Back to Los Angeles

We slept in this morning as we wanted to miss the morning traffic back to L.A. Joshua had purchased a keyboard from a real estate agent in Vegas because he knew we were going there, so after breakfast we punched the address into the GPS and went to pick it up. The chap, Paul, picked our Australian accents and told us he had just returned from a trip to Sydney and said he'd move there in a moment's notice. He was a really nice guy and we chatted about the differences between the two countries.

Solar Power Station

Anyway, we hit the road after that, and about 70 miles south of Las Vegas, we came upon this. It's a solar power station, with acres of individually controlled mirrors which track the sun and focus its rays onto one of the three towers in the plant. These get super-hot and generate steam which in turn drives turbines to generate electricity. It generates over 300 MW of power for Las Vegas, free from the sun. We also saw another large solar plant but this one was just a photovoltaic site, converting sunlight directly to electricity, similar to the solar panels we have on roof at home.

The vistas that you see on the L.A. - Vegas run are just enormous. The photo below does not do it justice again, but hopefully you will get the idea.

Descending into Mohave Desert

We stopped about half-way for lunch at Peggy-Sue's 1950's Diner, which was quite an experience, with amazing memorabilia from the 50's plastered all over the walls. The food was pretty good too!

Californian drivers are certifiably mad. We were on the Interstate on the outskirts of L.A. and I needed to move into the lane on my left, so I checked my mirror and it was clear, so I put my indicator on (optional in America, many, many cars do not bother to use them) and was just pulling out into the lane when this sports car sped past at least 50 mph faster than I was going, which was already about 70 mph. If I hadn't glanced back in my mirror as I was merging, I would have collided with him and the result does not bear thinking about at that speed. Fortunately, I did spot him at the last second and swerved back into the right hand lane. He vanished into the distance in seconds, an accident looking for somewhere to happen.

We are now safely back in L.A. again, spending time with Ros's sons.