A Final Day of Travel [but not the final post]

When we left the Monte Carlo hotel, it was a fairly early start--around 9:00AM. Pav knew that the ride from Vegas to West Los Angeles would be around four hours, so we'd hoped to get back around 1:30 or 2:00PM with stops.

We had a quick breakfast at the hotel and found a Starbucks a little ways out of town.  The mix of anxiety, anticipation, adrenaline, and exhaustion encouraged more coffee drinking along the way, and we stopped again near the Nevada-California border for yet another cup.

Crossing into California made it 25 states in total that we passed through since beginning this trek in New Hampshire on the 7th of July.

The ride from the border toward Los Angeles was fairly uneventful.  About half way between the border and Los Angeles is the city of Barstow.  We stopped there for yet another Starbucks coffee and something to eat when we noticed one of those brown roadside signs that indicates something of historical significance.  In this case it was for a Harvey House.  If you don't know what a Harvey House is, Pavlin will be explaining it and our visit in a future blogpost, so stay tuned.

We made our way toward LA on Interstate 15 or, as I now must learn to say, "the 15".  We were tooling along quite nicely until we encountered one of the only traffic slowdowns of the entire trip.  I think it took about a half an hour to go three miles.  As we got to the end of the slowdown, we stopped for a break off of SR138 then continued on toward home.  

About an hour or so later, Pavlin heard from his friends, Cris and Morgan, who'd left Vegas later in the morning.  It seems there was a brush fire along the 15 near SR138 that jumped the highway and several cars and trucks had caught fire. The highway was shut down in both directions, and the guys left their vehicle on the highway and were staying in a local hotel.

These images were screenshots from a live feed of the freeway.

Cris and Morgan were conducted to safety by CHP but Cris's car was partially burned in the blaze.

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Just before 4:00PM, we arrived in Los Angeles.  My car--my little old 2010 Honda Insight--the 'poor man's Prius' I like to call it--had taken us nearly 5000 miles in the past three weeks (if you include my time alone in New Hampshire)--and here we were, heading south on Veteran Avenue in Westwood. Pav was taking me to see our new apartment for the first time, together.  

We couldn't get in because we have to do a walk-through inspection first, but we did notice something rather nice as we walked the grounds:

A simple mailbox label says it all.

I think I'll leave it here for now and hope to have more to say in a day or so.