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| The Comfort Suites in Sandusky, OH I stayed at while visiting Cedar Point this year. I also stayed here on my CP trip in 2007 as well, nice hotel! |
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| My 2009 Dodge Caliber rental car that I drove while in Ohio this year. | ||
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| Metra Commuter Train #1239 which I rode to Aurora, IL from Chicago. | ||
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| A former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy caboose on display at the Metra station in Aurora. | ||
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| The Comfort Suites in Aurora, IL. This was my hotel during my overnight stay in the Chicago area, another nice hotel! | ||
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| Amtrak California Pacific Surfliner Train #567 just departing Fullerton heading for Los Angeles. This train arrived just after my train that brought me to Fullerton from Los Angeles. |
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| A BNSF freight coming through Fullerton shortly after my train arrived there from Los Angeles. | ||
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| 2 Photos of the World's Tallest Thermometer. Located in Baker, CA, this is conveniently located just off I-15 on Baker Blvd about 100 miles from Las Vegas in the heart of Death Valley! By the way, it was 86 degrees out, which for Death Valley is rather "cool" considering it gets to 125 in the shade during the summer here! | ||
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| Looking up Baker Blvd near the World's Tallest Thermometer. | ||
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| The 2010 Chevy Malibu rental car I had for my road trip to Vegas. | ||
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| The SpringHill Suites By Marriott in Henderson, NV. This was my hotel for the road trip to Vegas. It opened on Labor Day weekend 2009 and was very clean and nice and the staff was super friendly, great hotel! | ||
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| The world famous "Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas" sign! There is now a nice area where you can pull off the road to take pictures of or get in a picture of this sign! |
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| A McDonald's with passenger cars! This is located in Barstow, CA just off I-15 and is known as McDonalds - Barstow Station. |
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| More passenger cars at the restaurant. There is also a Panda Express and a Quiznos Sub restaurant here. | ||
| Sunday, October 4th, 2009: | ||
| I would make the drive back to Fullerton having left the hotel around 10:30am. I ate breakfast at a McDonald's on the strip located not too far from the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign which I then stopped by to go photograph. I decided that it would be a good idea to get out of Vegas as early as possible because a previous trip to Barstow to go railfanning on a Sunday afternoon in 2006 had me get stuck in the worst traffic jam I've ever seen in my life on my way back towards Los Angeles! As I drove back, I could see there was a serious amount of traffic on I-15 but at least it kept moving! I made a stop at a rest area only to find no vending machines there so I kept on driving and eventually made it to Barstow where I found a very unique looking McDonald's! It was called the McDonald's Barstow Station (see photos above)! There were passenger cars connected to it and yes, you could eat inside them. I opted to get some hamburgers to go because of my aforementioned fear of getting stuck in traffic! Well, I noticed smoke from some fires burning near Cajon Pass (there were forest fires in that area) but was able to get over the pass with no problems and ultimately around 4pm, I was back in Fullerton, having avoided the traffic. I stopped by the station there to pick up a Metrolink Ticket for Monday in case there was some delay in turning in my rental car. I spent the night with family in Placentia, CA. I did laundry and repacked all of my stuff and prepared for the flights home... | ||
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