Another extremely long drive, this time to Vegas. We'd managed to book a motel at the far end of the Strip near Luxor as, being Friday night, all the hotels were mega expensive. Just enough time for a quick shower and change and we were off for a night out, well sort of. We couldn't actually cross the freeway to get to the Strip, so we had to drive over and park on the other side of the road!

We got some very large frozen cocktails and had a wander down the boulvevard. As awful and tacky as it is, Vegas still never fails to amaze me or make me smile, mainly from all the crazy drunk overweight Americans on the streets! The Bellagio fountains always make me squeek with girlish glee, and the pink neon of the Flamingo is so retro it's hard not to love it.

The only problem is finding something, or somewhere, to eat that isn't stupidly expensive. So we had hot dogs. The air was so close, very different from the few weeks before when I was there it was cold and actually rained!

After too much frozen alcohol, the heat and the long drive, we slept very well!

We set off the next morning (after coffee and a bagel) and drove for a hour or so until we came to an Indian Reservation casino-come-diner and had traditional biscuits and gravy for brunch. Funnily enough there are neither biscuits, nor gravy, involved. I think we'd call them scones and it was covered in a white peppercorn/cheese sauce. Very weird, but good for a hangover. We had a bit of a gamble and thought we should probably hit the road.

As we progressed the wind picked up. We stopped at Beatty for a quick break and looked at all the billboards advertising the various alien-themed rest stops. We then stopped at the most bizarre place called Luning, Nevada. It was an old settlement consisting of a few houses and an old mine. There was various bits of scrap and crap for sale at the side of the road and a 'dollar table'. Basically filled with broken crap, I said I'd pay a dollar for the table and leave them the crap. Country music wafted through the air, not really sure where from though. And there was a lorry park, but no one about. As we continued we saw various signs that the road ahead was closed and diverting us to another junction, this would have put significant hours on our journey. As we got to the closure the workmen flagged us down and said they were just reopening the road so we could continue. It had been closed due to high winds and dust storms whipping up.

So we continued up the road. There were flat plains either side, nothing for miles, rising to small mountains either side and one long, seemingly straight, road. I would say 'as far as the eye could see', but you couldn't, as the dust storms blowing across the road were like driving through mud. You couldn't see a thing, and the wind got stronger and stronger and driving become quite difficult. Luckily there was hardly any traffic. After an hour or so we came to a lake which the road hugged the shores of, with mountains on one side, water on the other, and severe gales blowing us around like a toy car. There were huge lorries swerving ahead of us and passing us. Then, a few hundred feet ahead of us the little traffic there was slowly ground to a halt, and as we looked to the right we saw a lorry blown off the road and on it's side in the ditch. The police were already there and the driver was out and standing. However, there were now several lorries stationary in the queues, also being blown around.

I hung on to the steering wheel for dear life as I could feel the wind literally lifting us from underneath and howling round the tyres. Any one of those lorries could've been next to topple, yet the police wouldn't let anyone move. Huge grey clouds sped across the sky and I think it started to rain. We were eventually allowed to move on and it was an incredibly slow drive with everyone taking extra caution and not wanting to get to close to the lorries.

By nightfall it was wet and still windy and odd towns passed us here and there. No where near as far as we had wanted to reach - think we were aiming for Reno - we stopped in Fallon and found a nice and pretty cheap motel. We also found a Pizza Hut. Dinner sorted, we slumped in front of the TV.

The next morning we had decided to take it easy. That was until we looked out and saw that it had started to snow, so we packed up in record time, grabbed a complimentary coffee and bearclaw from the reception, and were on the tarmac once more.