Mesa, Arizona

We left Las Vegas this morning at 11:30, anticipating a 5 hour drive according to Googlemaps. Sadly, we encountered two motor vehicle accidents. The first one occurred just past the Hoover Dam. A semi trailer truck had driven through a guard rail, down a hill, and landed on it's side facing oncoming traffic. I can only imagine how those drivers felt when they saw this huge vehicle hurtling towards them! It took us over 2 hours to go about 8 km. It was 30 degrees and we didn't want to put the air conditioner on because of overheating the engine or running down the hybrid battery. The second accident happened minutes before we encountered it. Not sure exactly what happened but there was camping stuff strewn along the highway, a badly smashed pickup truck, two dazed people sitting on the roadside, and an ambulance on its way to the scene.

Other than these unfortunate events, the drive was quite interesting as we drove past Lake Mead and through a forest of Joshua trees. We saw specially built wildlife overpasses as this area has the largest herd of desert big horn sheep in the country.

We were relieved to arrive safely at our condo in Mesa 3 l/2 hours later than anticipated.Read more