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."