Outside the air-conditioned car, it’s 100 degrees. The Mojave Desert stretches away on either side of the highway. We have been maintaining a steady 60 on the clock for quite a while. But we are, nevertheless, in a queue. The same vehicles have been in front and behind since our last stop at Baker and will still be with us when we get to Las Vegas. It’s Sunday afternoon, and the traffic is solid in both lanes on our side of the highway. And it’s the same on the other side for traffic heading back to Los Angeles.
This is the first stretch of the most ambitious of our motoring trips. The idea is to drive inland from Los Angeles through Nevada, a corner of Utah and a corner of Colorado to Santa Fe in New Mexico, and then return by a southerly route through Albuquerque, Flagstaff and Phoenix. We arrived in Los Angeles late on Friday night, and did very little on our first full day, except relax by the hotel pool and book the hire car, a compact Ford SUV.