Today began the second leg of my journey from San Francisco back to Dallas. I started in Bakersfield, CA with a destination of Las Vegas. The trip was roughly a five hour journey, not including stops. Incidentally, I’m averaging 24.5 MPG with cruise control mainly set around 77-80 MPH. Not bad for a 170 mile-per-hour supercar.
A few miles outside of Bakersfield, I came across a range of mountains which carried me up to over 4,500 feet. The twisty mountain roads offered beautiful views of orange, grape, and other fruit and nut groves which eventually blended into mountain tops covered with wind generation facilities.
The mountains eventually gave way to the flat lands of Mojave and the elevation slowly dropped off from 4,000 down to about 2,000 feet. The desert is a rugged and sparse land with a wild beauty of it’s own, and it makes for a stark contrast to the nearby mountain range.
At one point, in the middle of the Mojave desert on a long, straight, deserted stretch, I pushed the NSX up to 120MPH for a short stint. She was rock solid with the only hint of speed coming from the roar of 270 horses screaming from the engine behind my head.
At one point in San Bernardino, CA (about 194 miles outside of Vegas) the highway dropped down to only two lanes for several miles. This wasn’t too much of a problem since passing was effortless and never even required a down shift.
I’m not exactly sure how long it took to reach Vegas, but it was in the 4.5-5 hour range with all the photo opp stops. My destination in Vegas was the Venetian hotel. When I pulled in to valet they gave me a little more respect than everyone else getting valet. This included some idol banter and an introduction to the front desk personnel.
The lady at the front desk proceeded to give me a complimentary room upgrade (which really only consists of the view since all of their rooms are already suites).
I should also mention that although I’ve only owned the car for less than 24 hours, I’ve had at least 10 people actually walk up and make comments to me about it. One young Asian couple wanted to get their photos taken with it… when I was sitting in traffic with the windows down passers-by stopped to tell me how nice it was… and even the ladies at the front desk of the hotel yesterday had to go out front to check it out and then proceed to tell me how much they love it.
Tomorrow morning I’m off to the Grand Canyon, so stay tuned…
(Continue on to Part 3 or go back to Part 1)
