Friday, May 23, 2025
The Trip Home
Today is the final day of our trip and time to head for home. We got off to a surprisingly early start, considering we were in Las Vegas, and were on the road by 9:30. We had a nice surprise when we checked out this morning; all of our expenses for our stay including all of our food was comped, and that did a lot to heal our wounds from the poor gambling we had.
It was an almost seven-hour drive to get home, but we have been listening to Tony Hillerman audiobooks on this trip so that helped make the time go by pretty quickly. We did make one stop on the way home – can you guess where? Yes, since our route home would take us back through Tehachapi, we stopped again at the Red House BBQ for lunch and had another great rib dinner.
When we pulled up to the Red House, we noticed several emergency vehicles leaving and wondered what was going on. It turned out all was well, they were hosting 150 first responders for lunch that day, but it had just ended so there was plenty of room for us.
We arrived home a little before five. It had been a pretty easy day without too much traffic. It was the end of another great trip.
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| The final map, we have closed our loop through the central part of Nevada and made it home. |
Final Thoughts
This trip started out as a trip to Las Vegas, but after Val said she’d like to revisit Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, the pieces came together to add a week to our trip and turn this into a mini road trip. On a Nevada state map, the arid lower middle part of Nevada looks empty, but a closer look shows there are actually a lot of interesting things out there.
The basin range terrain that covers most of the area, has a stark beauty, and there are many ghost towns to explore, lonely backroads to drive, and many surprises out in the back country. Every day of this trip led to a new adventure, and we really enjoyed it.
We love road trips, but as we have aged, they have become a little more strenuous for us. Our stamina is not what it used to be, so having to pack up every morning before a long day’s drive takes a toll on us, but that said, we still love a road trip and would do it again. It also helped that we knew that at the end of the week, we had four days to relax in Las Vegas, and with no set plans to do anything, we could do as much or as little as we wanted.
Speaking of Las Vegas, after the initial culture shock we felt after being out in the boonies all week, we had a great time in Las Vegas and plan on going back to more frequent visits.
What’s next for the Travels of Dave and Val? The first thing is a trip to Michigan that will have already been completed by the time you read this and then in the fall we are going on an almost two-month cruise into the deep South Pacific.
We have also booked another Holland America Grand Cruise for January of 2027. This cruise is a 70 day round trip out of Fort Lauderdale that sails through the Panama Canal, circumnavigates South America before returning to Fort Lauderdale. What got us really excited about this cruise was that when we reach the southern end of South America, we'll spend five days sailing around parts of Antarctica; a bucket list item for us.
Val and I are making some major changes to our lives in 2026, so travel plans for that year are on hold until the dust settles from that. More on that in a future blog.
That’s it for now, we’ll see you on down the road!
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