The Death Drive Won’t Be Your Last Road Trip

The desert is a weird and wonderful place. I am reminded of this when I pull into a gas station parking lot an hour outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. To my left, there’s a fireworks store. In front of me is an alien-themed convenience store. To my right, there’s an alien-themed brothel. Where else in the world can you score fireworks, alien paraphernalia and sex in one stop?

I need to get to the tiny town of Beatty before the sun goes down, so I don’t have much time at Area 51 Alien Center. There’s a 1950s diner in the back of the store, plus gifts like an alien baby wine bottle holder. It’s a fruitful first hour into The Death Drive, a road trip through the Nevada desert I’ve embarked on for the sake of taking a road trip. I needed a break from civilization, so I decided to take the next few days to explore the mysteries of the stark emptiness.

After landing at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport, it was time to get the hell out of dodge, so I rented a new, cherry red Dodge Charger—a change of pace from my decade-old Jeep Liberty at home in California. It didn’t take long for the doldrums of Vegas and its suburbs to give way to vast open space. Chipotles and Starbucks were replaced by cacti and jack rabbits. With no one around to watch, I was flying down the freeway at a speed I will not incriminatingly put into print. I blared the Black Panther soundtrack louder than doctors recommend, scream-singing along with Kendrick Lamar as the sun started to set. Desert dusk is one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see. The blues and purples of the mountains become even more blue and purple. The bright sand and rocks of the desert floor reflect the backdrops’ changing hues.

I rolled into Beatty, Nevada just after a dark night began to settle in, and found my hotel in the town of about 1,000 residents. Like many of these desert towns, the mountain-wrapped Beatty got its start as a mining hub. The Stagecoach Hotel & Casino sits right on Highway 95, and is conveniently located next to a shop that gleefully bills itself as “The Largest Candy Store in Nevada!” At check-in, I learn that the dinner options are limited. There’s a Denny’s at the casino and a VFW restaurant a few blocks down the road. The third option is closed tonight. I take note of the slim pickings and go to put my stuff down. By the time I walk through the casino and get to my room, my hair smells like gamblers’ cigarette smoke. The room looks exactly what you’d think a desert casino hotel room would: two queen beds on carpeted floor, a shub (shower/bathtub) in a blindingly fluorescent white bathroom. The WiFi password is “Blackjack,” because of course it is.

I opt to eat at Denny’s and build my own Grand Slam like a good American. While I’m waiting for the buttermilk pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, I study the rest of the menu, learning that a birthday cake milkshake clocks in at 1,090 calories. “How have you guys been? Haven’t seen you for a while,” the hostess asks the family she seats in the booth behind me. The regulars ask about the employment flyers posted in front of the restaurant. “I do have a lot of openings, more and more every day, but busy season is coming up. I need cooks, dishwashers, servers.” My Grand Slam arrives and I’m impressed by how the pancakes are as fluffy as advertised. I do not calculate the calories of the meal, and eat the whole damn thing as diners at a table diagonal from mine talk about guns. I pay for my $9 ($9!) meal and head back to my hotel room. I haven’t been in the desert for a full day yet and my skin is already visibly dry. It’s turning white and scaly, quite the look. I bathe in the shub and douse myself in lotion to combat the lizard skin.

The next morning I explore Beatty in the sunshine. The beauty of doing this road trip at theend of winter is that there’s no rush to get my day going early to beat the scorching heat. I don’t have to worry about potentially dying in the blazing sun—it’s only going to be 75 degrees today.

I jog down Beatty’s main drag and through its few residential streets lined with permanent and mobile homes. The run gives me a lay of the land, and helps me find a spot to eat. At Gema’s Wagon Wheel Cafe and Espresso, I have the super skillet, a meaty breakfast-for-lunch with three eggs, ham, cheese, potatoes, bell peppers, and onions. The whole wheat toast comes buttered. I sit at a table near the window with a view of a Washington Federal ATM and a sign for the Beatty Water and Sanitation District. Here, too, the staff knows regulars. The server catches up with returning customers in between watching Oceans 11 on his phone when things are slow. I eat my skillet while siphoning the WiFi. “Howdy,” a typical Western movie-type says coming in through the bell ringing door. He’s got jeans and cowboy boots on and, naturally, has a mustache. “You guys have espresso drinks? Can I get a 16-ounce cappuccino to go?” Not the order I imagined from pseudo-Sam Elliott.

When it’s time to go, the server gives me a road map after he learns I’m heading into Death Valley. Millennial me thinks I’ll never need a paper map as long as I have my iPhone. Millennial me is wrong.

“By the time I drive another hour deeper into the park, I find myself liberatingly alone.”

En route to Death Valley, I stop at Rhyolite, a ghost town with crumbling buildings from an era I cannot relate to. What on earth was it like to be a homesteader of the early 1900s, or a miner’s wife out here in the middle of nowhere? On the town’s outskirts is Goldwell Open Air Museum, a fascinating collection of contemporary art, including a giant Minecraft-looking statue of a naked blonde woman. Belgian artist Albert Szukalski’s contributions are, put plainly, spooky as fuck—statues of cloaked, hooded, faceless people in different arrangements, such as a recreation of The Last Supper.

I get back in the Dodge and head for the valley. At the Furnace Creek Visitor’s Center, I get my national park day pass and learn that Death Valley holds a few crazy records. It’s the hottest and driest place on the planet. They’ve recorded temperatures of 134 degrees Fahrenheit out here. I make sure I have water before driving into the belly of the beast to check out various points of interest. First, there’s The Devil’s Golf Course, a salt-covered expanse of land that is not actually a golf course and gets so much gusty wind that a sign warns you to be careful walking around the treacherous terrain—you could get blown over and break bones on the shards of rocks and salt formations. Badwater Basin is another salty spot named for a time that a mule refused to drink from a pool of salty-AF water. At every stop, tourists like me walk around smiling at the stunning moonscapes, bracing themselves against the powerful winds. They take selfies, read the informational signs posted near the parking lots. I figure I’ll be with these people all day, but by the time I drive another hour deeper into the park, I find myself liberatingly alone.

I wait for a car to appear in any direction. Cars never come. There’s no cell service. It’s just me and the Dodge for nearly two hours—I didn’t know you could be this alone in 2018. It’s amazing. Until it’s not.

At some point during the second half of my Johnny Cash essentials playlist, I notice that my gas level is lower than anticipated. With no internet access, I can’t check the GPS to see if I’m even close to a gas station, or the park exit. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuck,” I sing aloud as the mileage estimate goes from 70 miles remaining gas to 55. I picture myself sitting outside of my car, waiting for someone to come along. How does getting help even work out here? Would I betray my childhood training and get into a car with strangers? Would I ask someone to send for a park ranger? Would someone even stop? Hell, I wouldn’t. I feel like a pathetic city wimp as the gas burns steadily away.

Then, I remember the road map. The map! This is what maps are for! I pull over onto the soft shoulder and examine the paper like an ancient artifact. I say a faraway thanks to the diner server as I study it, and I feel a weight lift when I realize I will be able to make it to a gas station. Back behind the wheel, I soar through the remainder of the park, falling deep in love with the unforgiving landscape that grows more pink with the setting sun.

I reach Shoshone (population 31) at dusk and get gas just in the knick of time. Inside the convenience store, I pick up a date muffin made with local dates—they thrive here in the desert conditions—and some water before driving onto Pahrump, population 37,00-ish, which feels massive compared to baby Beatty. I check into a Holiday Inn Express and eat Northern Thai food for dinner, just like the old prospectors who passed through this land before me.

The following day, I leave Pahrump in the brilliant sunshine and head for Amargosa, another abandoned town that now houses an opera house, hotel and farm-to-table cafe. Amargosa Junction sits right where the big Nevada sky blends with the big California sky. A borax mining company owned it back in the day, but sold it when they decided to move the mine to Boron, California. Now the town has just three permanent residents. I met one of them, Jason Neuman. “I’ve been here about a year,” he tells a customer in front of me in line at Amargosa Cafe. “It is kind of a long time for me to be in one place.” Jason works at the cafe, the hotel and the opera house. He even lives in the hotel, which makes sense considering there aren’t many other housing options around.

I order a soft-scrambled egg sandwich with natural cherrywood bacon and arugula. “We use fresh and local ingredients as much as possible. Ask us about the local farmers we work with,” a corner of the chalkboard menu reads. It’s wild, borderline funny, to imagine any local farms around these desolate parts. How could anything but those dates grow out here? A hitchhiker comes into the cafe and asks what time it is, if California recognizes daylight savings time, and when the town was built. Jason knows the answers to all of this and doles out a brief history lesson to the thoroughly tanned drifter. The hitchhiker seems deeply grateful for the information and heads back out to the open road. I inhale my sandwich, so violently in fact that I choke on some biscuit crumb that whooshes down the wrong pipe.

It’s time to return to my densely populated reality. I get back in the Dodge and take advantage of the last hours of liberating lawlessness. (Maybe not literally lawless, but it feels that way when no one is around to stop you.) I race down the highway toward Las Vegas, growing weary of the increasing traffic. My cell phone service turns back on and I’m hit with text messages and emails I’d been sheltered from all day. Back on the grid, my isolated desert party is over.