Las Vegas

Death Valley continue inc. night of 12th May

I've probably been a bit harsh on Death Valley as it is in reality a harsh place. It has a long history and has been occupied for thousands of years by the Shoshone Indians. In more recent history prospectors and miners have made an attempt but nothing much has lasted longer than 10 years. The most money has been made from Borax and talk but the extreme conditions and lack of decent transportation doomed 98% of these small industries. Today limited mining is undertaken.

We were going to stay the night at Furnace Creek the only habitable area at about -100ft which has two hotels, shops, well souvenier and store combined, a couple of restaurants, rangers tourist office very large and the' piece de resistance ' a manicured extreemly well kept lush green 18 hole golf course, obviously water at Furnace Creek but a golf course. As I said we were going to stay at 1 of the two RV campgrounds but the day temperature 0f 103F or 40C falling to a cool 93F in the evening was a promise we declined as with no power hook ups we could not use our air conditioning. We came ot of the Valley and up 2500 ft to an Casino RV park called Longstreet Inn Casino and Rv park just 100yds into Nevada on the 127 going north from Death Valley Junction into the Amargosa Desert.. Dinner that night in the Casino with live band 26$ for salad, large steak and chips etc quite good value for a change. I suppose at every position you enter Nevada you will find a Casino they must as a state make huge monies from the Casinos.

The following morning we went back to death Valley Junction, a virtual ghost town apart from a hotel and Opera House. The opera house is very well known and was saved and created by Marta Becket in or from 1967 onwards a well known artist, dancer, pianist and opera singer who fell in love with the rundown hotel and large club room some years ago and has been renovating and using it ever since. Performances were given many times each yearand she performed in all of them, she gave her last one man show and her last retirement show in February of this year. She with her husband and later her partner did all the restoration and painting of the Opera house and hotel themselves. The Opera house took her four years solid to paint with the murals, she painted the ceiling standing on a ladder paining above her head the whole time. A gifted eccentric woman.

This whole area east of the high sierra mountains appartevrything around, is actually desert. High mountain desert, plateau desert, low Death Valley Desert, one or two better than average towns but no much . The area covered by not much except scrub and nothing else probably is the size of Europe it is huge and desolate punctured by places of total unreality such as the Canyons and of course our next stop.

Chalk and cheese or rags and riches 13thMay to 15th inclusive

You could not get two more different areas if you tried than the swift transition from Death Valley to Las Vegas. Little or nothing to probably the greatest excess of money in pursuit of money the the world can see and it is here right in your face.

We stayed in the KAO site at Circus Circus about half a mile walk to the "Strip" so were very well placed to wander at will.

Las Vegas 1900 population 30, railroad arrived 1905, now defunct, but land sold off formed the start of a small town of single street style. 1931 Nevada legalised gambling and the Hoover Dam 30 miles away was being built. Workers flocked to Las Vegas where there were one or two gambling places to spend their pay packets. An abundance of cheap water and electricity from the dam amounted to a huge fedral subsidy and Vegas was up and running and has not stopped since, faltered maybe but not stopped.

Facts:- It boasts 19 of the worlds largest 25 hotels, 140,000 motel and hotel rooms needing reservation if toy want to stay in town over the weekend. 220,000 visitors every weekend, 37 million tourists each year. Most of the casios on the "Strip" have 2000 or more bedrooms one or two 4000 and two of them have over 5000 rooms

The casinos are all themed, as is the current trend, so you have PARIS created in intricate detail with an eiffel tower standing about six stories high and correct in proportions etc, inside it is all French and not bad. NEW YORK NEW YORK a complete recreation of Manhatten. CEASARS PALACE all Roman with the Forum, Trevi Fountain and so on. THE VENETIAN and PALAZZO as the name suggests recreates six major venetian buildings and Rialto Bridge with canals and gondolars with singing gondoliers at street level and the Grand Canal recreated at first floor level again with Gondolars and gondoliers. As the guide book says "at first floor level it's upstairs for God's sake! And so it goes on and on.

The buildings are on an enormous scale covering acres of land, most have outside or street level entertainment of some sort to attract and entice you in. By street entertainment think fountain displays swooshing up 200ft or complete enactment of Pirates trying to beat the Sirens, quite ludicrous but the full scale pirate ship actually sinks every half hour in the battle and the sirens using music and flames win every time. We watche from about 75 yards away across a six lane highway, the Strip, and the heat from the flames used was amazing it must have shocked those much closer. The buildings and their lighting of of a very high standard of design and construction as each tries to outdo each other as they continually re invent themselves and rebuild in many cases from the ground upwards. All is not a bed of roses as there are some huge blocks of bare land near the Centre of The Strip which were to be the next upward reinvention of the newest Casinos some are partially built some not started but the finacial crisis of recent times has halted all these development.

What of Vegas, its very glitzy but quite refined and certainly the Strip is not downmarket in any way. Ultimately the Casinos are there for one thing only, your money. All despite their individual themes are the same inside, ground floor packed with every gambling machine and table imaginable, probably millions of them, bigger casinos have shopping malls of very very high quality shops again every designer lable you could think of and these in virtually every casino it seems impossible that they can all make money but they are there nonetheless.

A couple of days in and out looking is enough as it begins to look samey after a while.

We went to a show LOVE by Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage Casino a tribute to the Beatles using their music for a dance show mainly in the air on trapezes, high wires and amazing set pieces with amazingly costumed artists apearing via wire from the roof some 100ft or more above us. An amazing experience and very well presented though the amount of equipment and the split second timing beggars belief. This was all dance style though no flying through the air and catching but a lot of flying . A good evening.

We rounded off our stay by going to the Freemont Street area where Las Vegas first started now called Downtown, here are the original Casinos or whats left and a five block section has been roofed over and updated as the area tries to grab back some of the tourists from the Strip.

It was crowded but it is much more what one might have expected to see or it is more like ones old ideas of Las Vegas. Much more out on the street, three major street bandstands with multi piece band playing at the cross intersections of the blocks. Five blocks about one mile long. an ariel wire with people wizing overhead runs for half the distance. Fancy dresse,d weirdly dressed, mostly undressed persons around for you to have your photo taken with and so on. A much more downmarket and basic area but quite a lot of fun with possibly more atmosphere than The Main road running through The Strip.

Pleased to have been yes- go back no. Temperature throughout stay around 90 degrees humidity 4 too hot and dry, it is after all in the middle of the desert.