BigH Rides Again - The Wild West Tour June 2014

Palm Springs to Laughlin – 232 miles

Awoke too early (residual jet lag) and milled about with the crew outside Ruby’s Diner at 7 am for a classic 1950s breakfast. A beautiful morning in Palm Springs – warm but pleasant and a clear blue sky. We loaded our luggage into the support van and set off around 8.15.

10 minutes after setting off we stopped at the Palm Springs Harley Davidson shop for a brief spot of retail therapy. Our next stop was the Joshua Tree National Park – which was quite a unique landscape – pale brown weathered granite outcrops and of course thousands of Joshua Trees – which are not trees but cacti.

Its not really a tree you know !

Me with helmet hair - looking a bit like Alan Partridge

By this time the temperature was soaring towards 40 C and we rode through the rest of the park to lunch at 29 Palms. In the afternoon heat we moved across an increasingly barren landscape. Just outside 29 Palms in a wide open valley (which appeared virtual desert) there were numerous side roads (or more accurately tracks - one ironically called 'Sandy Lane') which must have led to numerous dwellings judging by the mail boxes at the junction with the main road. In such a terrain – why do people live here ? and perhaps more of a mystery – what on earth do they do all day ?

Travelling through a succession of truly immense ‘basin and range’ settings we turned onto a section of Route 66 and stopped at Roy’s Café and Motel in Amboy. Unfortunately this appeared much run down compared to when I saw it in 2011. The combined effect of the heat (40 C in the shade) and not enough sleep had made me feel a bit ‘not quite with it’ but this was cured by Gatorade and pouring ice cold water on my head and down my neck.

Volcanic cinder cone at Amboy

After another hour, in the vicinity of a settlement called 'Essex' we arrived at a more prosperous-looking oasis of petrol station, shop and irrigated gardens. Re-applied the startling cool-down treatment and ate an ice cream for good measure.

Another hour through rocky, almost ‘lunar’ landscape saw us at journey’s end – Laughlin. Laughlin is a small scale version of Las Vegas. Both are situated in the state of Nevada where gambling is legal on a grand commercial scale (unlike in California). Our hotel (rooms very comfy) is part of a casino complex, with a layout such that you (amazingly) have to walk through a maze of slot machines to get to most of the establishment’s amenities.