Driving Through Nevada

Eli:

We went to Las Vegas, and a place called the Strip there were huge shiny casinos.

Rebekah:

Driving through Nevada is a surreal experience. We drove through the entire state from Carson City to the Hoover Dam. We spent much of our time on highway 95. We passed Walker Lake which was beautiful but had no one recreating on it in the middle of the summer. Wondering why, we looked it up and discovered that the water line had dropped drastically in the last few years and as a result the water had become increasingly salty and the fish were dying. They used to have loons come every year, but this year they had to cancel the annual loon festival. At the bottom of Walker Lake is the largest munitions depot in the United States. I'm not completely sure what this all entails, but it sure looks like something creepy and isolated and strangely powerful. I kept having fantasies that it was really some secret location for containing and torturing large masses of people. I've never been more aware of how many military industrial complex type structures there are, and how likely it is that the conspiracy theorists are all correct. We stopped to eat in the town that supports the munitions depot. We waited an hour and half for our food, watched a man almost choke to death at the next table, and then when the food came it was so awful none of us actually ate, except Elijah who had ordered fried eggs. You really have to work to mess up fried eggs. 

Through most of the night as we were driving in near pitch black there was an amazing electrical storm in the distance. At one point it started to rain huge drops. We had been just then wondering what the small strange square of lights in the distance was. Then two things happened, the highway changed to a larger four lane smooth road and we passed a sign that said "Mercury." Turns out it is a town in the middle of Nevada where the people in charge of nuclear testing used to live, and it has a marked air strip, but the rest of the town is unmarked. Only authorized people are allowed to go there. This pretty much epitomizes our Nevada experience.

Finally we rolled into Vegas at 2am. We got a hotel at the north end of town so that we could drive in and drive out without getting too caught up in Vegas proper. We did drive down the strip on our way out of town, so that we could show the kids all the big shiny casinos. The boys spent most of the time picking out the ancient culture they liked best. They both agreed that we should stay at the Luxor next time.