I awoke at 5am in our Las Vegas hotel room with a splitting headache, except it wasn’t a hangover. I took a couple of painkillers and tried to go back to sleep, but it didn’t go away. Then I realised I had missed an entire day with no coffee. I didn’t have one on the plane at all. Rookie mistake. And the US don’t have tea and coffee making facilities in hotels.
I googled somewhere that might be open at that time of morning, and Starbucks (gag) was the only place open. But I needed caffeine. Bad. So we wandered downstairs, surprised to see a few people already queuing for coffee. And then I saw the price. $10 USD for a flat white which will probably taste disgusting! So we wandered around the casino looking for somewhere cheaper. There were a few early morning (probably still out from last night) gamblers on the floor, but it was eerily quiet.
Our mission to find anywhere else open failed, so we decided to suck it up. Back at the Starbucks counter I noticed they had filter coffee for half the price. This is something Americans know how to do. And I’d much rather have a good filter coffee than an piss-weak espresso.
Sometimes I wish I’d never started drinking coffee, it is quite a severe addiction, but the filter coffee hit the spot, and the headache faded. It was a nice time of morning to be up and about before the crowds. We headed out onto the strip, and were instantly knocked back by the heat. At 6am! But it was still cooler than it was at 10pm the previous night.
We picked up some supplies from CVS. Two snickers bars, a sandwich and some pretzel crisps. Oh, and two cokes, emergency caffeine if we get stuck again. (We could have had breakfast out for $40 usd per person. Yikes. Las Vegas is ridiculously expensive these days)
And then it was time to pick up Rodger. We ordered an uber, and it was only a 20 minute trip to the storage unit, no traffic thankfully. The storage unit has shrunk. They’ve sold off a big chunk of it, and Rodger was crammed in with a few other vans. I just hope they don’t get rid of it completely, otherwise we’ll be stuffed!
It was nice to see Rodger again, but he was absolutely filthy. We hadn’t seen anywhere to wash him before we stored him which was a shame. We opened the doors and dumped our backpacks inside. Rodger had been locked up for about a year, and he smelled quite musty and needs a good clean. And he was really hot inside which makes me wonder if the warehouse is climate controlled. I think not. Either that, or they are keeping him outside without us knowing. But I guess the important question is, did he start?
Mike got into the drivers seat, I got the GoPro out to film the moment. And first time, he roared into life, rearing to get out on the road again. So we climbed onboard, and off we went, into the desert heat, no air-conditioning. Even with the windows down, it was like a furnace was blowing in. We just wanted to get out of Vegas, and into the mountains.So we took the motorways and got out as quickly as we could.
It was weird being back in Rodger after Bertie. Bertie is modern and smooth and doesn’t smell like damp, whereas Rodger likes to bounce all over the road, but the seats are like armchairs.
In the drive I got a bit peckish so I reached for my snickers bar. But guess what? Yes that’s right. It was a sticky liquid gooey mess. I drank it down as best I could making a mental note not to make that mistake again!
It took us about 3 hours to get to the mountains, and even though it was still about 33 degrees, we noticed the drop in temperature. We stopped at Cedar city, at the same campground where we spent a week last year with covid! But it seemed like a good place to stop and get things done. Rodger badly needed a clean, we needed food, and we also needed to do laundry. So that’s what we did for the afternoon.
Tomorrow? No idea, but we’re heading towards Colorado.