Surprise on the Highway

One evening I was traveling from Fort Irwin, CA to Las Vegas, NV with my wife about midnight. We made a stop in Baker, CA home of the world's tallest thermometer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World. I took the time to refresh myself and for safety consumed a bit of caffeine and sugar. This is counterproductive when you want to sleep later, but in this case, it may have saved my life. As I cruised along after scaling the Clark Mountain Range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Mountain_Range in my semi-daze I noticed a slow moving car ahead. I noticed a rate of closure that indicated it was going very slow. All of the sudden, I realized that this was not a slow moving car. This was a van positioned sideways in the outside lane of the 2 and I had seen the side reflectors. I jerked the car left and it seemed like slow motion as I eased over past the stationary van. My wife woke up from the jerk and asked me in an irritated manner, had I checked to see if the other lane was clear. I had to tell her that if I had checked, we would have smashed into the van. She called 911 to notify the police, they weren't interested to talk to her because they had already received a call from another "near miss." (My son, Gabe pointed out it could better be described as a "near hit."

A note about coming into Primm, NV. If you ever studied political geograph, coming into Primm, NV from Baker, CA says it all. Here is the view of California, http://www.flickr.com/photos/manning999/2520488894/ It is a bleak desert. And then here is what pops out of the desert just because across an imagenary line, gambling is legal.
http://www.primmvalleyresorts.com/