My eyes open. It’s Thursday morning. I’ve driven over 18,000 miles in the last ten weeks, and I’ve got about 150 more to go to get to my final destination.

My last evening of the road trip was not one to remember. In the nothing town of Ridgecrest, CA (formerly known as Crumville - no, really!) - Paul and I ended up eating some crappy Dominos Pizza whilst sat in the car in the parking lot outside. It’s high livin’ this road trip.

We’d left Vegas that morning, and driving through the heat of Death Valley. An attempt at persuading the park ranger to give me my $80 ‘all parks’ voucher for free because I’d already done Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Arches and Grand Canyon in the past few weeks was unsuccessful, and it meant I had to cought up the ten bucks to pass through.

We got slightly worried when we read and were told the story of a woman who’s eleven year old child had died out there just last week. But she had been stupid - driven off of a recognised road/path, and was then blindly following her GPS system down a path that wasn’t drivable. She’s got a flat tyre, was unable to move and in the four days that it took people to find her, her son passed away. We later found out that was the third death this year.

Temperatures hit 117F for us (that’s 47C for anyone in England) as we drove through, stopping at every opportunity we could to rest the car so that the engine didn’t overheat and take on water ourselves. At Stovepipe Wells we found a gas station selling at more than a dollar of what you’d normally pay. Bags of ice normally around $1.50 were selling for four bucks, and even my favourite Vitamin water drink had a 200% markup on it. Sellers market, here in the desert.

Hearing The Eagle’s ‘Hotel California’ (for only - surprisingly - the fourth time on the trip) on the radio that morning was a serendipitous signal and convinced me to splash out on a hotel and not camp for the last night meant no more putting up of the tent … well until next week when I drive back to Charleston and camp a few times there anyway, and so we stayed at a place which - again - had a ropey internet connection. Once I’ve done writing my book on my trip, I feel like I could write the book on just how hard it is to get a mobile internet connection these days - poor when you consider how long we’ve had the ‘net now.

Down Interstate 5, and onto the 405, I filled up with gasoline for the last time - all 984 gallons of it, and the cost of two thousand, six hundred dollars. Some nice charts based on my stats to come on this blog over the next few days, naturally.

To Hyde Park. A sketchy neighbourhood (“4 shootings last month!”, my mum helpfully twittered me) meant that I didn’t get out of the car. Instead we did our own shooting - with the video camera - as Paul got me down on digital tape, only moving on when we started to attract attention from the locals because he stuck his head out of the sunroof to get a shot of the ‘Hyde Park’ sign.

And then that was it. I was done. Just like that. On a non-descript Thursday, with me feeling hot and bothered and more grumpy than ever because it was about that moment that I realised that I wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow morning and instantly feel under pressure to be somewhere, drive someplace, or produce something online, and so my body started to shut down. Was it an anti-climax? Perhaps. A little.

I stayed at my friends Thursday night in Santa Monica. I slept for twelve hours, woke up and yet later in the afternoon slept for another four. Friday night I slept for ten hours again, and when I woke up instantly yawned and felt tired. Well why did I wake up then? I queried my own body.

At some point next week I will stabilise, and (wearily) trudge back east. On a trip which some might consider by itself to be an epic journey : From West to East coast. Another 4 to 6 days and two thousand miles on the clock - probably a lot of tedious interstate driving too, scenic road tours will not help me get back quickly. Back to some sort of normality.

And then … ?

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