In the morning I first fixed my rear right direction indicator light that was not working. One of the crimp-on connectors, used to attach my aftermarket tail lights to the Mazda wiring, had come loose. I fixed it up for now. I also took out my Big Red Button to see whether it would fix the starting problems. I had indeed no problems today. Strange.

I drove the last part of Route 66 to Santa Monica. The old Route 66 is still indicated, after you are on it. I managed to follow it pretty well, with only a small deviation, thanks to my GPS, Route 66 map and Rand-McNally LA. Actually, it was the GPS that told me where to go after I got off-route.

At the end of Route 66, I turned back over I 10 and I 15 to Las Vegas. I 10 was not too bad, at noonish on July 3, with not too many traffic jams. It was also quite cool, really nice.

I 15 was very scenic, as Rand-McNally indicates, but again no pictures because of traffic density. It was again hot, maybe even hotter than before, and I was again fighting overheating by turning the AC off and the windows down whenever extended climbing was needed or traffic jams occurred.

And traffic jams did occur. This road was crowded. I had hoped the road would thin out away from LA. No such luck. Maybe it was LA people driving to Las Vegas early to spend July 4. In any case, I had little time to look at the scenery, having to give all attention to the tightly spaced endless lines of cars before and behind me when I was not watching the temperature guage or the altitude guage.

There does not seem to be an alternative to I 15 through the still gorgeous San Bernardino mountains, but I planned to deviate from I 15 later using CA 127. But it was getting late so this idea started losing its appeal. Then, while the car was struggling to recover from overheating once again with the AC off, there was a more specific sign for 127 adding "Death Valley" to the info. Right. No more appeal left. None. Zilch. Njet.

When I approached Las Vegas in the midst of this endless dense stream of cars, I was worried that it might not be easy to find lodging at 6:30 pm or so local time on July 3. But I need not have worried. Plenty of room available.

It may have helped that Las Vegas has more hotel rooms than New York City and Chicago combined. I kid you not. Nine of the ten largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas. It was quite a feat to turn this infernal hot spot in a desert into a major town taking in tens of millions of visitors and many billions of dollars each year, with absolutely no resources except lax gambling laws.

Besides this record, there is also no other place on this planet, nor likely in this galaxy, where kitsch is practiced on such a gigantic scale. I just had to laugh when the magnitude of it all sunk in.

Pictures (click for larger size):