A survey of American deserts
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Well, we made it to Las Vegas. Three and a half days driving, one Harley Davidson knocked over (glad I bought the insurance), pretty good luck with avoiding pet fees in hotels for the cat. But a whole lot of different desert looks, starting in the panhandle of Texas.
The western panhandle is much like New Mexico, which is stunningly gorgeous. Then you get into eastern Arizona which is less interesting but has its own look. The high desert of Flagstaff and the Kaibab Plateau, populated with western pine forests, going down into the low desert north of Kingman into the craggy moonscape mountains around Lake Mead and Hover Dam. So much variation in vegetation and look.
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You knocked over a Harley? This sounds suspiciously like a Tim Allen movie…
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Not too hot for that kind of road trip, this time of year? Wasn’t Arizona on fire?
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@George-K said in A survey of American deserts:
I still wanna know about the Harley...
That's a sore spot. It was, of course, at Buc-ee's. This place was a ZOO. Traffic in and out took half an hour each. Cars and people everywhere, like opening at Disney World. No real place to park a truck, so i was in a fire lane and had to back up. I could not see the bikes in the mirrors. I almost took out all four of them. It took a long time to get the owner out there and I insisted we file a police report. Even the cop that came out said he hated to get calls to come there. Thye owner was not happy, but he soon realized that I stuck around to find him and take care of it so things got more amiable. He'll need to repair a saddlebag and some scuffed chrome but the bike was rideable.
Now, the sore spot? This truck HAD A FUCKING BACKUP CAMERA but it didn't show in the rear view mirror unless you had the dash lights turned all the way up. I discovered this when we got to Amarillo. Unbelievable. There was nothing in the truck that would tell you that and the only label was CARGO LIGHT and nothing was said when I rented it. Ten seconds of instruction would have prevented the whole incident.
Penske will be hearing about this long and loud and I am going to pass this along to the bike owner.
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It’s still hell. This place had at least 80 gas pumps but people would leave their cars parked there while they went into the store behemoth.
Worse than airports by a long shot.
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It’s still hell. This place had at least 80 gas pumps but people would leave their cars parked there while they went into the store behemoth.
Worse than airports by a long shot.
@Mik said in A survey of American deserts:
It’s still hell. This place had at least 80 gas pumps but people would leave their cars parked there while they went into the store behemoth.
My neighborhood one is my favorite gas station / convenience store ever. It's not so crowded that one can't go into the store while the tank is filling. The car wash is nice too.
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I went into one in Katy, TX while I was working there for a week. It was awesome.
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I never heard of Buc-ees
One is under construction about 60 miles from here, maybe I'll get there sometime
Link to video -
This is the one we were at. It was just like this. It’s the biggest one ever.
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This is the one we were at. It was just like this. It’s the biggest one ever.
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Did you see EV charging stations there?
Imagine the entire Buc-ee's converted to EV charging!
