FOLIO OLIO: LAS VEGAS

Finally returned to our back roads...ah, the back roads, where you can eat breakfast at a place called The Hungry Bear in a tiny hamlet I never even caught the name of. We like it that way.

We drove through the Mojave Desert today on the way to Hoover Dam. The desert is much more rocky than I had anticipated.

We pulled off to pee and there was a tree...the only one for 100 miles.

In front of the tree there was this sign.

Behind the sign was a collection of items left by travelers, some of them pretty neat. It may look like trash, but these items are actually arranged, with some hanging in the tree.

Of course, I couldn't resist installing Tag #86 there...I mean, I was invited!

Then Hoover Dam...what can I say? Coming in from the east there was a 4 mile stop and go traffic jam...took a couple of hours. I was not a happy camper. And when I say stop and go I mean that the traffic STOPPED, then a minute later you crept up a car length, then you STOPPED again. Then when I got to the dam there was only one observation platform with a parking garage that charged money to look at something my tax dollars built...sort of. It was so fucking crowded we blew off the whole tourist thing, therefore I never saw the big part of the dam because the guardrail was too high...damn!

The new bridge is NOT open and all in all I was extremely disappointed with the whole ordeal.

Leaving the dam, there was stop and go traffic backed up for 7 miles on the Las Vegas side heading toward the dam...poor bastards, cause once on the other side the only place to actually go is to turn around and drive over it again.

In Las Vegas we are staying on the outskirts and I haven't even SEEN a casino.

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There are plans afoot to build a huge mosque right next to ground zero. They say that it is to honor the victims. Can you believe the insensitivity of that? Come out of your cave, America, it's dark in there.

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