The Road to Vegas

Day of firsts. First time west of Ash Fork, AZ, on I-40, first time seeing Hoover Dam, first time in Nevada, first drive down the Strip. It was generally interesting, at least once we got within 30 miles of Kingman and the terrain became more varied, more rocky, and the mountains were closer.

Well, let me amend that. The stretch of US93 from Kingman to the dam isn't exactly interesting so much as... what phrase am I grasping for here... oh, yeah, fucking creepy. It's like driving through the Navajo Nation south of Shiprock but without the Navajos and sheep, just a strip of featureless moonscape between two rows of hills. Traveling Tip: hit the Mini Mart about 20 miles up the road from Kingman if you have even the slightest inkling you may need a bathroom. We kept figuring there would be something else coming along soon, and the only something else ended up being a bar/souvenir stand called Rosie's Den, which was straight out of a bad horror movie involving inbred axe murderers.

Traveling Tip, part deux: if you make it as far as Rosie's, screw up your resolve and hold it another 20 minutes and you'll be at the first parking lot at Hoover Dam. Of course, that means a row of portajohns that have not been serviced since perhaps the Hoover administration itself--take your own paper and for the love of god do not sit down--but relief is relief. Plus there's a nifty view of the lake side of the dam in all its art deco glory. I should have taken pictures but was too distracted looking over my shoulder for any three-eyed, twelve-fingered hangers-on that may have crawled into the truck bed at Rosie's before we escaped.

On the way home maybe we will park closer to the dam and have a walk across the top. This afternoon was chaotic and the lots were full. I hope we can stop on Sunday for the vertiginous juxtaposition of looking down the dam (goddamn! loooong way down) and immediately whipping the head up to look at the stanchions for the new bridge being built far above the road (goddamn! loooooooooooong way up!). I wonder how many workers have died on this project so far. It looks complicated.

So here I am in a La Quinta somewhere in northwest Las Vegas. Here is the card they leave on the beds explaining that they're trying to save water by not changing the linen every day. Note the extension of the marginally cute "La Quinta: Spanish for anything but villa" theme:

Spanish for "Protecting our environment." Tee hee.

And here is the flip side of the card, helpfully translated into Spanish, but maintaining the "Spanish for ___" thing, which kinda loses something in the translation:

Sinonimo de "proteccion..." Como?