![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV03.jpg)
A mile down the road, I crossed into Arizona and found gas was $3.64/gallon. Three miles later, I was in Nevada and confused as to time-zone. So I impulsively took a quick turn onto a dirt road to nowhere, a beautiful 12 mile dirt road over "Christmas Tree Pass" :
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV04.jpg)
The weather was dramatic in spots, the scenery was too:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV05.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV07.jpg)
There are precious few indications of "level" out in that surrealscape. I took that hill to the left in 1st gear. I took the whole road in 1st gear:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV08.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV09.jpg)
The rocks patiently acquiesce to their sculpting:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV10.jpg)
The BobD has the VW bus genes. It (very) calmly just puttered at 12 mph from the 558 ft elevation of Laughlin to the 3,963 ft elevation of the pass through the mountains:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV11.jpg)
I felt like I had just wandered into another epoch:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV12a.jpg)
Getting close to the top of the pass, I was adoring of the splendorous solitudinousness:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV13.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV14.jpg)
Ran into a mud-spattered CJ 5 doorless Jeep just after I had scrambled up a nasty rocky gully gulched section of eroded road. He was coming up the other side that was just as wretched. We had to do a mirror kiss to get by. He looked hard at my passing, I think not quite believing that I was playing on his turf from the comforts of a well waxed 7-passenger bus. This road had claimed someone's wheel/brake drum/axle carrier:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV16.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV17.jpg)
Somebody made a namesake at the summit. You may find this to be tasteless desecration, but I found it to be a perhaps displaced demented delight:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV15.jpg)
Only on the downside did I spy this sign a bit late in the journey. The BobD displays a diffident attitude to such recommendations:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV18.jpg)
The descent into Searchlight NV (Harry Reid's hometown) was another submersion in a sauna of heat and humidity. Drove up US 95 through the little town of "Cal-Nev-Ari" to Boulder City and passed under 15% of Los Angeles' electrical supply from the nearby Hoover Dam:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/07NV19.jpg)
Did I mention that I love how these air-cooled VWs get around like mountain goats?
Colin