Pray For Me, I'm Driving The 93

As my children can verify, Bruce loves a good back road. He and I took a few days off last weekend and went to Las Vegas. By that I mean we eventually made it to Las Vegas, but not on the usual route. We took The 93.

Back in the day, as in before I-15 was built, the main road from L.A. to Salt lake City was Highway 93. Bruce's dad and uncle used to drive this road to get to their military assignments out in the nuclear testing zones of central Nevada, thus the title of this entry. I guess that used to be a big saying back in those days.

The 93 takes off west of Cedar City and heads into eastern Nevada, then curves south to Las Vegas. Sometimes it follows the main Union Pacific line from Utah to California. We stopped at the historic Spanish-style train depot in Calliente, Nevada to have a look around.

They had a hand painted map inside that showed all of the little towns along the railroad route. Bruce loved it.

Now the depot houses city and police offices and a library. The city seems sadly vacant, but the people there still hang on. Driving through the desert we saw fighter jets from Nellis AFB dog fighting above us, which was neat. The whole Highway 93 experience added a bit of time to our drive, but I'm glad we went exploring.