The car was beginning to give us trouble and with the harsh desert sun beating down upon us, we were happy to be heading into an air-conditioned environment. Remarking to myself that Hunter S. Thompson had made a previous voyage down this very stretch of highway 15, but not for the same reasons, I stood up in the seat as we zipped along and began taking shots of the approaching menace.

Having just beat feat from La-La Land, the sun was escaping us and I struggled to get shots of the beast. It ties the Steel Phantom at Kennywood Park for the highest drop on any coaster and delivers a top speed of 88 m.p.h., making it the fastest coaster in the world. The videos I had seen of this coaster made it seem like one of the world's most travelin' rides--I had silently plotted camera angles based on these tapes and it sure helped once we got alongside the imposing structure. One main road allowed for great tracking of the coaster train as it hit camelback after camelback coming out of that wicked second spiral.

Upon pulling into the parking lot of , we were immediately aware that Desperado kind of owned the place, yellow tracks were evident just about everywhere you looked. Grabbing a few shots before we lost sun, the casino soon beckoned and it was into the darker light and the expansive theme of the place finally grabbed ahold. It's amazing what casinos will do in order to pull in potential gamblers. The interior of Buffalo Bill's was garish, to say the least, with a full-fledged log ride in operation, hundreds of slot machines and more family entertainment than most of your Orlando-area strip malls. After handing over Wile E. and some other important belongings, we began that long first hill and took a look around at the desert surroundings. The Coaster dives right past the resort room windows, folks with fruity drinks sort of wave as you go past, and it's a quick move, a horrific dive right into a tunnel and out onto a sloping hill that thunders you around into an intensely packed turn.

After a bit of magical slopes, this big bullet heads for the hills and negotiates a series of camelback humps and then right onto a bit of brake track....

they need to slow it down at this point, it's half-way through the course and it's going too fast.....

....and then it's off on a little tour right past the front of the casino, watching the folks who came to gamble standing their with their mouth open and finally goes spinning through rock work and right into part of the show building for one of the resorts other attractions, a log flume complete with little Disney-type characters.

After proving to you that it's still boss, the train finally thunders into the daylight and with over 5000 feet of track covered, it's back into the casino at a surprisingly brisk clip and you're free to stumble into one of the nearby resort villas, where you can recuperate and head on out to Vegas in the morning. There was no way we could settle down and enjoy some of that Primadonna hospitality, so it was back into the car for a few last shots of this wild and woolly ride and then back onto the highway with dreams of neon in our heads. The cool night air brought our temperatures way down and calmed the sunburns that were beginning to develop. If you've never made the drive from Los Angeles to Vegas, understand that it's a lot of zip. Dirt, yucca plants, cheesy ghost towns and sultry billboards. It's imperative that you possess the ability to entertain yourself until arriving on the strip, or you'll go stark raving nuts. The light was soon leaving us and it looked like we would end up slightly behind schedule. It was originally intended that we hit Las Vegas on this very same day to do the coasters in town, but perhaps the car had something to do with our getting on the road to Vegas as the sun began to set. We would check into the Holiday Inn Boardwalk on Las Vegas Blvd. and tackle the strip in the morning.