Day 7: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

To be perfectly honest, after we had seen some of the beautiful landscapes of Utah and northeastern Arizona, even the Grand Canyon wasn't quite as impressive as we expected it to be. That's not an easy admission to make. To be fair, the canyon was gorgeous, but we'd already had our standards raised by a couple of days of raw natural beauty.

Nevada, on the other hand, completely restored our faith in the canyon. The Nevada desert by itself has a kind of severe beauty that we might have appreciated a great deal more, if it had not been for the perverse ugliness and insanity of Las Vegas, where we paused along the way to stroll through a casino.

It's difficult to convey the impact Las Vegas had upon our minds. While the word "gaudy" might not have been defined in Vegas, its implementation was certainly perfected there (and personally, I happen to think that perfection may well have been enhanced by the use of mind-altering chemicals). Beneath the baking desert sun, it sits like a pile of tawdry faux baubles heaped upon the sand, and round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Inside, as you pass by flashing electric signs awash in startling blazes of colour, you get the impression that none of this is really real. Imagine your whole life is an elaborate fabrication, being acted out in Technicolour and stereo surround sound, by a highly trained crew of actors and movie makers. You know it's fake, but everyone around you acts as if it's the real thing. You begin to wonder, after a while, if they realize it's just a show.

Or is it real after all?

Incidentally, this particular philosophy was much less coherent when it was first formulated. You can listen to its original explication here, if you are so inclined.

It's a little known fact that long before Europeans set foot on the North American continent, the great Egyptian pharoahs had stopped by for a visit. The deserts of Nevada so reminded them of home, that they built some pyramids here just in case they were to die before they could make it back home.

This turned out to be convenient for the designers of this road, who had a nice level surface to build upon as a result.

Winding roads were a welcome change after so much flat, straight, and level. It looks as though we're heading back up into the mountains, but don't get too comfy; the desert isn't quite through with us yet!

Dam it all! Despite appearances, this is not actually a spaceport, but rather the lake created in the middle of the Colorado River by the Hoover Dam, whose graceful arc you can see before you.

Hoover Dam, built during the Great Depression and named for President Herbert Hoover, first began delivering electrical power in 1936.

Fortunately for the people upstream, the Hoover Dam includes two enormous overflow sluices, one on either side of the dam itself.

You can't see it from here, but there is a pipe big enough to drive a double-decker bus through, if said bus wanted a quick ride straight to hell. It's hard to imagine how much water it would take to keep that pipe busy.

Most people didn't know this, but Herbert Hoover was an avid skateboarder. He had his engineers design the front of the dam to serve double duty as a totally bitchin' skate ramp. Unfortunately, nobody's out on a plank today, but you can just imagine what kind of a ride you'd get.

At the foot of the dam lie the power converters, from which radiate a spiderweb tangle of power lines, vaulting up the sheer rock faces to distribution towers that carry them away across the desert.

From this distance, even through a zoom lens or a pair of binoculars, they kind of look like little model buildings.

"You know," said Michael, "if you were to fall off here, you'd hit the wall pretty soon. It might even break your fall enough that you could skid the rest of the way down to the bottom. Of course, at that point your bones would all shatter as soon as you ploughed into the lip of that big platform..."

You can view a brief movie clip of Hoover Dam if you'd like to see the view Michael was talking about.

The border between Arizona and Nevada is right in the middle of the dam. Apparently, this border is so elegantly constructed that it was voted one of the seven wonders of the United States by the ASCE in 1955.

One of the guys who worked on the dam used to like to strip off all his clothes and go swimming in the Colorado. They decided to make a statue of him. "Hey," he is saying, "which one of you goons took my towel?"

(Actually, this relief is intended to honour the many who died during the construction of Hoover Dam)

In order to protect our nation's investment, two winged guardians have been hired to watch over the dam both day and night. Here, we see one of them yawning and stretching to get prepared for another busy day on the job.

"Welcome to Nevada. Don't try any funny business, see, because I've got a pick and a shovel."

Eventually, we made our way down into Las Vegas. Here's the first fully-grown palm tree we've seen.

It was so hazy that none of our footage of Las Vegas from afar came out well enough to use here. You can hear our first impressions of Las Vegas, however, if you wish.

Las Vegas is full of interesting stuff (interesting in the sense of the old Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times"). That includes some pretty peculiar billboards.

It's a good thing they posted this one. We all know you were forgetting the Sabbath Day, and making yourself an idol. We weren't sure if this said "Humor your Father and Mother" or "Honor your Father and Mother", but we figured either way works.

In Las Vegas, you can turn just about anything into cash. Here's a place where you can hock your car for another fix of slot machine tokens.

Are you so in love that you just can't wait to get married? Scared to wait overnight in case the physical attraction wears off? Well, fret no more, O romantic soul! Here at the "Chapel of Love", you can get married faster than you can say "Jack Robinson" (I do!)

And, if that wasn't enough, you can wed now, pay later, with their full financing plan. Don't wait another minute! Get hitched today.

According to the casino's records, Harry Galloway actually won $9,547. However, we creative procrastinators don't generally let facts stand in the way of a good prank. See what happens when you let two computer geeks have access to a data port while travelling?

(Actually, after you take out the amount Mr. Galloway spent to win his $9,547 and pay all the taxes, it probably does work out to about $9.54)

When we heard that Las Vegas was a great place to get booty, we didn't realize this is what they meant. Arrr!

David was amazed by this parking lot. Total cost to us, zero. Zip. Nada. Niente. Nichts. Michael is still not entirely clear why this is such a fascinating concept, but I guess that's because he avoids parking in Boston.

Las Vegas doesn't have many tall buildings, but one of the more prominent landmarks is a very tall tower, the top of which you can see here.

Amazingly enough, that loopy red thing around the top is, get this, a roller coaster. Yep, that's right, folks -- you too can get spun around upside down on the top of a twenty-storey high spire until you hork your lunch out all over the pedestrians below.

When we first saw this sign, we merely thought it amusing. Well, it is amusing, but it wasn't until after we captured this still picture that we actually read the fine print...

This palm tree has pissed David off for absolutely the last time!

Michael wasn't quite so lucky. You can see what happened to him when he tried to negotiate with a spiky plant just a few moments before this shot was taken.

In order to help you get a better feel for what the terrain in Nevada is like (once you're outside the limits of Las Vegas), we've prepared this panoramic image. As with the other images on this page, you can click on this one to get a larger version. This is almost a three hundred sixty degree view.