Notes from the Road - Day 27

2/25/04 10:10pm Kanab, UT

I kept waking up periodically last night, which meant I didn’t end up getting out of bed until nearly 10:00am. The other three beds in my room were still occupied and the curtains were drawn, so I packed my things in the dark, then moved my car outside the security fence and checked out.

There were still two things I wanted to see in Vegas before I left: the Luxor and the indoor acrobatics at the Tropicana. I parked at the Luxor, which is shaped like a giant glass pyramid with a sphinx in front of it, and walked all the way through it and out the front, since I didn’t have time to stop or I’d miss the Tropicana show. All of the parking at the places on the strip is behind the casinos (because who wants to look at a parking garage when you could be seeing a giant sphinx or the Brooklyn Bridge?), so it is a bit of a walk. The Luxor is gorgeously decorated inside with mock statues of all things Egyptian, and you can see all the way up to the inner apex of the pyramid from the ground floor. If I were in Vegas on my honeymoon, I’d either stay there or Caesar’s Palace for the sheer opulence of the surroundings. Interestingly, those two casinos both have rooms with a Cleopatra theme.

By contrast, the Tropicana is a little bit older, and more geared toward the gambling. I had envisioned the glass-domed ceiling the athletes performed under as being at least 30-40 feet high, but it was actually more like 15-20, and no less of a feat for that. In truth, two of the three acts I saw did physical tricks like the ones I’d seen before, but the third were truly acrobats, swinging just a few feet above the heads of the patrons sitting at the slot machines below on a long tether. These two guys were very impressive.

Just before the show, I bought a coffee and put one of the quarters that made up my change in a slot machine and won another $5.00. I thought to myself, “I’ll take it,” and cashed out. For my time spent in Nevada, that put me a little over $30.00 in the black, which is better than I expected to be. After the show, I picked up a free deck of playing cards at the promotion desk and headed back to my car. This left only Circus Circus as the sight I missed that I wanted to see. There’s always next time. At least that gives me a reason to come back.

It was 1:00pm by the time I hit the interstate north, and it was not crowded. Few people enter or leave Las Vegas from the east side, apparently, as I was one of only a few cars visible for miles. At a turnout for trucks, I got off and followed a side road a little ways out to take a look at some of the date palms that were showing their colors. I’d earlier mistaken them for cacti, but they’re really trees up to 10 feet high. I had to walk about 100 yards out into the sand to get a picture of the one I liked, and I started to get a little nervous when I noticed all the pool-ball-sized holes in the ground burrowing towards the roots of most sage bushes. I don’t know what was living in them, but snakes and scorpions came to mind so I started walking faster. While I was out there I also saw tumbleweed, a purple cactus, and some strange white station a long ways down the road, with a cone shaped sensor coming out of the middle. It wasn’t identified by any signs, so I don’t know if it was military, weather, or science, but I resisted the urge to drive out and knock on the door. Shortly thereafter, I stopped in Mesquite, which from the highway looks like an oasis of golf courses, to eat at McDonald’s.

As I headed out again, the mountains got steeper and canyons and washes started appearing, huge cracks in the landscape weaving their way into the scrubland toward the peaks in the distance. There were many spots on this drive, as there have been everywhere, when I wished there was a place to stop for a good picture. In some of them, I just held my camera up to the window and took the shot anyway, just hoping for the best. I’ve done this quite often.

I crossed the border into Arizona to find more rocky desert scenery that took my breath away. I even turned the radio off to appreciate it by giving it my full attention. At one point, these huge earthen landscapes became the red mirror of the Continental Divide I’d crossed up north. The Virgin River runs through here, brownish-red, reminding me of the creek running by Friendship, Indiana, at flood stage. The sides of these elaborately slant-stacked mountains are virtually bare, meaning the process of breaking them to rubble goes unaided by vegetation. Wind and water still do the job, but they’re not as thorough, leaving precarious rock formations standing on mountaintops.

Eventually, I crossed the border into Utah, but the landscape didn’t change, since nature doesn’t recognize the borders we see fit to impose. Perhaps the soil got a little redder, but it was hard to tell. In my haste to find a restroom, I missed my exit since some of them have signs declaring “No services,” and it was one of them. This cost me a precious hour of daylight, which was already beginning to dwindle through the increasingly overcast sky. I made my way at last to Zion National Park, which thankfully wasn’t charging admission by the time I got there. The best way to describe the peaks here would be jagged, like the lower jaw of a carnivore with some of the teeth missing. It was some truly stunning scenery, and sadly I couldn’t get any pictures after I entered the park because the light was too dim. It was enough that I could still see though, and what I saw reminded me of the Grand Canyon, which is nearby. Zion also requires a trip through a small tunnel that digs straight through the upper part of a mountain for 1.1 miles. There were periodic breaks in one wall of the tunnel offering breathtaking views but the signs said no stopping inside the tunnel. There is a pedestrian walkway through that side, but you can only go through it with a ranger.

As I’d started making switchbacks up the road leading through the park, I’d begun to wonder if this road was going to be disturbingly similar to my terrible time on Highway 1 in California, but when it got to the tunnel it straightened out considerably and was rather smooth driving by comparison. It was something else entirely that made me slow down as I descended the mountain and left the park: I saw three groups of deer grazing along the side of the road within a mile of each other. Night had fallen by this time, but I could still make out the snow clinging to the land around me, the first I’d seen since Washington State more than a week ago. I kept my high beams on and my eyes moving.

Finally, I reached the town of Kanab and decide to call it a night. A brochure I picked up in the office of this cozy family-run inn says the town has been home to many Western productions of both television and movies. The walls of the office are lined with pictures of actors signed to the proprietors, Bob and Bon.