Las Vegas -
USA from coast to coast

Friday, July 28'th

Again we start the day at a modest time, the motel-parkinglot is almost empty when we leave. I think we'll have to plan the days better so we don't have to spend so much time at night, hunting for Motels and then sleeping the day away. We are also getting mutually tired of the music we have brought along, Shehab of my strange mix of 90'ties Eurodisco and I of Shehabs never-ending collection of Dylan/Springsteen tapes. So, thank God for the radio even though there is Country-music on all stations up here - but that together with the Radio-announcer make a better feel to the infinite roads in the US.

We are getting close to the mountains now, we are driving on a highway with next to no traffic, going in a straight line for Salt Lake City, our destination for today. Along the way we see signs for archaeological sites, impressions from the Jura period with dinosaur foot-steps forever immortalized in the dried-up and now petrified river-bed. But we are in a hurry, we will try to get to the salt lake and perhaps locate the salt-sculptures used on a Pink Floyd album cover (according to Shehab).

The drive graduately take us up into the Rockies, we follow the empty highway until it intercept the interstate from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City and we are going with full Air Condition. Even though we don't feel the constant ascend, the engine does. Full speed with the overdrive enabled and the AC making the glove-compartment into a freezer has a price and at the gas-station on the interstate I notice that fluid are dripping from the engine. While Shehab go to pay for the gas I open the hood to have look, the engine is boiling. I find Shehab in line at the station and we buy some antifreeze for the radiator as well. And off we go once again, the engine now show a normal temperture on the meter.

Across the mountains we made a brief stop at Salt Lake City. At first we drove into the city and after a unsucessful detour looking for the lake on our own we gave up, turned the car around and headed back towards downtown, following the signs for the information center. But apparently it was to late in the day, the Information had closed.

Instead we asked a couple of girls that came walking toward us, if they knew "how to get to the lake?". Either our spoken English had improved significantly the last ten days, we got the reply "We don't know, We're from New York too!". Or perhaps they had seen us driving into the parkinglot in the Taurus with New York-plates.

Finally we got a pointer to which highway and what exit to take that would bring us out on the dried out (or so we thought) lake. It was now almost 8PM but the sun was still high in the sky. The road took us to a small castle build on the shores of the lake, we could smell the lake now, the odour was like that of bare-feet-in-shoes. We parked and began our walk our on the lake, Shehab was leading the way. Past some granite boulders was the lake and Shehab was marching on, but suddently he jumped back on the rocks. He tried to trick me by taking out the video and ask me to walk out o the lake, so he could get some pictures. But I had seen his leather shoes, almost ruined by the swampy surface. No more lake-walking for us.

We headed on towards Las Vegas and made a stop for the night at a small Motel in Provo, a quite inert town with only a few places to eat, it was Subway-sandwiches for dinner that night. The Motel was cheap though and Shehab used the Pool-cleaning-device to fix his shoes. The antique Air Condition in the room was effective but noisy so we turned it off in order to get some sleep - but it was hot out here in Utah, even at night-time.

Saturday, July 29'th

It was late morning before we left Provo and we started out on a hot drive down through Utah following the Continental Divide to the Nevada-state where we would aim for the tinsel town of them all, Las Vegas. We figured out the drive would take four hours and we were sort of right. On the way we saw other tourists, driving in their RV's and with their regular car on haul - in Europe you only see bicycles strapped to the rear of RV's, never cars. The highway have special deceleration lanes, build to avoid disaster if/when a truck loose its breaks going down-hill, a clever invention. Here they can get rid of their momentum in a safe way instead of a crash into the rock-wall.

Around noon we went out of the Rockey Mountain foot-hills and entered the desert. It was hot but since there was no humidity it didn't feel so bad, well we were going full throttle with the AC so we didn't notice anything. There was a lot of dust in the air and we saw tiny small tornadoes or whirlwinds caused my the morning heat, sweeping across the desert-highway. Even five miles from Las Vegas we could only vaguely make out the skyline. We would aim for the old part of town and stay at near the classic Casinos; "Golden Nuget", "Lady Luck" or whomever would have us. We drove round on the city circular-Expressway for a while until we spotted some of the well-known Casino names.

At first we tried a "Town Palms Hotel" but they had no vacancy so we drove to the down-town classic Casono district and pick the first, the best.

After the five hours drive fra Provo we finally reached the hotel were we decided to stay (they had room for us), I was surprised how cheap the room was, but thinking of it, I guess they make most of their money in the attached casinos. The room was spacious with a view up the "Strip", if you stood on your toes. The rest of the hotel was perfect with a Casino at the ground level and a sub-ground Valet parking, you know where you leave your car and car keys at the desk and get a receipt (to get your car back later). After unpacking we took a drive round town to see the sights, not many people out - this is a town that linger until nightfall.

Since Bugsy Seagal made his dream come true, the "Flamingo Hilton", a lot has happend. In the new part of the city, up the "Strip", one Casino/Hotel is more impressing than the other. Don't miss "Ceasar's Palace" with the animated fountain, starts every hour, on the hour and lasts about ten minutes. Right next to this is "MGM Grand", with the MGM theme park and further out is "Luxor", with the replica of an Egyptian pyramid along with a live size Sphinx. There's also a "Hard Rock Hotel" here, and if you want to take a course in how to participate

So that afternoon we visited the big and expensive casinos at the eastern end of the Strip, We started out with Ceasar's, then a trip to MGM Grand and finally the Luxor before we headed back to Fremont. A few hours rest and then it was time to taste the Las Vegas night. We had planned to catch a show but fx Siegfried and Roy was 80 bucks, this idea was dropped. Instead we had drinks and watched the Gambling, dinner at Fremont was cheap but not that exiting.

We started to walk down the Strip and I guess we got half way towards the Mirage, right before the unfinished Stratosphere, when we decided to take a cab. The heat was intense and out there among the fancy places we couldn't last more than 10 minutes outside, then we had to walk inside and get a drink. Not a bad way to see Las Vegas, when you don't have that much money to gamble with. So we were ll over the place, testing a slot-machine here and there before we headed back - tomorrow was Grand Canyon day. We saw signs that you could do a field trip to the Canyon by plane from Las Vegas, but they were only interesting until we saw the price. At 3AM it was nightynight-time for the explorers.