Exercise: Several Miles of Walking Piano Song of the day: No Piano today

Miles driven: ~280

The thing about road trip that are different from flying to your destination is what you can see on the way, that you can't if you fly. Today was no different.

I had heard of The Tehachapi Loop before, even watched a video, but I had never seen it in real life. Trains don't go uphill very easily, especially American trains which are unbelievably long. At one point on the California / Nevada route the engineers back in 1876 decided that they could solve in incline problem with a big loop, and they built it in Tehachapi. A slight detour off our route to Vegas, allowed us to see it in action.

You can see an aerial view of a long train coming up the incline here

Next we stopped off at the Mojave Spaceport to charge our car. This is the home of the Virgin Orbiter which delivers satellites into space by launching them from beneath a Virgin 747. There was no satellite launches today, but we did spot the Virgin 747 (Cosmic Girl) parked on the apron in the distance.

It's quite amazing what you can find in the desert and this next stop I hadn't heard of prior to checking the route last night, and I'm glad I did. In the desert an artist was given permission to built seven 35 foot tall rock totems painted in fluorescent colors.

You have to see them in person to fully appreciate the scale and beauty. We went to see them, even though it was 99°F outside with no shade and a hot sun. I'm glad we did.

The art installation is titled "Seven Magic Mountains"

Had we flown to Vegas, we would have missed all three of these experiences.