Day 14, 15 & 16 - Las Vegas
Up early, packing is completed in minutes, and by 6.30am I'm pulling away from a desperate motel I vow to never visit again. I think about trying the free breakfast, but the serving room looks like it's been converted from a small bedroom, and with two people crowded inside sampling unappetising chocolate muffins and coffee that looks as though they've been using it to tar the roads is not grabbing me, so I decide that this goodbye should be over quickly. In moments I'm slipping on to the two-lane 101 and away from the pleasant welcome the people of Ukiah have provided.
I'm expecting, with stops, the journey to take me somewhere between ten and eleven hours, and have decided not to take the longer, but far more interesting, route as this could push the time closer to fourteen hours. I love driving in America, but not that much, so it's thoughts of what might have been near Truckee, Lake Tahoe, Reno and Virginia City in favour of the long (not winding) roads south and then east.
The freeways are fairly easy at first as this is Memorial Day, but as I reach the edges of the Bay Area and head towards Oakland (I’ve driven in San Francisco many times and it’s not for a faint-hearted, pathetic British driver like me) everybody seems to have decided to jump suddenly into their cars and turn the freeway into their personal racetrack, and soon I'm switching lanes, dodging traffic, and keeping my wits about me.
An hour later the scorching concrete and harsh noise gives way to undulating vistas and a feeling of calm somewhere near Livermore, before finally there's nothing to do but let the car take the strain as I study landscapes that are so huge I am firmly put in my place as I head south for hundreds of miles before the satnav tells you to head east just before Barstow.
The trouble with America is that travelling through these landscapes spoils you because there is so much of it, and your attitude becomes blasé when you realise that if you miss one unforgettable scene there’s always another one moments away.
Paris Vegas
Paris Balloon
Red Rock Road
In the end my mind cannot keep processing these awe-inspiring views and it shuts off and takes them for granted. Writing this now I feel quite annoyed with myself for daring to treat these American landscapes with such nonchalance, but the only thing I could comprehend, with anything approaching normality, was the temperature gauge in the car as it starts to climbs to temperatures that are impossible to spend any time in.
Around San Francisco, the gauge seemed stuck in the low 60s and I feel a little deflated. In the Central Valley I'm heartened when I notice that the outside temperature is in the 70s with ambitions to reach the early 80s on the endless roads and flatlands that are fringed by mountains way off in the distance.
Somewhere in the Mojave Desert 90 degrees is reached and I feel like I’ve won the lottery as finally I pull into a small gathering called Baker and 100 and 102 are reached. After filling up the car with petrol I realise that it’s so hot I can almost chew this heat. Thank goodness the gauge decides to be sensible near Las Vegas and sink back to a calming 98!
Las Vegas, I've been away for six years and reasoned that there are bound to be one or two changes. Hotels will have been blown up, spirits might be down, and punters might be thiner on the ground than usual, but will this phase a city that has prided itself on giving the customer what they they want, even when they don’t know what that might be until they have won it, lost it and only noticed the fact when they return home?
The first sad thing I notice is the journey into Las Vegas itself, because where once you’d pull off the freeway and be placed on a road that would develop into the famous Strip a little further north, the satnav now keeps you on the dull freeway, and the look of excitement one would feel as the famous casinos rose up in front of you has been replaced by a glazed look of boredom at the walls of this bland stretch of road continue and continue.
The magic trick of exciting you before you even got out of the car is gone, and has been replaced by a cynical rush to get you to a destination where you can drop your cash as quickly as possible. Of course it’s probably easier on the traffic, but I always thought the traffic jams were part of the magic.
The second change is the hotel parking. This used to be complimentary and was such a welcome surprise that you didn’t mind introducing yourself to a slot machine on your way to check-in.
It’s now $20, with nothing off for guests. Las Vegas used to sneakily part me from my money, but now it’s a fully-fledged assault on my pocket before the car has found its place. There's no please or thank you, as the charges for this and
Fremont Pink
El Cortez Neon
that quickly mount up.
Everything is exorbitant, and where once bargains made this a great destination, if you didn’t gamble, it's now a city where the determined desperation to part you from your cash is brutal.
Where once you could avoid the seedier side of life here, it is now the obvious location of the hustle, the fix and the trick, and it doesn’t leave one feeling happy to be here. Of course you might say that it's always been that way, but it now seems so blunt and depressing.
Once you smiled like an imbecile as you were parted from your cash, because you felt you were getting something in return, be it cheap drinks, food or anything, but now you just feel like you've lost the three-card monty before you've even had time to play.
The drinks cost an arm and a leg, the food costs the shirt on your back, and if you've a kidney to spare you won't have it for too long as the scammers and the devious watch and wait to pounce.
I'm in the Luxor, and this pyramid themed hotel has always been my favoured destination, because years ago it was the only swanky hotel I could afford and that gave me a nodding experience of feeling opulent and well-trousered in the cash department.
The feeling of loss and change continues inside a room lacks a fridge. The drawer on the writing desk lacks the ability to open, and the furnishings lack the old ‘authentic’ Egyptian copy feel. Look, I don't ask for much, just that my pseudo-Egyptian hotel has more going for it than a hovel in Cairo!
Where once you were offered an upgrade before you breathed, they now offer nothing but a bland smile that is part of the uniform of a thousand corporate modding dogs. I reason that I’m now on the Las Vegas diet where everything is so expensive I won't be able to afford to eat, drink, breathe or enjoy myself without a charge!
Neon Fremont
I talk to a few employees and one says that if I want a fridge I should check in to a Motel Six because it gives you more at a cheaper price (a hearty recommendation from an employee, and one I'll follow next time). He also excuses the broken drawer and says that it’s okay because nobody uses it (the fact that I wanted to seemed to not compute).
In a concession shop, there are no prices on anything, and when I ask I’m given some spurious excuse that it’s because the prices on the Strip keep changing. What is this person actually talking about? It is so obvious that they figure that you'll buy the merchandise because you're in the location and cannot be bothered to go elsewhere, or ask the price!
I take a short walk into the Mandalay Bay, and then The Excalibur, and notice the same price hikes are in all of these MGM properties. There's also a sterile lack of excitement about these places. It's like being wrapped in a duvet of tissue paper!
The old days were always tinged with easy memories of what made Vegas great, and what you might achieve if you dream and take a little bit of a risk. Now the dream is dead, and like Napa, this place has lost its way.
Will the Luxor be there when I next return, if I return? I just don’t know, and don't imagine the corporate number crunchers in the remote offices of MGM really giving much of a damn. They're like a shill moving towards the next stooge like a shark.
Can Vegas survive economically in these trying times with this attitude? Of course it will, but will it have lost its once enticingly coloured shirt in the process, it could well do!
It’s not a good start, and I’m wondering what happened to the Las Vegas I knew? Still, a Johnny Rockets veggie burger eases the pain of broken memories, even if I’ve had to sell my house to pay for it. The fact that small things like a tray and courtesy are missing, and are seen as an inconvenience, according to the new Las Vegas philosophy. Can you tell me why I should give a tip in a fast food joint to a server who only pushes a tray and a sure look in my direction?
Day 15
The trip enters it’s third, and final week and it’s time to get out and have a look around Las Vegas and see if the whole place has lost its way, but first it’s the cinema.
I go to see the new Mission Impossible film. No, it's not about the saving of Napa or finding a bargain in Vegas. It's about Ethan Hunt struggling to save the world from some entity bent on domination and destruction (so it could be about Napa or Vegas).
Tom is looking a tad bit careworn, like the last en primeur I went to, but it’s certainly a great way to leave your brain at the door and forget the high priced life of Las Vegas for a couple of hours.
The price to get in is actually reasonable, as is the bucket of soft drink, and I’m beginning to wonder if my thoughts about Las Vegas should be confined to MGM properties. More research needs to be done in this area.
I have a look around Town Square, a large shopping complex to the south of the casinos. It's supposed to feel down home with a name like that, but is actually a rather soulless experience where people walk around baking streets like suntanned zombies.
After a bite to eat that re-injects life into my melting soul, I head back and fight the multitudes that want a spot of pool time. Thankfully, there aren’t quite the numbers, and it doesn’t take long to find a spot to lie down and shy away from the heat.
The Lightshow
Nicely toasted to impress, I head downtown towards Fremont Street, parking in the Circa, which has prices like the Strip and delusions of a grandeur its location and style just cannot match.
I cannot work out its theme (probably daylight robbery). I do notice the largest sportsbook I’ve ever seen, and watch eager punters sitting mesmerised by a variety of sports being beamed from dozens of silent television screens. It reminds me of the Jungle Room at Graceland's, but on steroids!
You just know that in the slender time I've been observing the gamblers, the housekeeping, the pension fund and the college fees have vanished into the casino coffers, along with a little piece of my dignity for standing and watching.
I’m asked for ID by a man who looks young enough to be my son, and for some reason I find this absolutely annoying. Shouldn't I ask to see this toddler's permit to carry a gun? I hate to say it, but I look far older than the 21 year old age limit I left behind many a year ago, but this jobsworth has got to do his little job. Oh dear you silly man!
Walking along Fremont Street I witness fellow visitors, desperately looking for anything approaching a good time where something will happen. The plastic showgirls, drag sisters and S &M babes can smell them a mile off, and circle for the kill..
Just Married?
Singers and Heart Attack
The light hypnotises you down here, and the neon seems to rob you of your power of speech. It all distracts you from the grubby and seedy side of things, and across from me a couple in their just married finery sit on the sidewalk ranting so loudly that you can’t tell if they’re arguing, enjoying themselves or playing to the constantly passing crowd who takes photographs as though watching a disaster, which this marriage might just be.
I stop for a drink and notice the Heart Attack Grill, a location where people get to eat free if they are obese and ready to face scales that will check that they’re not lying, and have also had their dignity removed.
Inside they're forced to wear hospital gowns, while the waiters and waitresses are dressed as kinky doctors tending to the stomachs and wallets of eager patrons willing to debase themselves for a burger.
In front of this, a couple serenade people (who ignore them) with old love songs whilst sitting in matching wheelchairs, gathering sympathy, but not much cash.
At the interval as they call it (I call it relief because they’re terrible) the woman rises from her wheelchair like Lazarus and goes somewhere, while her partner in cat-strangling taps the feet he's supposed to have lost.
Why am I surprised? Las Vegas is the place where illusion is everything and the city hopes to part the punters from their cash before looking for the next grift.
I buy tacky souvenirs for friends back home, and I'm spoilt for choice because there's almost a tsunami of bad taste, and your mind cannot take in the amount and variety of absolute useless detritus to purchase. All so your friends can have a laugh for a couple of hours before throwing it away, or selling it at a car boot sale!
Heading back to my car, pausing every so often to watch the zip wire junkies yelping with glee as they experience a near death experience that is only slightly worse than the prices they've been charged, before realising it wasn't really as death-defying as they first thought!
All is done beneath a canopy that plays a colourful, vibrant musical medley by Shakira and works hard to keep the attention, and it does this because it entertains in the old Vegas way of giving a little something for nothing, and making the punters feel it's like nothing they've ever seen before.
It entertains, it keeps them coming and it helps the nearby establishments to fleece on the drinks and serve below average dinners to those who've been blinded by the spectacle. Those not inside are sitting looking at the light show with smiles on their faces like manic kids on energy drinks, as they marvel at how this city that never sleeps (forget it New York you're not even close) does it with such polished ease.
I drive to The Stratosphere (or Strat as it's now been rebranded in the most pointless of ways) and the world’s biggest souvenir shop which dishes out more rubbish than a host of politicians.
Inside the title doesn’t lie, because row upon row, and aisle upon aisle of nothing worth having is paraded as though you’d be a fool if you didn’t own it, and finding that elusive Elvis bottle opener is akin to finding the cup of Christ!
Around here, the bars, restaurants and shops are shutting down unless you’re looking for company, a wedding licence, a pawn shop, or perhaps all three. I make my excuses and head away until my derriere is safely parked on a bar stool at the Irish pub in the Mandalay Mall. Here I sit with only a Guinness for company as a man with a guitar sings songs from an ‘old country’ he’s never been near but keeps in his heart as though his life depends upon it. When will Americans learn that it’s not where you’re from that counts?
Day 16
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I'm having some time away from the Strip and taking in the local nature, of which there is more than enough if you can be bothered looking.
First is Red Rock Canyon with a landscape that makes you feel insignificant as you constantly repeat to yourself that this is like nowhere else you've ever been.
Impressive mountains fight for your attention, and every so often bands of red rock worm their way through like seams of gold. These look small from a distance until you see small ants moving about and realise these are people who have decided to get up personal with these marvels of nature.
You pay to enter, and if you haven’t booked you pay $2 more (even here they know how to hustle) and for this you get to go to the information centre which is limited in exhibits, see the odd tortoise moving slowly around a compound, and take your car on a single lane road for the miles the self-guided tour will take.
After a couple of stops you start to limit the number of times you pause because your brain just cannot take in one more amazing view. I visited here last time, and if I come back every year for the next thirty years I'd still be flummoxed by the natural beauty of the place.
All too soon I’ve driven the route and am back on a road heading towards Mt Charleston, the highest peak in Nevada. This is about 40 minutes away and the road is so light on traffic that it's possible to make good time. A couple of freeways head to places I'm not interested in visiting today, and I pass a road actually called, ‘Elvis Alive’ before Vegas disappears from the rearview mirror and I'm snaking my way around isolated landscapes where the temperature in the car settles somewhere around 82 degrees.
Red Rock Scenes
In the distance, with snow sparsely covering parts of the top, is the destination, Mount Charleston.
It’s nearly a hundred degrees in Las Vegas, but up here it’s cold enough for snow. Perhaps driving all the way up to the top might be a dangerous idea.
I stop at an average information centre that is full of smiley, and helpful forest ranger types who enjoy telling you about rattlesnakes, scorpions and other assorted nasties like parents telling evil bedtime stories.
Elvis Alive
Prop 51
I head outside to look at a Cold War Monument that pays homage to all those who died, gave service, or were involved in that moment of friction, of which it talks as though it was a real war like Vietnam, and seems to only mention America versus Russia. A bit unfair to the rest of us!
There is also a damaged and bent propeller that stands as a testament to a plane that crashed in this area and is a stark reminder that there are moments when this area can be quite unforgiving if you don't pay attention.
The aircraft contained 14 people who were involved in secretive work over at Area 51, and that mystery location makes one conjure up obscure science fictional connotations.
In reality, it was probably a gang of scientists returning from the development of some sort of weapon that should have been left alone, but why let truth get in the way.
I head back towards the baking oven that is Vegas, and after dumping extraneous ‘stuff’’ I head out to climb the east face of The Strip. It's the beast that has broken many a visitor in this heat, and is not to be tried unless you have the correct equipment. A good pair of walking shoes, enough cash to buy regular drinks and an ample amount of cynicism. I've got the latter in spades and set off with the cackle of a knowing concierge ringing in my ears.
The MGM is passed through quickly, except for a loan of some air-conditioning, a moment to ponder if I'm doing the right thing, and a thought that my shoes might melt in this heat.
Outside, there's an array of pointless shops selling things you would never normally go near, determined hustlers trying to get you to go and see shows that should have a health and safety warning because they are so dire, and Rubenesque 'showgirls' who offer expensive promises they never intend to keep.
From the outside, the hotels all look different with their French theme, their Aladdin theme and their Roman theme, but inside they are all slight variations on the same motif - the let's part you from your money theme.
These are owned by a couple of enormous corporations who should be spending money winning the average stalwart back rather than attracting the latest trendy crowd to breeze into town for five minutes. Their approach means that these places meld into one amorphous blob of neon shouting at you with a noise that deafens desperate crowds milling aimlessly about.
Of course Las Vegas has photo opportunities in abundance, but unlike Red Rock, you feel you’ve covered them very quickly as your tired brain watches life pass by as though you’re in a bubble. It really is trial by tourism and I've been fully suckered in!
Paris in Green & Luxor in Red