_      Our day started with a huge breakfast, unlike any that we have cooked on our little camp stove.  Katie and Charla made pancakes, fried potatoes, and bacon.  If you couldn’t tell by the Chick-Fil-A, we are back in the South!

_      After breakfast, we ventured downtown with Chris to visit Dealy Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum at the former Texas School Book Depository.  While in our travels, we have both experienced some incredible museums, this one was outstanding for its ability to arouse both questions and emotions.  As we exited the elevator on the sixth floor, we began our audio-guided tour with some background on the political and cultural climate of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, including some original movie posters, newspapers, and novels.  After that, we toured through the sections on John F. Kennedy’s campaign, election, presidency, and Dallas tour and then arrived at the window where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly sat as the motorcade rounded the hairpin turn from Elm Street, which was recreated with school book boxes.  The rest of the museum included videos and displays about the world’s reactions to JFK’s death and his legacy as well as the investigations into the events of that day in November 1963—from evidence, the Zapruder film timeline, and further conjectures about possible conspiracy theories.  The tour ended with a short film featuring Walter Cronkite, the famous voice of CBS news, that left the three of us pensive as we left the museum.

_      We planned to walk around Dealy Plaza a bit more, but a thunderstorm had set in for the night.  The rain poured down as the National Weather Service repeatedly issued flash flood warnings for our area.  Trying to work our way out of downtown was difficult, as all the traffic lights were out of order and many roads were impassable due to standing water.  Dallas’s sprawling infrastructure and insufficient highway systems weren’t helping the matter either, but we somehow made it back to the apartment in time to grill up the rest of the tilapia in the rain, as well as enjoy corn and potatoes.  We ended off the evening with a healthy dose of MarioKart 64, the go-kart driving game from the 90’s on Nintendo64.  During college Chase and Chris spent the a significant portion of time playing all of the racetracks in “Versus” mode, so it was great to rekindle old rivalries and again speed towards the checkered flag.

_ .  And, as is the state custom in Nevada, there was a scuzzy little gambling hall called the Say When Casino located just feet over the border.  The Say When is open 24 hours, and it has 25 cent slots, so to celebrate getting to Nevada we stopped.  Even at 6:30 in the morning there was a crowd inside.  We walked to the closest slot machines to the door and dropped in our quarters; with Chase’s quarter he won back 50 cents, and is probably the only person in the state of Nevada who is currently 100% ahead in gambling winnings.

_      From Winnemucca we jumped on the I-80 for a short hop to Battle Mountain and then took Highway 305 south to Austin.  Highway 305 felt like an extremely lonely road, and it didn’t seem that there was any reason for someone to drive it unless they lived or worked out there; and despite a couple ranches and mines, we can only assume very few people lived or worked out there.  Ironically, Highway 305 dead-ended into Highway 50, which is billed as the Loneliest Highway in America (despite having more tourist traffic).  Highway 50, though, is an amazing road.  We immediately entered the town of Austin, which is a quaint little mountain town.  Steeped in gold rush (and oddly enough, Pony Express) history, the town was situated at 6,600 feet elevation and when we pulled in the air temperature was exactly 100 degrees.  We did the only obvious thing, and stopped at the Toiyabe Café for ice cream.

_      On our way out of Austin the road started climbing, and climbing, and climbing, until we finally reached Austin Summit at 7,484 feet, which has been our highest elevation of the trip.  From there it was all downhill.  (Las Vegas is all the way down at 2,181 feet elevation.)  Highway 50 to Highway 376 to Tonopoh to Highway 95 to Las Vegas!  On the way we passed some sketchy-looking military outposts in the desert, including the alleged Area 51; we also passed Angel’s Ladies, a legal brothel in the desert, though we didn’t want to investigate the quality of the ladies who would choose to work in the rural desert when Las Vegas was less than hour away.  Managing to avoid military security, aliens, and prostitutes, we soon found ourselves driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, more popularly known as The Strip.

_      Pulling into the Stratosphere, we commented that neither one of us could remember the last time we had been in a parking structure so large.  The hotel has more than 2,800 rooms, making it approximately ten times the size of the Hotel Alyeska, where Chase works in the winter.  Exiting from the parking garage, guests must drag all of their luggage with them from one end of the casino to the other to check-in for the room before dragging all their belongings back across the casino to get to the elevator.  There are three elevator banks, depending on which part of the hotel your room is in.  We finally found our elevator bank, and sped up to the sixteenth floor for our mountain-view room.  We barely left the room, instead relaxing and reveling in the fact that for the first time since July we had walls, electricity, air conditioning, a shower, and a bed.