21 Fun in the Sun

Chapter 21 FUN IN THE SUN "You kids missed all the fun!" Mrs. McDonald gushed when she got back to the hotel room. She and Dr. McDonald proceeded to regale Coke and Pep with stories of their adventures visiting many of the oddball museums and attractions Las Vegas had to offer. Her only regret, she said, was that the Liberace Museum had closed several years earlier. "So what did you two do while we were out?" asked Dr. McDonald. "Nothing." Everybody got a good night's sleep, and after checking out of the hotel in the morning, the family stuffed themselves at one of the many all- you-can-eat breakfast buffets found on the Strip. Mrs. McDonald started grabbing snacks to munch on in the car, but the rest of the family

convinced her that would be unethical—if not illegal—so she put everything back. "It's all-you-can-eat, Mom," Pep scolded her. "Not all-you-can-stuff-in-your-purse." Everybody had gorged themselves. It was hard to imagine being hungry after a Las Vegas buffet. "I don't want to eat again for the rest of my life," Coke said, rubbing his belly. There are only a few roads heading west out of Las Vegas. Dr. McDonald pulled the Ferrari onto I-15, also known as the Mojave Freeway. In just twenty minutes, the bright lights and glitz of Las Vegas were completely gone and the hot, flat, wide-open spaces of arid Nevada were back. One couldn't help but wonder why human beings had chosen to build a strange playground in the middle of the desert for people to lose their money on slot machines and roulette wheels. "I have an announcement to make," Dr. McDonald said shortly after leaving the city

limits of Las Vegas. "Uh-oh," thought both twins. When their father had an announcement to make, it was usually not good news. "I slept on it," their father continued, "and after going to the Atomic Testing Museum yesterday, I've decided not to write that Trinity novel we talked about." "Why not, Dad?" Pep asked. "That would have been a cool story." "There are dozens of books about the first atomic test," he explained. "The world doesn't need another one. I want to write something totally original." "Dad, you should write a novel about a guy who can't come up with an idea for a novel to write," Coke suggested. "It's been done." "So what are you going to write about, Dad?" Pep asked. "I don't know," Dr. McDonald replied. "I'll come up with something."

Pep opened her notepad and turned to the page with the five ciphers they had received. She focused on the fifth one. It would be the last one, according to Dr. Warsaw's card. 8980 Numbers were harder to figure out than letters, Pep always found. And four digits didn't give her much to work with. It was obviously a very short message. The Internet wasn't much help. Pep borrowed her mother's laptop and searched for "8980," but all that came up were a bunch of street addresses and model numbers for various products. After staring at her notepad for a long time, Pep closed it with a sigh. She could work on it again later. Everyone had settled in for a long drive, but just an hour and a half after leaving Las Vegas, this sign appeared at the side of the road.

As if on cue, the whole family spontaneously burst into that old song—"Cal-i-forn-ia here I come, right back where I started from..." Everyone stopped right there, because nobody knew the next line of the song. "Woo-hoo!" Coke shouted. "We're home, baby!" Well, not exactly home. California is a big, long state. If you were to drive from the top to the bottom, it would be about eight hundred miles. However, if they kept driving without a stop, the McDonalds could be home that very same day. It's only about three hours from the state

line to Los Angeles, and after that it's a five- hour straight shot up I-5 to San Francisco. But just knowing that they were finally back in the state of California again made everyone feel like they were home. When you think of Southern California, you probably think of the glamour of Los Angeles— beautiful movie stars, spectacular mansions, swimming pools, and crowded freeways. But here, right near the Nevada border, there was none of that. This part of California is desert, and some of the most unforgiving desolation in the world. If not for the water and electricity supplied by Hoover Dam, parts of Southern California would be virtually uninhabitable. Mrs. McDonald dropped her Nevada guidebook in the trash. She didn't have one for California. Who buys a guidebook to their own state? She did, however, open her laptop so she could go on the internet and see if the family would be passing by anything she could use in Amazing but True.