There's No Place Like Home

My last day's drive offered me nothing new or exciting to report. I traveled roads into which I've practically worn ruts, I didn't listen to any radio programs offering an alternative viewpoint to mine, and I didn't see any anti-abortion, adult superstore, or FIREWORKS! EXIT NOW! signs. I took only one photo the entire day. Here it is.

The day's route was pretty straightforward: I-79 in Cumberland to I-81 to I-80. I cruised through the always attractive Delaware Water Gap, on to I-287, over the Tappan Zee Bridge, across southern Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway. I turned north onto I-91, hit some traffic in Hartford, then drove I-84 to the Mass Pike to I-495 to exit 21A. That's it. Trip over. Almost.

I did take the time to reflect on a few things I learned over the last two weeks, however:

• Judging by what you can see and hear while driving the interstates, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas seem to out-Bible the Bible Belt (or at least what I thought was the Bible Belt.)
  
• There is more to Mexican fast food than Taco Bell. Taco John's, Del Taco, Taco Tico, Taco Time, and Jimboy's Tacos all offered me their culinary delights during my days of driving. I passed on each one.
• John Sterling, the New York Yankess radio play-by-play guy, really doesn't call all that bad a game. As long as nothing exciting is happening, like a Yankee homerun or the final out of a Yankee win, he keeps his revolting Stirlingisms to himself. And as long as nothing controversial develops, he keeps his homerisms to himself too. I enjoyed my three innings with him.
• Road kill comes in many forms. Over my fortnight of driving, I saw dead rabbits, deer, raccoons (lots and lots in northern Missouri), prairie dogs, desert mice, possums, squirrels, skunks, cats, dogs (maybe coyotes, definitely not wolves), birds, frogs, and one red fox. Actually, I guess I already knew that roadkill comes in many forms, but I wanted to pass along the list of what I saw, and this provided the forum.
• Night Ranger's debut album Dawn Patrol sounds very dated. I still happily sang along to almost every tune.
• Speaking of dated music, try belting out the songs on Bat out of Hell with Meat Loaf. Be sure to tap into the pain and anguish of Meat Loaf's delivery, and be sure to hold all of the notes for as long and as loud at Meat Loaf does. See if you don't get light headed and gain a little respect for that sweaty fat pig; I certainly did. And then I played the album again just to see if my initial reaction was accurate. It was.
• This American Life remains the best show on radio, but The Moth is a close second. I recommend them both to you. Also, my youngest brother has twice been thanked by TAL's host, Ira Glass, for his help with stories.
• I am more frustrated than ever with Americans who never think of seeing their own country, instead believing that "travel" only means going to western Europe or some Sandals resort in a tropical location. Ours is an unbelievable country offering geological, geographical, and cultural variety unparalleled by any nation anywhere.

I pulled into my driveway at 6:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 11. My kids put a "Welcome Home, Daddy!" sign in the front yard for me; a neighbor said it looked as if I had been at war, but I was happy all the same. After hugs and kisses, we all enjoyed a chocolate "welcome home" cake, looked at pictures and souvenirs, and the trip officially came to its happy conclusion. No breakdowns, no attacks, no death or even severe injury, except to countless insects who were unfortunate to meet me driving across the heartlands, over the mountains, and through the deserts. (Click on and magnify these photos to get a look at some of the carnage.)

Two tasks remain to really complete the journey. First, I've still got a bottle full of Pacific Ocean water waiting to be poured into the Revere Beach surf. I also need to compute the final numbers—miles covered, gas used, time in the saddle, etc. Hopefully I'll get those done in the next couple of days, and I'll report back to you, gentle reader, one final time.

The Beginning of the End

In The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux uses 350 pages to describe his journey from England to Japan. The return home on the Trans Siberian Railway is conveyed in about twenty-five pages. Theroux is tired and ready for his trip to end, and his prose carries his feelings of loneliness and exhaustion. At the risk of comparing my writing to his or my relatively short jaunt to his months long adventure, I think I'm kind of in the same place. I'm ready to go home.

I rose early from my very ordinary campsite, packed without making breakfast, and hit the road for the short trip down to Jefferson City, one of our lesser-known state capitals, I would wager. The domed building sits atop a hill guarding the Missouri River. I don't have much to say about it—they are all starting to look the same—but it is probably too big. States like Texas, California, and New Jersey deserve big, grand capital buildings. Missouri's okay, but it's no New Jersey.

I gassed up and re-iced the cooler in Fulton, Missouri, famous for being the site of Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in March 1946. There's a Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in town. It's got a big hunk of the Berlin Wall on display, I'm told, but who doesn't have that these days? I skipped it.

I drove into and out of St. Louis without thinking of even slowing. I came across my favorite Christian radio broadcast of all so far, so even if I hadn't been through the Gateway to the West a week and a half ago, I wasn't about to miss a minute of "The Messianic Voice," a Jews for Jesus show that encourages its listeners to get others, especially Jews, to come along for the fun. Next up was a Christian financial advising show hosted by Dan Celia. Over the next sixty minutes or so, Dan taught me a little about how to protect in a properly Christian way the blessings that God had bestowed upon me; it's all His money, after all, and I'm just the steward. Additionally, he railed about the Obama administration's "unending attacks on American corporations," on the importance of low tax rates for the wealthy, and on the evils of socialized medicine. I'm not a Christian, and I haven't spent much time in church, but I don't remember ever hearing about Jesus telling the rich to protect their investments in safe tax shelters, or that God rewards his followers with gold, or that the saintly way is the corporate way. I think I remember reading something about camels going through the eyes of needles though, don't I? And wasn't there something about Lazarus and the rich man?

I drove across Illinois and Indiana without stopping; corn can be amply admired at seventy-five miles per hour. Just past Louisville, Kentucky, I stopped for gas, a handful of groceries, and Starbucks wifi service. I still don't much like Starbucks coffee, but Starbucks employees are uniformly smiling and nice. On this day, the freshly scrubbed guy gave me coffee for free because there wasn't enough Pike Place Roast for my venti, so he blended it with something else and picked up the tab.

I was caught off guard by the southern accents I encountered in Fulton, Louisville, and, later, Frankfort. I didn't really see this trip as taking me through Dixie, but it felt that way for most of the day. Missouri and Kentucky remained with the Union, didn't they?

I pulled off I-64 for a look at Kentucky's capitol building. After circling the parking lot twice for a spot, I hopped out of the car with my PowerShot SD20 in hand, and I started thinking, "This is so stupid. Nobody (except maybe Marshall) cares about my pictures and thoughts on capitols; just because I have a 'virtual collection' of austere buildings doesn't mean that others want to know about it. Why don't I just drive by and see what there is to see without stopping." I almost returned to my Mazda to keep my forward momentum, and then I began to see the tops of tents, and I heard an amplified speech-giving voice.

I wandered onto the expansive lawn in front of the marble steps and found myself surrounded by people sweltering in the heat, sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets with their dinners (a lot of McDonald's) laid out in front of them. A politician was rousing the crowd with fiery rhetoric, and folks under foldout canopies looked toward the speaker, ignoring potential business. Three little kids ran past in their bright yellow "Don't Tread on Me!" tee shirts. The blue haired woman woman to my right hollered, "Yes, Rand!"

I had stumbled into the Kentucky Freedom Festival, a rally put together by various Bluegrass State Tea Partiers. "The Next Senator from Kentucky" Rand Paul, son of Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, whipped the crowd into a patriotic frenzy. Rand recently found himself in a little bit of hot water for suggesting that perhaps the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an overextension of government and, ironically, a violation of civil rights. Rand also believes that a Canada to Mexico superhighway is coming soon to blur national borders and identities. When he left the podium, I considered asking for a picture with Mr. Paul, but I was unshaven and dirty, and Rand's beefy guys flanking him scared me a little; I settled for a handshake. (By the way, my right hand has clasped those of Dan Quayle, Rev. Al Sharpton, Paul Volcker, and now Rand Paul. Not too shabby, huh?)

The next speaker was a veteran of some branch of the armed services who attacked Bill and Hillary, Barack Hussein Obama, the Liberal Mainstream Media, and General Motors, as well as Socialists, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, and Maoists. He also assured us again and again that he wasn't a racist. He, in fact, liked immigrants as long as they are legal, are able to completely support themselves without aid, are conversant in English, and have memorized the Pledge of Allegience. I didn't hear much from the guy who took the microphone as I was leaving, but he also made damn sure that I understood that he wasn't a racist. I think my favorite moment of the rally came when a portly geriatric closed her eyes, raised her hands, and shouted, "God bless Fox News!"

I must say, however, that the people I spoke to were quite friendly to me. From Rand to those selling bumper stickers and decals to people wandering around like me, everybody was full of smiles, friendly greetings, and polite "excuse me"s.

Back on I-64, I crossed into West Virginia under waning sunlight, failed to get a campsite at Kanawah State Forest, ducked in and out of Charleston (another capital city, after all) for gas, Diet Coke, and a bad photograph, and then turned north on I-79. I wound through the mountains with a smattering of other cars and trucks, zoomed past what I expected would be high motel rates in Morgantown, and finally called it a day at a Super 8 in Cumberland, Maryland at 1:15 a.m. The day's numbers: 905.1 miles, $78.35 in gas bills, and roughly seventeen hours of driving, not counting my short pit stops. Whew!

The Sybil of Superhighways

Interstate 70 is the superhighway with a multiple personality disorder. Going though my memory and scanning the Rand McNally map of the United States, I can't find another interstate that offers so much dramatically changing scenery. Through the Rockies, I-70 is glorious (when the rain isn't trying to kill you) and back east, when it is part of the partnership that makes the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it is fully deserving of its "scenic road" status. But looking at the stretch from eastern Colorado through Ohio, you'll be hard pressed to find a less interesting road.

With no natural scenery to hold my attention, I contented myself cruising under puffy Simpsons clouds and reading billboards for fabulous attractions. A sampling of the tourist spots I passed by includes Prairie Dog Town (where you can see the world's largest prairie dog), the Oz Museum, Castle Rock (I visited there almost twenty years ago with Nanda and Morgan), the Garden of Eden, the World's Largest Czech Egg, the Boyer Museum of Animated Carvings, the U. S. Calvary Museum, Rock City ("A National Landmark!"), the birthplaces of Senators Bob Dole and Arlen Spector (both in Russell, Kansas), and the President Eisenhower Library and Museum. I did stop to see the Cathedral of the Plains, which was finished in 1911 and so named by William Jennings Bryan, because is was just a quarter mile off of the interstate. It was thoroughly underwhelming. Have a look for yourself.

In conservative Kansas, somebody paid for a billboard offering a quotation from Ronald Reagan, but the message was too long and the font was too small for me to understand what "The Great Communicator" was trying to tell me. I was also back in the land of roadside Christian messages; my favorite, mixed among the many anti-abortion signs ("I had hiccups before I was born," one infant told me), was the one that read, "Jesus heals and restores; pornography destroys." Others seemed to disagree because the adult superstores and their billboards were also back in force. One simply announced, "ADULT! EXIT NOW!"

I spun the radio dial and found more Christian broadcasts. Family Life Radio interspersed Jesus soft rock with one ad after another about how to fix your problem children. The advice boiled down to going to church more often and buying Dr. Soandso's (the names changed but one ad took a moment to clarify that he is not an M.D.) eight/ten/fifteen step program—the first DVD is free!

I took a break in Topeka to stretch the legs and do what I do in capital cities. The capitol building is fine, although too grandiose for a state like Kansas, and the park in front had the longest freshly mowed lawn I have ever seen. Just around the corner, however, is perhaps the ugliest office building ever thrown up. While the blocky green monstrosity stood out among its neighbors, the whole of downtown Topeka had a stuck-in-the-1960s feel to its architecture.

Topeka is also home to the Brown v. Board of Ed National Historic Site, housed in the very elementary school that was problematically segregated. I took a quick tour. The information presented was pretty basic and well known to anybody with a passing understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, but it was cool to go through the school anyway.

Just down the road is Lawrence, home to Kansas University. The campus is very fitting of the state: pleasant enough but not worth taking pictures of. The downtown area is nicer and college trendier, but I didn't get out of the car; I had to get going past Kansas City and into Missouri.

More boring driving, more of the same billboards, but now FIREWORKS! signs were thrown in liberally as well. I grabbed campsite #20 at Finger Lakes State Park and then headed out to the Country Kitchen for free internet access and a plate of chicken and ziti. I was back in my tent and asleep by 1:30 a.m.

Saturday (thankfully) will be my last full day alone on the road before getting back home to Hopkinton, Massachusetts and my patient, wonderful family.

Disappoinment and Danger

Thursday morning's weather was like every morning's weather on this trip: sunny and dry. I cooked up two packets of oatmeal, packed the car, and was off by 7:00 in the morning. I felt good, looking forward to another glorious day in the American West.

Not far up Route 191 is Arches National Park. When I left the campsite, I still wasn't sure if I was going to tour the park, but since I seemed to have missed my planned turn, I pulled into the parking lot and paid the fee. The warming morning sun was enticing, and I'd gotten an early start; I'd still surely make the 3:00 Rockies-Cardinals game in Denver.

I drove the winding road to the end of the park, took a few snapshots and began my drive back out. When I came to the turnoff for the hike to Delicate Arch, I decided I could get in and out quickly with a few lovely pictures. (I know this isn't the way you are supposed to enjoy our national parks, but remember that I had considered passing by altogether, so these quick looks were a bonus in my mind. I'll be back another time to do it right.) I charged onto the trail and was soon passing couples on their way up to the arch. Somewhere in my rush, I missed a turn in the trail and soon found myself looking up at the crowd of people happily chatting and posing in front of the most photographed arch in the park. My picture came from an unsettling spot where I wasn't supposed to be, and the sunshine was on the wrong side for a good photo. After slowly edging my way back to safety, I considered hiking around to where everybody else was, but I had already burned too much precious time getting lost. I found my way back to the path and half ran down to the car. After a little more driving to scenic viewing points, I headed for the exit and turned left to follow state road 128 up to I-70.

128 is a gem of a road that follows the Colorado River upstream past white water rafters bouncing through rapids. High canyon walls pushed right against the slithering ribbon of pavement. I actually previewed this route using Google Maps's "street view" feature, but the Google car's cameras substantially diminish what 128 has to offer. If you're ever in the neighborhood of Arches National Park, give her a try.

In hopes of making up lost time, I flew into Colorado on I-70. My calculations had me missing an inning or two of the game, but that was okay with me. I gassed up in Grand Junction and then drove through what I judged to be an overhyped pass cut through the mountains by the Colorado River. I-70 from Denver to the Utah state line is supposed to be one of the two or three most scenic stretches of interstate in the country, but the walls along this portion looked pretty much like quarry detritus.

Just after Glenwood Springs, I-70 begins to fulfill expectations, but on this day she was also flirting with the dangerously sullen storm clouds that had gathered in front of me. I wound through narrow canyons looking alternately at the traffic in front of me, the walls around me, and the gathering darkness above me. This was going to slow me down.

The interstate began to climb steeply, and I had to repeatedly shift back into fourth gear to keep up with traffic. Raindrops started to splatter my windshield as I passed mile marker 175, and it was raining steadily by the time I crested the 10,666 foot high Vail Pass. Almost immediately after, I went from annoyed by the inconvenience of the rain and the further lateness it was going to cause me to fear that I was going to slide off the mountain.

After Vail Pass, the interstate dropped sharply as the rain picked up. Rivers of water ran down the blacktop in front of me, and I hydroplaned several times. I kept the car in fourth gear all the way down, slowing at times to just forty miles an hour. Tractor trailers raced past me, sending up a blinding spray, and cars came up on my bumper before swerving into the left lane to pass. I wasn't having any fun at all, but by the time the road bottomed out, the rain had backed off a bit, and I thought that the worst was behind me. Then we began to go up again at an even steeper incline, heading back into the clouds and the rain. At this point I had to shift through fourth gear and down to third just to keep my speed above 45. With streams of rainwater rushing toward me now, I hydroplaned again. Cautiously white-knuckling my way to the top of the climb, I breathed easier when the road flattened and dried out in the Loveland Pass tunnel. At an elevation of 11,990 feet, I had reached the Continental Divide and the highest point of my entire trip.

The committed reader will remember how disappointing I found my Continental Divide crossing in Wyoming, and even as I tensely strangled my steering while while climbing I-70 in the pouring rain, I thought, "Well at least this is the Continental Divide scenery that I had expected." And then, to my dismay, there, in the middle of the tunnel, was a sign saying I had passed the divide. This was worse than Wyoming, damn it! I was surrounded by tiles and sodium lamps. My death-defying drive got me a view of the Continental Divide that looked no different than the Holland Tunnel.

Back down the mountain we went. More rivers of rain, more hydroplaning, more flying, spraying trucks. Six thousand feet of elevation and thirty miles later, the road flattened out and the rain slowed to a drizzle. Breathing several sighs of relief, I turned the radio to ESPN to see how much of the game I had missed, thinking I'd pull into the parking lot sometime around the fifth inning. And just when it seemed that my afternoon couldn't get much worse, I learned that the game was over. Turns out it started at 1:05, not 3:05—the information I got from the Major League Baseball website gave me the east coast starting time for a game in the mountain time zone. I pulled up to an empty Coors Field to snap a couple of angry pictures and then meandered through the clogged Denver streets.

As I turned east on state road 86 toward Elizabeth, Kiowa, and Limon, the sun finally came out. Looking back, rain clouds still covered the highest mountain peaks, but here the road was dry and without traffic. I picked up speed feeling better about life.

Most people don't ever think about the eastern third of Colorado—I know I don't. It's prairie land, gently undulating with a tilt down toward the east. I cruised past grass and a few cows thinking that maybe I'd find a place to camp in western Kansas, but by the time I got back on I-70, Mother Nature was fixin' to rear her angry head again. Looking down the interstate, I saw a wall of dark charcoal gray rain waiting for me. After another seventy miles of wet, tense, slow, right lane driving, I called it a night and pulled into the nothing town of Burlington, Colorado.

Here, in the middle of nowhere, Comfort Inn offers rooms for a ridiculous $115, and even America's Best Value Inn charges almost ninety bucks. I decided to give the independently owned Burlington Inn's fifty-dollar rooms a try. #201 had sticky carpeting and a broken television. I tried to call the front desk to ask about the t.v., but the phone was broken too. I walked through the rain back to the lobby to get a new room and screamed like a little girl when a rat with a body the size of my size 12 foot sprinted past me, grazing my shoe; it was trapped in the glass-doored entrance vestibule. I told the lady at the desk about the rat and the room, and she gave me a key card to #212. This room's t.v. was broken as well. Going back to say that I'd be changing plans and heading to America's Best Value, the rat made another run at me, so I yelled at it. It retreated to the corner and glowered at me. I got my credit card charge canceled and left as the front desk woman's teenage daughters beat the rat with a stick and popped it in a plastic grocery bag. My new home for the night, although not the Hilton, was at least a national chain with standards to uphold. I caught up a bit on internet-related things and turned out the light, happy this day, by far the worst since I left home, was finally over.

Arizona and Utah's Canyon Country

I don't like driving at night because I don't know what I'm missing, but I think that the stretch of I-40 between Ash Fork and Flagstaff might be worth seeing; if you get the chance, drive it while the sun is still up. Before the sun set, I got a look at both Kingman and Seligman, struggling towns along the old Route 66. According to Wikipedia, Seligman was the inspiration for Pixar's Cars, but it could just as easily have been Kingman. (Or Winslow, for that matter. More on Winslow in a moment.) The towns are desperately trying to revive themselves on nostalgia for the Mother Road, with stores and hotels being sure to remind you again and again what used to be. Meanwhile, the interstate exits provide just about anything the through driver needs with their Burger Kings, Conocos, and Travelodges. It was kind of sad, in the same was Cars was.

I got an early start from the Super 8 in Flagstaff, Arizona. Ninety minutes and a stop at Meteor Crater later, I pulled into Winslow, one of the centerpieces of this trip for me. I thought I was being sort of quirky-cool in planning to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, but I learned before leaving Massachusetts that plenty of people have been doing that for years. Folks in Winslow pitched in to build "Standin' on the Corner" Park downtown. I went anyway, without apologies.

A man and a woman were cataloging the names on the bricks in the park. A fire destroyed the building that gave the park its muraled back wall, and donations poured in from all over the country (and some from outside of the country) to help save it. The woman was happy to show me the bricks marking contributions from Don Henley, Jackson Browne, and Tom Petty; I wondered to myself whether those three couldn't have given a little more than $100 for a brick.

I moved on to see what else Winslow had to offer, and I found a thoroughly depressed town. While the buildings around "Standin' on the Corner" Park looked healthy (outside of the one that caught fire) but empty, like a well-to-do summer rental community in October, the rest of the "business district" was lined with decrepit, vacant storefronts and restaurants. I ate a mediocre omelette in a tired cafe and then took a look at the 9/11 memorial, which featured the largest pieces of the Twin Towers outside of New York City.

From Winslow, the rest of the day was spent on secondary and tertiary highways. I rode Arizona Route 87 north into the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the country. The mostly empty land was dotted with squat cinder block homes and an occasional trailer. William Least Heat-Moon wrote that the Navajos traditionally avoided grouping themselves in villages, unlike the Hopi, who have a smaller reservation inside of the Navajo Nation. Sure enough, once within the Hopi land, very small towns began popping up among the increasingly numerous sandstone canyons. I stopped in Oraibi, which Least Heat-Moon said was "most probably the oldest continually occupied village in the United States." Oraibi, perched on the edge of a cliff, is little more than thirty ramshackle buildings—some ancient looking and made of stones—separated by powdery dirt paths. Ten to fifteen senior citizens unloaded from a tour van as I went into a small Hopi arts shop. The van's tour guide apparently makes this store a regular stop as he seemed to know the owners and told them that they had time for "only one song." The patriarch of the place complied with a traditional tune sung in Navajo.

Further down the road I found Tuba City, a settlement begun by the Mormons, but I was the only non-Indian in the supermarket. After grabbing some ice and food for the cooler, I was met in the parking lot by two youngish men who opened the conversation by saying they weren't panhandling. They asked where I was from, where I was going (they assumed the Grand Canyon), and what I thought of the reservation. The dude with the sunglasses walked back into the store to get me a copy of the Navajo newspaper, and the one with sunburn scabs on his shoulders asked if I could help out his "bro" and him with five dollars. I gave him two singles and kept my twenties. I was packing my cooler when Shades came back with the papers. They told me that they made bows, arrows, and hatchets, and wondered if I'd want to buy any. They didn't have any with them to show me, so they asked for my phone number so that they could call me to set up a sale. I gave them an email address instead. They acted quite friendly, but they seemed also to be trying to size me up. The "bros" asked what I did for a job, and while I was answering, they were looking to see what was in my car and asked about my iPod and whether I had a laptop with me. I tried to stay cheery, shook their hands, and took off.

Heading north on US-160 to US-163 in Kayenta, I was soon into Monument Valley where I stopped several times in an effort to get some photos that did the stately sandstone pillars and plateaus justice. Crossing into Utah, I thought I'd take a left on Route 261 for a look at the Valley of the Gods and a loop through the Grand Gulch Primitive Area. Less than a quarter of a mile into my scenic detour, however, I was frightened into a U-turn by a sign warning of "steep switchbacks" on loose gravel roads; large trucks and RVs were encouraged to turn around, so I decided that maybe this wasn't the road for my ride either. Instead I wound up the semi-interesting 163 through Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello. I grabbed a site in the completely empty Wind Whistle Campground and then drove to an overlook into Canyonlands National Park where I was, again, totally alone except for the lizards that scuttled across the rocks in front of me. Back at my campsite, I set up the tent and cooked dinner while a few swallows and bats swirled out of the hulking mesa behind me. (The rocks you see behind my tent are actually ten to fifteen stories high.) A very distant storm flashed lightning that was never followed by thunder. After two helpings of ramen, I pulled out my guitar and sang to myself for a while.

I was of two minds. On the one hand, I don't think I've ever camped in a more stunning setting, and I was thankful for the peace and beauty. On the other hand, I wanted to share this place with my family. This was my loneliest night of the trip, and I really began looking forward to getting home again.

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.

Tahoe to Vegas with Sancho Panza

Another day, another magnificent drive. My camera is smoking from overuse. But before getting to that, it occurred to me that I didn't take a moment to offer a reflection on Tahoe. The lake and mountains, as I've already said, are stunningly beautiful. Tahoe City, on the California north end of the lake, is a wealthy tourist town filled with ratty skateboarding kids, healthy and attractive hikers and bicyclists, and preppy families. There are several real estate businesses in town (one advertised place was going for $35 million) alongside bike rental shops, upscale markets, and cafes like the one where Marshall and I met Ramona and her clan. I guess I like Tahoe City well enough, but I didn't feel like I was in the appropriate tax bracket to be allowed in. It was a little like visiting Carmel.

A Monday brunch hosted by Aunt Carol gave Marshall and me the chance to get in a few more laughs and hugs with family. We had considered leaving earlier in the morning to get a jump on the day's travels, but I'm glad we didn't; I really like my extended family, and I wish I got together with them more often.

Sometime around 11:00 a.m., I hit the road with Sancho Panza, heading south along the California side of the lake and into the dense traffic of South Tahoe. After a left, a right, and a couple of state line crossings, we were at the foot of the monumental Sierra Nevadas. The scenery reminded me of Innsbruck or Bariloche; the air was clear and cool, and the mountains were rugged and snow-capped. As we crested the 8143 foot Conway Summit pass, Mono Lake opened up before us.

Mono Lake takes in water from the streams coming down the Sierra Nevadas to the west and the Excelsiors to the east, and she never lets it go. The snow melt and sparse rains between central California and eastern Nevada don't even make it to the ocean; the water collects in lakes like Mono, where it just sits and evaporates—that is unless water-starved areas siphon it off for the expanding population. Mono Lake was tapped for Los Angeles in 1941 and by 1982 its surface had dropped forty-five feet, exposing its distinctive calcium tufa spires. Today its shore offers a spooky and smelly stroll.

I had driven US-395 south of Mono Lake almost exactly twelve years ago with my brand new bride on our honeymoon. I warned Marshall that the road was not deserving of its "scenic drive" status, but I hadn't remembered that Nanda and I had driven it after dark. The reality is that the Sierra Nevadas grew higher and more majestic with every mile post passed, and more than once I had to quickly swerve to get back in my lane after staring out of the starboard window too long. Soon Mt. Whitney, the highest peak (14,505 feet) in the Lower 48, loomed far above. A mere seventy-six miles away, the lowest point in North America was calling to us.Sancho Panza and I hit the western edge of Death Valley at about 6:30 in the evening. We were driving with our windows down, and we could tell the temperature had risen considerably, but we figured that going through America's most ominously named park at this time of the day was probably safe. Still, we were amazed at how hot it got; checking the reports later that night indicated that we were dealing with temps between 110 and 115. We pulled over to roast and gawk at a dried lake, climbed the mountains that bisect the valley, then dropped into Furnace Creek where we grabbed some rocks for souvenirs. (A little-known side note: Telescope Peak, the highest point in Death Valley National Park, rises to 11,049 feet and Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level; this is a vertical drop twice the depth of Grand Canyon.)

Your intrepid travelers made it out of the park without incident, but we were both left tired and weak by the drive. Although we were constantly drinking water, we figure that dehydration had taken its toll. After getting cold water and snacks at a convenience store outside of Pahrump, Nevada, the two of us began to feel better.

We pulled into Las Vegas well after dark, got our room at the Tropicana, and took a walk up and down the Strip, but I'll hold my thoughts on the City of Sin until my next entry.

TOTAL MILES DRIVEN SO FAR: 4434