Getting Lost - An Adventure in "The"

So, it's a beautiful Nevada Sunday in Las Vegas, the top is down on the convertible, the light breeze and partly cloudy sky makes us feel this will be a relaxing trip to Mt. Charleston. My wife hasn't been there yet, but I was there with my daughter a few months ago. You see, my wife and I actually were on our way there a few weeks ago, but I had her make a wrong turn, and we ended up driving around "The 215" all day (all major roads are considered to be "The" for some reason).

So, looking at Google Maps, I emeorized the route for this particular Sunday. After all, I wanted to make sure we'd get there this time. Well, to make a long story short, we turned off "The 93" instead of "The 95"....which would have been the next off ramp.

Being the adventureous type, we decided to stay on 93 to see where it goes. We realized that we were on "The 15" which at that point was still "The 93". We saw a sign that said "Junc 93 North" and figured we'd take it, since we knew where "The 15" would take us, as we'd been down that road (been there, done that).

Well, 200 miles later, we ended up in Caliente, Nevada.....although we thought for sure we were in Utah or Colorado....or who knows where. It's a good thing we had enough gas to get there, because this 200 miles was all open road in between mountain ranges....no food, no gas, no nothing. Boring....except for the fact the Sun was on the west, then the est, then the north...we had no idea of which direction we were going, or where we'd end up.

We had lunch at a little buger-casino joint. The owners, who had just opened the place, had recently moved there from our origin of departure, Henderson, NV. They explained that we were on the west side of Nevada - which was not correct, as later I went online to discover we were on the east side, which is what I figured....since a sign we say after having lunch said "Beaver Dam - 300 miles". We'd been to Beaver Dam on another trip....which we discovered there was no such dam, but a town called Beaver Dam.

So we explored the mining town a bit north of Caliente, and headed back the same way we came. "The 93" south was actually heading west, then north, the east, then west, then south....finally. Too bad there wasn't a straight line from Caliente to Las Vegas....probably would have saved two hours of drive time.

Moral of the story: Print out the directions from Google.....or your wife will (jokingly) say "You're an idiot".