The San Diego to Pahrump Midnight Express (And I do mean express!)

One tank of gas, two bottles of water, a bottle of Sobe, 8 Red vines, and 4 CD's later... I was in Pahrump.

OK, so technically, this isn't Pahrump. This is the lovely town of Crystal, Nevada. In Nevada terms, it's just down the road from Pahrump, in reality, it's a 25-minute drive over a mountain range. If you look carefully, you'll notice that the museum is closed. Last week, you saw the billboard advertising this place. My guess: advertising a museum is legal, advertising a brothel, not-so-legal. So the museum is here strictly for advertisement's sake. Nice. (By the way, this is about 1 mile from a dry lake bed, there are 60 mph winds, and the road literally ends here dumping you into the desert. Click for video!)

So, aside from the very cheery town of Crystal, Sara and I visited Death Valley National Park, where we took in the wide open spaces...

Frolicked among the oddly colored dirt...

Dropped our jaws the gas prices... Pretended to hold our breath under the ocean...

...and went home. (We paid Uncle Sam $20 for that?) The trip home did have its redeeming features, though. Somewhere in the middle of the desert, about 30 miles from the nearest...anything, is the Amargosa Opera House. Some might call it an outpost of the fine arts. Others call it a ghost town.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Here it is!!!! (It's that white thing in the middle there, I swear.)

If you squint really hard at the picture, and hold your tongue just right, you might see this...

...which is my wife making faces with a fire hose (?!) in front of the opera house. This, of course, begs the question of where one might find enough water to actually fill a fire hose in the middle of Death Valley. If you figure that one out, let me know. Also in the category of unanswered questions, why would anyone even consider a 48-hour footrace from Baker to Las Vegas? Apparently, there are a lot of people that think this is a good idea. Sara and I passed the race a couple of times. These people are nuts.

On a positive note, there were LOTS of porta-potties stationed at even 10 mile intervals from Baker all the way to Las Vegas. Before the footrace, one could travel almost 60 miles before finding relief! And so, returning once more to Pahrump, I felt a stirring in my soul. There was a challenge to meet! A record to beat! A desert to conquer! A hundred-thousand grumpy gamblers to race home, and energy drinks to consume! Yes, it was time. Time for the Pahrump to San Diego Midnight Express! (Cue corny CHiP's-like theme music.)

* *(All speeds and times in this chart are purely fiction. Didn't happen. Nope. It wasn't me.) One last note... The moon rose directly over the road on the way into Baker. That was interesting. For a while, I couldn't figure out what it was. But it was the moon. (The picture may be blurred due to the light bending around my car. I was going kinda fast at the time.)

This is Ben, signing off... "If it's a weekend, my rump is in Pahrump."

How to Abandon Your Wife in Pahrump, NV

The short version:

1.) Kindly ask your wife to get in her car, and to follow you wherever you may lead her.

2.) Choose a nice, long road through the desert. Preferably one like this...

3.) Station your wife in comfortable surroundings replete with air-conditioning, golf course views, and really steep stairs. Ensure that she has proper rations and victuals to sustain her through the duration of her abandonment. Then...

4.) ...drive home as fast as you can, hoping she won't notice you've gone.

The longer version of this story is, of course, much more polished, detailed, and possibly even enthralling. It includes thought-provoking items such as horse carts, art museums of questionable repute, Ash Meadows Amargosa Pupfish, and Gila Monsters....yes, Gila Monsters.

The story however, does NOT include the World's Tallest Thermometer. It DOES include a "world-famous" thermometer which, while obnoxiously tall, just isn't tall enough to make the record books.

In order to be regaled with the complete tale with all these amazing details, PLUS the wayward traveler rescue in Death Valley, the nearly disastrous sparrow collision, strewn-field reconnaissance, cursing guitar-hero stars, spinning Civics, AND rather embarrassed novice rollerblading Sonic carhops...just call me. I'll tell you all about it. :-)

-Ben

P.S. So far the tooth to Pahrump resident ratio stands at 7:1. (Expect more precise results after research on subsequent visits.)

A message to Sara, my kindred spirit, my love, my bride...

Your Maryland Dog has returned from his journeys over the land. He presents you with "Essence of Susquehanna State Park" or "A tale of digital cameras, beavers, stomachs, Mavis, Google, and most-definetly-haunted-and-creepy stone places with dripping water".

First things first. As a wee lad, I was enamored with Bill Peet's books. Perhaps you've heard of him. He drew in pencil and color in ways that made things real and likable. My favorites were the woods he drew. In almost every story, they had a role. The main character would somehow end up in the woods, like this...

and this...

...Bill Peet's woods were always dark and inscrutable. Places of refuge, mystery, or deep secrets. I loved them. And so, having exposed that colored-pencil, childhood, underpinning of my recently-expressed exploratory desires, let us move on to the present day, where my face is all swelled up...

...In this painfully real and puss-filled world, I get to twiddle my thumbs, waiting for the government to tell me to go back on base. Sigh. So, this afternoon, after exhausting all productive tasks I could think of, and even some marginally productive ones, I said to myself. "Self, get your butt out of this chair...

...and go do something." ("But first, have some Jelly Bellies.") And so my self cordially agreed, and we set about our task together. Before long, I was dressed warmly, had amoxicillin coursing through my veins and ventricles, and pear-flavored jelly belly stuck to my upper second molar. It was time for me and my sugar-laden chompers to go. I had Mavis, I had food, I had my camera, I had a brand-new mini-car-van-sliding-swinging-door-folding-seat thing with a full tank of gas. I had a map. I was invincible, gloriously independent, free of all tethers, unencumbered from schedules... and had no idea where to go...and first I had to pee...

...Since I had no idea what to do, I asked the nearest woman. She said Susquehana State Park was a mere 6.3 miles from my current position, and furthermore, there were several ways to get there. AND, would I like the fastest, shortest, or most/least freeway usage to get there? I opined that the fastest might be in our best interest, since the sun was only seven fingers above the horizon. And so, my dear reader, that is how we found ourselves on the way to a closed, deserted, and most likely very uninteresting State Park. And so we went...

...we journeyed through the lands of the dearly departed, under the rain, over dale and speed bump, in our desire for Susquehannian satisfaction. Never were there a wordlier (werdlier?) pair of travelers. Mavis curtly directed me in her prim manner from the cup-holder, and I followed her every word with split-second obedience. Soon, we were descending...

...from the loamy heights down to the brooding hollows among the trees. Here indeed, one could imagine Civil War scouts, underground railroads, misty creatures from tall tales, and perhaps even Salem-era witches. Anything was possible in these woods, with dank stillness and slow dewy drips to accompany the travelers steps. Not far on...

...we gained our prize. The entrance to the hallowed Susquehannian woods (not to be entered after civil twilight, apparently). Mavis fell silent, as if in respect of the portentious occasion. Here, man was on his own. Man was scared. The woods grew darker, and man grew to appreciate the glow from his vehicle's lights, its comforting, steady gaze, and mollifying reports of speed, temperature and oil pressure. After all...

...who knows what lurks about in such places?

...tree-felling R.O.U.S.'s?...

...surely goblins, trolls, and elves were not far off in this misty, silent place...

...the murky river's depths revealed no secrets, no matter how long I looked. It was patient, but I was hungry. I finally left several long, agonizing, soul-searching, stomach-rumbling seconds. It was time to leave. As we passed, ancient buildings...

...loomed out of the mists in a haunted-for-sure-so-I'm-not-going-near-that-thing kind of way. Man was scared. Woman told him the way back to his hotel. And then man ate. After his efforts he said, "It is good", and everyone lived happily-ever-after.