Notes from the Road - Day 25

2/23/04 Midnight Las Vegas, NV

I had nightmares last night, at least two of them, the first I’ve had in a while. At least one of them featured some recognizable actors, which in my dream I thought about casting in those roles if I wrote a movie based on the dream. Weird. Anyway, the result of this was I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. I finally gave up and got a shower, then went down to breakfast. It was decent, but it cost $6.00, and I was hoping for better for some reason. I decided against taking any of their stinky oatmeal soap (what’s up with that anyway?), but I snagged the shampoo, loaded up and set off for my first glimpse of the Las Vegas strip.

The surrounding desert had done a pretty good job of soaking up last night’s rain, but mud was still visible on one side of I-15 stretching for miles. In fact, I encountered rain showers off and on all day, but the sun was there in the intervening time, and for that I was grateful. About an hour from Primm, the city skyline appeared unceremoniously through the low lying clouds, but something stopped me from going straight in when I saw a sign for the Hoover Dam. I took the exit the sign marked and started bumbling my way around the Las Vegas suburbs for a while before giving up and getting back on the interstate. The directions I got from some bystander in a tire and lube shop sent me through the strip anyway, and I snapped a few pictures while I was at it, then shot straight out the other side and on to Boulder City.

When the Hoover Dam was built, it took half a decade, so the government established Boulder City as a base of operations. However, they proceeded to outlaw everything the construction workers liked to do with their free time, so they all headed for Las Vegas after their shifts, and since the building went on 24 hours a day, there were people getting off work at all hours. Boulder City continues to be the only place in Nevada to forbid gambling. The site finally chosen was Black Canyon, which beat out Boulder Canyon just a short distance away because it was narrower. This meant less concrete would have to be used, since they were using the mountainsides as part of the structure of the dam itself. As it is, they used enough concrete to make a 4’ wide, 3” thick sidewalk around the equator. The dam is made entirely of concrete, no rebar or steel was used. The blocks were lowered into position like Legos, interlocking almost but not quite perfectly in a slight curve. The remaining space was closed by the pressure of the water in the reservoir squeezing the dam into the space between the mountains. This created Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the hemisphere, in addition to the reservoir, and enabled the southwestern states to finally solve many of their water problems, like irrigation and the perpetual flood/drought cycle of the Colorado River.

Before I took the dam tour, I snapped some pictures from the top and saw more than a few chipmunks scampering up and down the sides. The tour of the dam, which has been shortened considerably due to security concerns, took about an hour. One of our three tour guides, the one who took us to see the Nevada-side turbines, sounded profoundly bored, and they all seemed personally offended not to be able to complete the tour like they used to. There are 17 turbines total, but they have to limit how much energy they generate in order to keep water levels up. The reservoir is currently at its lowest level in 20 years, and this area has been in kind of a running drought for the last five years. After the tour, it started sprinkling. Of course, the rain they’re experiencing now that I’m here is a fluke, and something they needed badly, I’m sure. (Author’s note: It’s worse than the guides let on, as many scientists now believe the relatively wet weather in the west for much of the last century was a brief part of the climate cycle, the dry part of which once lasted 400 years. It may have been a mistake to allow the population explosion in most of the west for the last twenty years.)

When I got back from the dam, I drove around town for a bit looking for a hotel the AAA book said had a cheap rate, but it was almost twice what was listed, and they didn’t have any vacancies anyway, so I checked into one of the local hostels instead. I got so much information there on what to see and do on the strip that it took me a while to get out and do anything at all. Finally, I saw the pedestrian mall on Fremont Street, and it kind of blew my mind, just like the Strip did and continues to do. The display of wealth, greed, and glamour everywhere you look made me literally laugh out loud more than once. I’m not sure if these casinos co-opting famous landmarks, themes, people, even entire cities, diminishes the original or brings them closer to the average American, but it’s certainly something to see.

I stepped in the Mirage looking for an affordable show, and stopped to look at Siegfried & Roy’s white Bengal tigers in a glass habitat along the way. After touring several casinos and failing to see any shows for various reasons, I finally got a ticket to “Jubilee!” at Bally’s. It’s billed as a show in Vegas’s traditional style, and it doesn’t disappoint on that count. Half the female cast was topless for most of the big musical numbers, but I still almost fell asleep near the end. There were three sets of very good athletes performing in between stage setups (which included Samson and Delilah and the Titanic), the first of which was a pair of Asian contortionists who could have been brothers and immediately brought to mind one of the thieves in Ocean’s 11, which was filmed partly at the Bellagio. All in all, I probably would have rather seen one of the three Cirque de Soleil productions, but they were ungodly expensive. It’s sad to say, since the production was so extravagant and well-put-together, but “Jubilee!” felt like a relic of a bygone age when such stuff was titillating and provocative, whereas tonight the bare skin didn’t merit a second glance from anyone in the audience, at least a third of which was women.

I’m planning on more of the same tomorrow, along with a trip with some other people at the hostel to the Rio casino to celebrate Mardi Gras. Time for some sleep.