Road Trip 2020 - Detour: Las Vegas & San Diego

January 24-27, 2020 - Las Vegas, Nevada (Patte) & San Diego, California (Roger)

Las Vegas is better with friends

Red Rock Canyon is located just outside of Las Vegas.

     We sadly departed Jumbo Rocks Campground in Joshua Tree National Park after three magical days of biking, hiking, and stargazing. I was on my way to visit UMaine friends in Las Vegas while Roger would drive the van to San Diego and hang out with his brother and sister-in-law for the weekend. I had a Greyhound bus ticket from Palm Springs to Vegas. It made sense at the time. Cheaper and quicker than flying since there are no direct flights to Vegas from Palm Springs. 

We B 2 B Who B U B?

     Roger dropped me off at the North Palm Springs bus stop at a Shell station off I-10. The bus arrived about 20 minutes late. In the last minutes before the bus arrived, I went back to the van (thankfully, Roger was still there) and grabbed a couple of granola bars and two clementine oranges. (Lesson one, always travel with food and water.)

     The bus arrived, and I took a seat near the back. The bus originated in Yuma, Arizona, that morning and was heading to L.A. I would get a connecting bus to Vegas in San Bernardino. I settled in, looking forward to a relaxing ride to Vegas.

Not a happy bus customer

     At 1 p.m., a half-hour into the ride, after picking up new passengers in Banning, the bus chugged a few times then quit, and the driver pulled over to the side of Highway 10 near Calimesa, about 20 miles southeast of San Bernardino. The driver went outside and opened an engine compartment near the back of the bus. Then he tried to start the bus again. He repeated this procedure a few more times. It didn’t look good. 

     We sat on the bus for two hours before the passengers started to lose their patience. Some called a customer service number. Then someone said that everyone needed to call the number until we got results. This is wrong. We should get a refund. We need water.

New York, New York, in Las Vegas

     The customer service person said, “I’m sorry that happened to you. You need to call the customer service number.”

     The passengers said, “This is the customer service number. You are customer service. That’s you!”

     The customer service person said the phone lines must be overloaded because the calls were being forwarded to him. All we could do was call back. Eventually, one of the customer service people verified that indeed, we were broken down, the driver had filed a report, and either a mechanic or another bus was on the way. Which one? They didn't know. In this situation, the procedure was to send a mechanic, and if the mechanic couldn't fix it, then they would send another bus. How long would that take? They didn't know.

Feeling better in Red Rock Canyon

     There would be no real-time customer service. No questions or concern about our well-being. No offers to improve the situation. Just an apology and a remote customer service agent reading a script from a procedural manual.

     The driver then returned to the bus and announced that Greyhound was sending another bus FROM L.A.! It would be there in an hour. AN HOUR. We had already been sitting on a hot bus in the desert for two hours. Many of the passengers had no food or water.

I've been looking for a Year of the Rat mascot.
This story to be continued...

     Following the lead of another passenger, I decided to call a Lyft driver to take me to San Bernandino to catch the next connection to Vegas, scheduled at 4:45 pm. I had already missed my earlier connection. I felt bad about leaving my fellow passengers on the broken-down bus. Most of them were going to L.A. Another passenger and I shared the Lyft to San Bernardino where her ride would pick her up. 

Beautiful sunshine with beautiful people --
NJ - ME - AK - CO

     The San Bernardino Greyhound station was a rough-looking place. A security guard checked me at the door. “No guns or knives,” he said. “No, absolutely not,” I replied. Then he passed a wand over me just to make sure.

     The station was full of passengers waiting for the bus to L.A. and other connections, including mine. My bus was late because of the heavy L.A. traffic. The 4:45 pm connection I made didn’t leave San Bernardino until after 6 p.m. I arrived in Vegas around 11:30 p.m. (My original schedule was supposed to arrive at 5:30 p.m.)

Red rock at Red Rock Canyon

     Despite a terrible bus experience, I had a wonderful time in Vegas. I hadn’t seen two of my friends since moving to Alaska seven years ago. The third I hadn’t seen since I graduated in 1988. I’d write more about what we did in Vegas, but, well, you know what they say about Vegas.

     We rented a car on Sunday and drove to Red Rock Canyon for a hike and then had lunch at Cottonwood Station in the village of Blue Diamond, Nevada. 

A Joshua Tree stands guard in Blue Diamond, Nevada.

     Sadly, we were in Red Rock Canyon when we learned about the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven other people. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. The heavy L.A. traffic was the reason Kobe traveled mostly by helicopter. I hope L.A. does something to address its traffic and smog problems.

     A the end of the weekend, I flew (yes, flew) to San Diego to reconnect with Roger. We dined on lobster he and his brother caught the night before on a charter fishing trip. I hadn’t eaten lobster in a long time, and it was delicious. 

Roger caught our dinner -- a California spiny lobster.

     As I will continue to learn, traveling includes adventure as well as misadventure. It’s important to be prepared for the unexpected, but we don’t have to let the unexpected ruin our experience if we can help it.

#lasvegas #redrockcanyon #sandiego #vanlife #me2ak #ontheroad