Linda and I have completed Part Two of our 31-day trip, the part I've thought of as exploration. On September 10, we saw our first red-rock canyon of the trip--Glenwood Canyon in central Colorado--and began traversing various parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona. In nine days, we saw Arches NP, Dead Horse Point State Park, Monument Valley, Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, both rims of the Grand Canyon, Zion NP, Bryce NP, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Snow Canyon State Park, and points in between that were also breathtaking. We saw elk at the South Rim, Navajo in Tuba City, bighorn sheep in Zion, a zillion German-speaking tourists wherever we went, a flock of about a thousand sheep in Cedar Breaks, a mining operation at the otherwise barren Dead Horse Point, and buffalo in two spots, and read half of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang while in many of the settings in the novel. And a whole lot more. We can hardly believe we did all this in the past nine days.
After Linda's dialysis this morning in St. George, Utah, we went to Snow Canyon, a small state park which combines an amazing number of geological features in a relative small area: sandstone red rock, limestone white rock, black volcanic lava, petrified sand dunes, and plain old desert with patches of sagebrush. We found some shade in a picnic area and read Abbey for an hour before saying goodbye to the neatness of Utah and heading southwest for a couple of hours to Las Vegas. The temperature reached 102 on the drive, and at 9pm it's still 88. Not too bad considering that back home in upstate New York it was 50 degrees and rainy yesterday. Linda says it might be very tough to go back.
It's hard to imagine two locales more different than Las Vegas and, well, almost anywhere we've been for the past nine days. And it didn't take long to compile a fair amount of fresh evidence about the strangeness of this city where I lived for 14 years (1980-1995, with one year off for an extended research visit to the library at the Baseball Hall of Fame). As tourists this time, we're staying at Sam's Town, where I worked on and off from 1987-1994. I visited the (relocated) poker room where I worked and was proud to see that they are still running the promotion I helped create a quarter-century ago. One employee from our original 1987 crew is still there; as the day shift boss, I hired him as a dealer, and now he's the day shift boss. Tomorrow morning I'm going to go in there and scare the shit out of him, the ghost of hold'em past.
After a meal at Sam's Town, we went for a three-hour drive around the city, starting with Sunrise Mountain to the east, from which we looked down at the sprawling city as the sun set and its light was replaced by the colorful sweep of Las Vegas neon. Then we headed downtown and took the long drive down Las Vegas Boulevard and the whole length of The Strip. We passed a dozen wedding chapels, including a couple where an Elvis impersonator will perform the service, and thousand of tourists wandering around in a neon daze as they craned their necks at the ever-growing number of monstrously huge casinos. Linda likened it to Times Square, except that the people in New York seem to be going somewhere all the time, while people visiting Las Vegas spent a lot of time looking lost.
We saw three things which, to me, sum up Las Vegas' supremacy in the realm of indulging any excess. First was the woman we saw seated upon a rolling walker at Sam's Town, watching a friend of hers play a slot machine. The woman was a burly 75-year-old with white hair knotted atop her head, wearing a short leopard-print sundress with spaghetti straps which kept slipping down, a shell necklace, and black sneakers and socks, and drinking a glass of red wine. She looked like Barney Rubble in drag. The natives didn't give her a second thought.
Second was a small church building on East Charleston Boulevard. On the door it is identified as the Living Faith Assembly, God's Family Church, where "Our purpose is to love God and glorify him thereby." The lights were off this evening and nobody was inside the building, but there was a steady stream of cars entering the parking lot. Why? Because attached to the outside of the church is a Wells Fargo Bank express ATM machine. That explains why the information on the door includes the assurance that this church is "non-denominational." Yep, they'll accept any denomination there: fives, tens, twenties, or hundreds.
Last up was the business establishment in downtown Las Vegas whose marquee caused us both to do a triple-take. It is called the "Heart Attack Grill" and it proclaims "Over 350 lbs? Eat here free." Underneath that generous offer is this tempting come-on: "Ask about our liposuction lottery." We really don't want to ask, thank you. But that's Vegas. Any compulsion, obsession, or self-destructive behavior will be encouraged, aided and abetted. This may even be the last bastion where smoking is allowed in a public place, providing me with a nostalgic chance to inhale the stench of a cheap cigar in the cheap slot-machine area. No problem. Just come inside--and bring all those denominations with you.
On Wednesday we were transfixed by the delicate orange-white pinnacles of Bryce Canyon, the towering ridges of Zion, and many other natural wonders. One day later, I found myself trying to figure out how a new casino like the Cosmopolitan can stay afloat. Someone bought the property next to the massive Bellagio and decided that the only way to compete was to build something even more massive. They also realized that the only color not used yet for a mega-casino's primary color was kelly blue, so that's the color of the horizontal bars of neon 30 or 40 stories up or however tall it is. That's how it goes in Las Vegas, where immediate visual gratification is supreme, and once you are on the premises they'll do everything they can to keep you there. Sam's Town, a quaint Western-themed neighborhood casino when I first set foot in it 30 years ago, now has a McDonald's, a Subway, a Dunkin' Donuts, and several other fast-food places right on the premises, inside the casino, in addition to its own dining establishments.
No, despite the efforts of the Living Faith Assembly, I don't think I'm going to find God in a desert of neon where a 400-pound man can get a free lunch. I'm much more likely to find divinity in the marvels of the Utah and Arizona canyons which took millions of years to create magnificent vistas.
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