The Strip and the Dam

Las Vegas is horrible. I can't think of a major city that is less likable than Las Vegas except maybe Detroit, but beating Detroit in attractiveness is hardly anything to brag about. If I never go back, it'll be too soon.

As planned, Sancho Panza and I pulled in after dark, when The Strip would be at its most impressive. After checking in at the Tropicana ("Moe Green's out at the Tropicana now. I have my sons, Michael and Fredo, running it."), we walked up and down Las Vegas Boulevard in hopes of being amazed or, at least, amused. We weren't. We didn't see anything exotic or even interesting in the people walking by, and the glitzy hotel/casinos were mostly a letdown. To make matters worse, walking The Strip includes going up and over several bridges instead of crossing streets the normal way, and although many of the bridges had escalators to make life easier, about half of them were broken. Except for a cold bottle of water to help us cope with the 90-something degree heat at midnight, we found nothing to make us smile. (The grins in our photos are forced; that's what you're supposed to do when somebody takes your picture.)
We slept in the next morning and then took a dip in the highly-rated Tropicana pool before putting in our time at a casino. I am not a gambler, and I didn't think that I was going to do any betting at all, but when Marshall said he was going to get $20 worth of chips, I didn't want to look like a weenie. To warm up, we first hit the roulette table; Marshall played black, and I played red. I won and, as per our pregame agreement, gave my winnings to Marshall to make up for his loss. Riding my hot streak, we moved to the five dollar minimum blackjack table and settled in with our four chips each. After fifteen minutes, I was down seven dollars. Marshall, who confidently hit on sixteen and won, was up about twelve bucks. We walked away feeling that a bucket list item—gambling in Vegas—had been checked off, but little else.

After an overdue oil change for my ride and a breakfast in an overheated Denny's, we drove out to Hoover Dam. A new highway and soaring bridge will soon open to help alleviate traffic on the road to one of a seemingly endless list of "eighth wonders of the world," but "soon" didn't help us with choking traffic in the intense temperatures. The stop-and-go did give us time for a couple of pictures of Lake Mead, however. The dam is obviously a tremendous engineering achievement, and you can't help but be impressed with its massiveness. (No photos will do it justice.) Still, for all of the on-site museum's ballyhooing about the wonders that the dam has brought humankind, I can't get past the environmental problems that it and the many similar ones on the Colorado River have caused. Needing water to grow food in California is one thing; needing water and electricity so that Las Vegas and Phoenix can grow to immense proportions is another, and needing water so that Death Valley can have a golf course is absurdly disgusting. Lake Mead's water level has been falling precipitously for the last ten years and, at present, is at its lowest since 1955.

Driving Marshall back to Las Vegas so that he could catch his plane later that night, we passed many billboards for personal injury lawyers, just as we had driving in the night before. I don't know why it is, but southern Nevada seems to be the mecca of ambulance chasers, adding to its already considerable charm. I couldn't come up with the connections between gambling, drunkenness, prostitution, and frivolous law suits, but maybe you can. We decided to take a look at downtown Vegas, hoping to find something to applaud in this hellhole, but it was just a less famous cluster of more casinos. Have I mentioned that I didn't like this part of our country? I was happy to get out of town and into Arizona.