Travel CRUISING DEATH VALLEY IN THE (VERY) FAST LANE

Seeing the dust devil dance into view, my son finally snapped out of his teenage malaise. We were barrelling east through the Mojave Desert on California Route 190, two hours into a four-day road trip. In the rearview mirror, the shrinking Sierra Nevadas. Ahead, treeless desiccation beneath the big, blue sky.

Luther, 17, straightened from his slump. He pointed as the milky ghost, all shoulders and narrow waist, came churning across a salt flat that used to be Lake Owens until Los Angeles diverted the Owens River in 1913. The size of San Francisco, it’s the single largest source of dust pollution in the United States.

I stomped on the accelerator, and the Challenger roared in response. The needle raced past the 145 km/h mark. Yes, I was breaking the speed limit along this lonely stretch of highway, but I decided it was worth the risk. I saw no other cars for miles. No curves or hills or intersecting roads. Hitting 175 km/h, I let out a selfconscious, “Dukes of Hazzard”style “yeeeeee-haw!” and eased my foot off the accelerator just about the time the dust devil vanished. Sometimes, during moments of pure joy and spontaneity, pushing limits seems appropriate. Besides, the thrill of the drive was the main point of this trip.

Luther loves cars, especially fast, high-performance cars. He knows all the makes and models, engine specs, prices. During his junior year at Chantilly High School in Fairfax County, Va., he learned to fix dents with a ball-peen hammer and airbrush paint in an auto-body class. Luther’s a car nut, plain and simple, but one without a driver’s license. I wanted to give Luther a taste of the freedom and excitement that a powerful, finely tuned automobile driven on the right stretch of road can bring. What better way than a road trip through the American West?

We set out from L.A. on a four-day round-trip circuit through Death Valley to Las Vegas and back via a different route. After the dust devil encounter, Luther and I drove on, stopping at a scenic overlook called Father Crowley Vista Point. He jumped out with his camera and marched to the edge of Rainbow Canyon. The distant floor of Panamint Valley winked at us in the sunlight.

“Hey, Dad, check that out,” Luther said, nodding back toward the parking lot. I had paid extra to rent a shiny, black Dodge Challenger with a throaty engine, wide tires and beefy lines. A couple of foreign tourists were admiring our American muscle car.

As we cannoned toward Death Valley, we munched beef jerky, which we had bought during a pit stop at Gus’s Really Good Fresh Jerky in Olancha. Gus sells his dried meat out of a converted vintage gas station topped with a giant handlettered sign, “FRESH JERKY.” He also sells online, we learned while paying for our purchase. His beef, bison and venison may be part of the digital economy, A view across the salt flats in Badwater Basin, California. but it continues a long tradition dating back more than a century, when miners and others relied on dried meat to survive in the harsh desert.

We pulled into Stovepipe Wells around sunset. A sign read “Elevation Sea Level.” Originally a tented provisioning camp for gold and silver miners founded in 1906, Stovepipe Wells became a way station for tourists during the mid-1920s. Part of Death Valley National Park, it’s home to the full-service Stovepipe Wells Hotel and General Store.

While driving was the theme of this spring-break trip, I hoped to get out and explore on foot, even though Luther’s not much of a hiker. But he surprised me at Mosaic Canyon, near Stovepipe Wells, by leaping parkourstyle onto the water-polished marble walls near the formation’s entrance. We followed the snaking narrows in and out of shadows. The canyon widened, and Luther led me up a goatlike trail along the right shoulder.

Forty-five minutes into our Mosaic Canyon walk, the wind picked up. Sand, whipped up by gusts, burned our eyes and stung our bare legs. Back at the car, I tossed Luther the keys and asked if he wanted to drive the stretch of gravel road back to Route 190. He did great, even through washboard sections that rattled our spines and even when a van hugged our tail, flashing its lights to pass. It wasn’t like Luther was creeping, especially given the gravelly conditions. “Idiots,” he mumbled as the van blew past.

I drove the rest of the trip. Our next stop was Badwater Basin, well below sea level, where we parked and crunched out onto the blinding salt flat. We drove past the Devil’s Golf Course, a jagged expanse of halite salt-crystal formations. We explored Furnace Creek, once a borax-mining centre, where the famous 20-mule teams hauled wagons filled with the white, multipurpose mineral out of pits and across the Mojave Desert. After lunch, we pressed on for Las Vegas. We entered Nevada and cruised through the Amargosa Valley. When little green men began popping up on billboards, we realized we were near the U.S. military site known colloquially as Area 51, a perennial favourite of conspiracy theorists.

The traffic lights and congestion of Vegas broke the road-trip spell. We parked the Challenger and explored the Strip on foot. Luther and I aren’t gamblers or shoppers, so instead, we went to the Gene Woods Racing Experience go-cart track just south of McCarran International Airport. Even though Luther did not need a driver’s license, this was no summer carnival ride. We wore full-face racing helmets and thick neck braces for stability. The high-performance carts could top 80 km/h. We completed two races around the winding loop. Both times, Luther beat me and most other racers.

Driving back home is never that exciting. But it’s nice for Luther to have both experiences as reminders of what’s possible behind the wheel.