EIGHT freaking hours later... we are in Laughlin. Never underestimate the near impossibility of escaping Los Angeles on the Friday before Memorial Day. We left around 3:30, hoping to beat the rush... but alas we did not succeed. It took us five hours to get to Barstow... normally you can make it all the way to Laughlin in that amount of time, but ah... traffic. Anyway... I somehow managed to only take two pee breaks, one of them in like, West Covina or someplace -- the other in Barstow, the famous halfway point between L.A. and Vegas (or Laughlin, for our purposes) -- and pretty much the closest thing the desert has to civilization. It's basically a fast food mecca, where we ate at Hana Grill. Not too exciting. Cindy drove us out of L.A.-- but I took over after the first pee break for fear that she might pull a Michael Douglas in Falling Down and have an attack of psychotic road rage. She doesn't do traffic well. I don't do mergers well. But, we managed. I don't have any pictures yet cause the first four hours were spent staring at the back of a scaffolding truck, and the second four hours were darkness in the desert... which, if you haven't experienced this, is pretty much a black hole. There was a full moon though. That was cool. But I didn't think that would come across on camera. It was after midnight by the time we rolled into Laughlin and we made the mistake of carrying all of our luggage up in one trip. Note to self: Don't do that again!!

Now we're about to go to bed. I bought $20 worth of keno tickets, but as usual, I'm losing. Fortunately we will be gone before I can do any real damage to my wallet in the slots or roulette.

Tomorrow, we'll be seeing the grand canyon and spending the night in a wigwam... more from there!! I should be able to get some pics up too...

:) Arika