Notes from the Road - Day 24

2/22/04 9:30pm Primm, NV

I got up about 7:30am today, took a shower in the community bathroom with a nearly overflowing toilet, then found I had no desire to attempt to make a free pancake on the stove that was being fretted over by a little girl. Having burned her own pancake, she was offering it around. There are several children running around this hostel, and it just doesn’t feel right for some reason. I went out for donuts and French vanilla coffee instead, which I brought back to the hostel and ate while reading the paper. It was raining a little when I went out, even as the sun was shining, and the weather finally broke for a little while, so around 10:00am I checked out and drove around the city. I started with nearby Mission Beach, and was impressed with both the atmosphere and the wide array of boats lining the copious piers. There were little bays everywhere, many of them public, with their own little tide pools and eddies of current.

The neighborhood had the same bohemian feel as L.A.’s Venice area, but without the looking-over-your-shoulder quality. I could easily see how one would be happy there next to the beach, and the boats, and the nightlife. There was next to no one on the beach itself this morning, but many people were walking and riding their bikes on the boardwalk. One guy was even flying a kite at a nearby harbor point, and at others I saw a man in a camouflage wetsuit with a spear gun and another wet-suited guy getting into a kayak. Unsurprisingly, the ocean really seemed to make up a lot of San Diego’s character.

Driving around the area a bit, I stumbled on a memorial park for cancer victims. As I was walking the sidewalk, a jogger went by, turned around, and called out to me, saying it really pained him to see a Purdue hat (which I was wearing) out here. “I hate being from Indiana,” he told me. The memorial consisted of a twisting walkway lined with columns bearing plaques with tips on fighting cancer and sayings to encourage victims, and a small stone gazebo on one end. Halfway down the walkway were sculptures representing cancer sufferers stepping through several square, symbolic hurdles, and coming out a happy family.

I was determined to see downtown, so I followed the signs and discovered San Diego was bigger than I had thought it was. Taking I-5 around a bend, it suddenly emerged, a base of skyscrapers with a long blue ribbon arcing over the water to Coronado Island. I took the bridge without thinking and was gratified to see there was no toll today when I got to the other side. It started raining again, so I snapped some quick pictures of the city, including the docks where some very large ships were anchored, and decided to head for Las Vegas.

Several hours out, I was back into mountain country, snow-capped peaks rising in the distance as the sun fell behind the clouds. Around 4:30pm, I came across an old ghost town called Calico, which was written in large letters on the mountainside, visible from the road. The town was so-named because of the extraordinary coloring of the slopes around the mines that once anchored the colony. There were varying shades of green, red, and purple, all mixing with and emerging from the standard beige and brown. The town was about to close according to the hours posted, but there was no one in the booth and almost no one in the parking lot, so I drove on in and snapped a couple shots. From the entry point to the town, a train station was visible on the desert floor in the distance.

It was getting dark and the rain came on harder as I once again found myself descending out of the mountains at a 6% grade, with signs for trucks to check their brakes. I started seeing steady traffic heading west, back to California after spending Mardi Gras weekend in Vegas. On the radio, they were reporting how long the traffic stretched by the names of the towns it backed up to, but all I know is it must have been a hundred miles. Those headlights just stretched out before me like a string of pearls while the rain followed me out into the desert, creating mud flats on either side of the highway that only exist for a few days each year. Once in a while, before the light failed entirely, I could see date palms, and the ground had a green tinge to it, as if tiny blades of grass had sprung up a quarter of an inch, to see if the rain was real and drink it in while it lasted.

Then, night came on, and in the distance I could see neon lights rising up out of the desert, like jewels on the end of that pearl necklace. At first I thought it could be Vegas, but as I got nearer, I realized it wasn’t big enough. Instead, it was Primm, the first town across the state line, first chance for Nevada gambling. Three hotel/casinos made up almost the entirety of the town, with a McDonald’s and a gas station filling the only other positions visible at night. I stopped for a bite to eat at the McDonald’s, then accidentally sat on the drink I had left on my seat while negotiating the umbrella back into the car. The spill wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was still a mess. I grabbed a bunch of napkins and wadded them into the seat crack to absorb what they could. Then I checked into Whiskey Pete’s Casino because it had the cheapest rooms at $19.95 each. It is easily the largest, classiest hotel room I’ve stayed in on this trip, and it cost half as much as the dinky room at the hostel I stayed in last night. The money they make from gambling enables them to discount everything, from food to clothing to lodging, all to keep you within walking distance of a slot machine or blackjack table.

A big part of gambling, like life, is knowing how to quit while you’re ahead. After watching an hour of the Simpsons on TV, I decided to try my luck with $5.00 on the slots. On the third machine I stuck a quarter in, I made $60.00 on a triple play when I pushed the button by mistake. Now theoretically, I could’ve turned that money into enough to pay for this entire trip. Or I could’ve lost my original five dollars. For tonight, the three new twenty dollar bills in my wallet are enough to make me feel lucky. Tomorrow, there’s always Las Vegas to try my luck again.