stay for the night.
Ridgecrest, as my brother pointed out, felt a little odd. It's on the southern perimeter of the China Lake Naval Weapons Facility. The China Lake Naval Weapons Facility is 4,500km in area, just larger than Kerry (if you're Irish), Suffolk (if you're English), or 110 Skyrims (if you're me). The streets are lined with hanging banners with people's faces on them. Closer inspection reveals they're all fallen soldiers, young men and women who left their town and never came back. Every second billboard is an advert for hypnotherapy centres or sleeping clinics. This town had issues.
With any other town a good 100 miles down the road, we stayed there anyway. Found a nice wee motel who were willing to take us, stocked up on wifi.

Sweet, glorious wifi. A man can go mad in the desert if he doesn't have enough wifi.

And took a wee trip around Ridgecrest. We watched the Hunger Games in a cinema that looked like it may have shown Citizen Kane the first time it came out and not recieved a lick of paint. We took pictures of trucks.

Three yellow trucks in a row (and my brother in the Passat), you try not take a picture of that.

And then this one was just hilariously big. You could rear a family in that thing.

And called it a night. Lots more driving to do the next day.