Welcome to Sin City?

About 1/3rd of out trip was spent in the giant state of California. We had seen the majestic coastal redwoods of the North, made some new friends at a lighthouse near San Francisco, explored mysterious things with old friends near Santa Cruz, watched the sun set over a beach-side waterfall, witnessed Yosemite burn, stood in the presence of the biggest tree on Earth, and survived the hottest place in the country. Finally, for the first time in eight days, we crossed a state border into Nevada. Our final attraction in California proved to be a good segue for the southwest. Though we never experienced anything quite as hot after Death Valley, it was clear we were now in a completely different ecosystem. One expansive desert, broken only by the occasional river or mountain range, spread out before us and would be our home for the next segment of our journey.

Our first sign of civilization en route to Las Vegas was the small city of Pahrump. It wasn’t in our nature to stop at the welcome signs for any of the strange towns we had thus-far driven through, but this was obviously an exception.
Pahrump is a city of about 20,000, and though we didn’t spend much time driving through, we did have to stop for ice cream. This indulgence was, of course, the first thing we figured we should eat after leaving the thermal anomaly of Death Valley. If you choose to do the same in your travels, may we suggest not visiting this particular ice-creamery, as it is governed by a rude troll. Perhaps she thought she was royalty due to her castle themed habitation. Either way, we continued on our way equipped with tasty weapons to battle the persistent, triple digit heat.
On we went, eventually merging onto I-15 North right into the heart of Las Vegas. We got our first view of the strip from here, basically paralleling the famous Las Vegas Blvd from the west. For some reason we failed to drive down the actual strip, and simply exited at the northern terminus arriving at the Stratosphere Hotel and Tower, which was to be our introduction to Las Vegas.


My original perception of the the Stratosphere was that the rooms were all in the vertical rise of the tower, and then the restaurant was at the top. I was mistaken. In reality it has two buildings, the hotel and the tower. The hotel is an uncreative block shaped thing that butts up to the bottom of the tower. From the hotel, you can take an elevator up to the top of the tower. There's nothing in the rise of the tower except the elevator. We quickly checked in to the hotel and headed up to our first real hotel room since Petaluma. Taking showers was high on our priority list. Pri won the coin toss and got to go first while I sorted through our stuff. Once we were both clean again, we suited up in preparation for our first night in Sin City. This was to culminate in dinner at the Top of the World restaurant in the top of the space needle.
We descended to the casino level where we were hit full in the face with cigarette smoke and jingling bells. It became quickly apparent that we stuck out like a sore thumb in our nice clothes. As a Las Vegas veteran might know, the Stratosphere is not the place to go for glamour and ambiance; it is the place people go to feed their paycheck into a slot machine in the fervent hope of wining it big. We more or less ran through the crowd of dull eyed drones towards an escalator bearing signs that promised "shops," a feature we assumed would be an improvement over the casino. In retrospect I guess it was an improvement, though not a significant one. By way of example, imagine a Jersey mall. Make it trashier. Now replace all of the nationalized chains with sketchy looking gift/convenience hybrid stores. Insert a bunch of drunk shady looking people, and you have the stores in the Stratosphere. We lingered in the less scary ones for as long as possible, acquiring our customary magnet and postcards. After a short while, we decided to go up the tower for our dinner reservation where were immediately seated at a table. The restaurant is two concentric circles. The one closer to the center of the tower is stationary and houses the kitchen. The outer part was the dining part, a disk that flushed up against the windows allowing the diners to see the city. The disk rotated imperceptibly slow (once every 90 minutes), but fast enough to make our brains go "hold the phone, something funny is going on around here" and thus we had mild motion sickness. This feeling was rapidly pushed from our attention, however, by the arrival of our singular waiter.

A middle aged man, somewhat portly, with slicked back hair arrived, his eyes darting around wildly as he talked at about the speed of light. Basically, imagine a guy who was raised in a nightclub. Because he was. His father owned one on... wait for it, Long Beach Island. He left us with our menus and, with difficulty, we focused our attention on deciding what to eat instead of staring out the windows. We both liked the sound of a particular salmon entree, and despite his uninvited advice to steer us clear of ordering the same thing in a "world class restaurant," we committed the classic faux pas. When the food came out, he was proven half right in his suggestion. The salmon was cooked poorly and drenched in oil which would cause us both stomachaches later that night. The only thing world class about the restaurant was the view. Stretching out before us in all directions were thousands of lights. They always write energy statistics about how long something could power Las Vegas, and I now understand why they do. We gazed out in all directions, the shades of electrified tungsten, mercury vapor, and other illuminants creating a completely different landscape than what we were used up to this point in the trip. We could look straight down and see the drastic contrast between the strip and the surrounding area. Empty lots were within a block of Las Vegas Blvd, and beyond those were shady one story buildings scattered about. This observation, along with what we had seen in the hotel earlier, highlighted that the oasis in the desert was really a mirage, as it was completely supported by decay, avarice, and lust. Despite this sad realization, I decided that I would pause my judgment on the city until the next day, when we would be staying at a much nicer hotel hopefully funded by tourists seeking entertainment rather than weak people gambling away their life's savings.


We continued to eat, with frequent visits from our waiter who became less annoying and more entertaining as the night went on. He would typically take a knee right night to my chair, so close that I could knock him over if I moved my arm, as he rambled on about everything from his friend's cell phone service to the time he went to Colorado. We concluded the dinner by walking up to the outside observation deck. Upon exiting the turnstile doors we were hit with a wall of hot dry air. Over the course of the day we had reaclimated to the comfort of air conditioning, so the 80 degree blast of atmosphere was quite a shock. But like they say, the dry heat is much better. We gazed out over the cityscape, trying to find landmark buildings.At some point we realized that the top of the tower was decorated with three rides for the adventurous hotel goer. One ride was the classic freefall, with the tower's spire serving as the vertical pole on which the ride ascended before rapidly descending. Another ride was a rotor, from which extended six or so arms adorned with chair harnesses at their ends. The chairs all faced the center and spun around the central axis of the ride with the goal of making you dizzy. Oh, yeah and also... it was suspended over the freaking abyss at the edge of the observation platform so if you rode it your feet were dangling close to 1000 feet above the ground. For the last ride, imagine a 100 foot excision of a small roller coaster (like the ones at the boardwalk) complete with two cars. Now keeping with the theme of these rides, imagine that short piece of rail anchored in the center to the disk of the observation platform so the line of the track is tangent to the circle of the tower. The ride would teeter on this pivoting point so the cars would precariously plummet towards the end of the track (below which was nothing) then catch at the last second on some kind of pneumatic brake. It would pause for a few seconds while the riders undoubtedly got a great view of the people walking around far far below. The track would then tilt backwards and repeat the same maneuver a few times before concluding the ride. We marveled at these rides for a while, also soaking in the lights of the city some more. We descended to the lower observation platform which was indoors. Here we found those penny crusher machines, which produce the classic souvenir we had been collecting wherever possible. Neither of us had change so we resolved to return in the morning and retired to our room. We stayed up writing posts until we passed out.

The next morning we packed everything up into the car, then returned to the tower for our penny. Somehow, we forgot change again. All of the change machines were broken, and the woman in the gift store said she couldn't open the register unless we bought something. So we purchased some chapstick, attacked the penny machine equipped with our change, and headed back down triumphantly. Piling back into the car, we decided to kill the remaining time until our 3PM check-in at the next hotel by taking a daytrip to the Hoover Dam.

[adam]