Dennis was in the mood for another field trip, and I told him one of the places I wanted to hit was my new job site.  Even the idea of going to my new office excited him since he said it involved showing me a "secret" shortcut through the downtown area to get there.  I'm not sure how secret the route really is, but it does involve taking a tunnel underneath the airport runways.

After hitting my office, we went through North Las Vegas, a.k.a. the rough side of town.  Parts of it are blighted and I have heard on the local news about the crime that goes on there, but it looks about a thousand times nicer than 38th Street in Indy, let alone East Chicago.  "Oh, well there are bad areas of town, but they aren't as bad as THAT," Pam and Dennis reassured me.  Northeast of North Las Vegas is Nellis Air Force Base.  You can't seen a lot of it from the road, but we did see the fighter jets flying in formation, presumably doing training exercises.  We pulled off of the road at one point to watch them, and even at a significant distance those are some loud planes.

From Nellis we circled back south through Lake Mead and on to Boulder City.  Yes, they've shown me Boulder City before, but it is a very pleasant place to hang out just because.  We ducked into a surfer-themed restaurant called The Coffee Cup.

The place has a sizeable breakfast menu.  The "Hangover Breakfast" intrigued me on paper.  It intrigued me on my plate as well.  

Let me tell you how it's done!  The layers, from bottom to top, go something like this:

Gravy

Two biscuits, open-faced

Two sausage patties

Two fried eggs, over medium

Cheddar cheese

It was disgustingly good.  

After lunch, we went to Hemenway Park in search of the indigenous bighorn sheep.  In Indiana you see deer crossing signs.  In Wisconsin you see cow crossing signs.  In Nevada you see oodles of bighorn sheep crossing signs.  They wander down from the mountains and foolishly try to cross the highways, or so I'm told.  I'd never actually seen any until today.  I wouldn't have recognized them if I had seen them anyway--they look like big goats rather than sheep.

There was a conservation officer on duty, presumably to keep us from doing anything stupid like taunting the sheep.  Apparently, they can get pretty feisty.  (The sheep that is, not the conservation officers.)  Ergo, the photos above were taken at a good distance.  If you zoom out, you get a fuller picture of the area overall.  Lake Mead is in the background to the left, and the outskirts of Boulder City are to the right.  

Boulder City boasts some spectacular views of both Lake Mead and the mountains, and I'm told the property values reflect it.  New lots with a view are valued in the millions, and small bungalows without a view from the 1930s (when the dam was being built) start in the high six figures.  The bighorn sheep and hangover breakfasts are but an added local bonus.  

  

Hmmph, Pahrump!

It isn't the excesses of Vegas that surprise me these days; it's the restrictions that shock.  I knew that soliciting sex was illegal in Vegas, but I thought for sure that prostitution itself was legal.  Dennis corrected me today and told me that prostitution is illegal in all of Clark County.  Where does one go to find legal, paid companionship in this state?  One goes to Pahrump.

I like the name "Pahrump."  It sounds like the sort of sound you'd make when you're feeling really miffed.  Pahrump lies about 50 miles west of downtown Las Vegas.  It has a couple wineries and casinos, a golf course, and a bunch of small restaurants.  It's also home to a couple bordellos.

The bordellos are about 7 miles outside of the main drag in Pahrump, and I guess they're strategically situated to being as close as they legally can be to Las Vegas.  The first one we came across is called The Chicken Ranch.

A block down the street is Sheri's Ranch.

They both have bars attached to them, but you have to be buzzed in to get into the building at all.  Much to my disappointment, Dennis was WAY to antsy to go in to either one of them for some lunch.  "It's just too weird," he protested.  "I'd feel uncomfortable....How on earth would you guys NOT feel uncomfortable?"  Pam rolled her eyes.  "Dennis, it's just a bunch of women.  Why would we be uncomfortable?"  So while I looked forward to a hot tuna lunch at The Chicken Ranch, Dennis remained obstinate.  No way were we getting him to set foot in either establishment.  Pahrump!

A History Lesson

Pam informed me yesterday that it was time that I "embraced" Las Vegas, by which I think she meant that I needed to work on my tan.  Dennis took this suggestion in a completely different light and declared, "That's right!  You need to watch "Casino" and start learning about the mob!"  So now I've watched the movie, and Dennis took Pam and me for a drive through Lefty Rosenthal's old neighborhood.  Dennis also provided me with a small stack of books to educate me on the city's patriarchs.  I'm on it!

The Wild Comes Indoors

I've mentioned before how amazingly still the desert is, but we all know that something must be crawling around out there.  I've not seen a whole lot of fauna in the wild, but today the wild came in to us.  It's called a camel spider.  It's large, and it's absolutely disgusting.

Gross, gross, gross.  Scorpions are also common out here, though thankfully I've yet to see one.  Employees warn you when you walk around the greenhouses to pay attention to where you put your hands and feet as you look through the plants.  It's not just the goblins that will get you if you don't watch out.  

Primmest of the Primm

Pam asked me what I wanted to do today, and on a whim I said I wanted to go to California.  Dennis suggested we dip our toes into California territory via Primm, so off we went.

Primm, like so many small towns in Nevada, is inexplicably settled in the middle of nowhere.  It's a tourist trap 30 minutes outside of Vegas consisting of three casinos and an outlet mall.  It also boasts exactly one apartment complex, but outside of that there is no residential housing so practically everyone who works in Primm must commute from Vegas.

For me, the big tourist draw was the fact that Primm is home to the Bonnie and Clyde death car located at Whiskey Pete's.  Like The Excalibur on the strip, Whiskey Pete's looks like an oversized White Castle.  Classy.

The death care makes it totally worth it though.  Plunk down in the middle of the casino floor is a nice showplace for the car.  I didn't count, but supposedly 167 bullet holes riddle the thing.

The small exhibit also includes the shirt Clyde was wearing when he was shot in Louisiana in 1934.  The tag sewn into the shirt reads, "Wasson's Towneshirt, Indianapolis."  Good ol' Wasson's!

Close inspection of the shirt did reveal a few blood stains, but obviously the shirt had been cleaned at one point.  The long cuts across the chest and the sleeves were made by the undertaker.  The shirt also revealed that Clyde was a small guy--the shirt almost looked too small for me.  The sign said that Clyde was 130 lbs. and Bonnie was only 4'11" -- a tiny but tyrannizing couple.  

The small exhibit at Whiskey Pete's also included a bullet-proof 1931 Lincoln used by Al Capone.   The glass is bullet-proof and the panels of the car are lined in lead.  I wish I knew how much the thing weighed and what kind of miserable gas mileage it must have gotten.  While sporting quite a few bullet holes itself, it was indeed in much better shape than the Bonnie and Clyde death car.  Better design through engineering, better engineering by design.

Part of the parking lot at the outlet mall in Primm spills into California, so I literally went 40 feet into California then back out again.  What lies 40 feet within California territory?  A small building that sells lotto tickets.  You have to go to California for lotto tickets because it's illegal in Nevada.  Lewis Carroll couldn't write these jokes...or these laws.

A Friday Night

Pam felt like heading out last night, though it wasn't immediately clear why.  As soon as we left the house she said she wasn't feeling well.  On we went, though, toward a piano bar on the near northeast side of town.  Actually getting there didn't make Pam feel any better.  She didn't like her drink (bartender was too stingy with the white zin) and didn't like our seats (situated directly around the piano).  "I can't talk with the piano player being so close to us," Pam complained.  "What would you like to talk about if only you could?" I asked her.  "The quickest way to go home.  I hate this music," she added further.  And it's true.  As I've often complained, I don't know what compels reasonably competent singers to deluge the audience with nothing but pop covers songs from the past thirty years.  They can do better than that.  Something had to be done.  Sitting next to the piano player as I was, I asked for Cole Porter's "Night and Day."  He and the singer kindly obliged with a very nice Porter medley.  "Billie Holliday's 'Don't Explain,'" I asked for next.  They wouldn't touch it but did offer me "God Bless the Child."  Pammy started to perk up.

"'It's Almost Like Being in Love,'" I wanted after that.  The duo told me they would sing me every top hit of 1947, or almost every hit.  It was a valiant effort at comprehensiveness for sure.  Pammy and I were pleased.

In fact, Pammy was so pleased that she didn't want to go home after we practically closed the bar  down.  "Let's got to The Orleans for some blues!" Pammy insisted.  The blues had already gone to bed by that point.  "Let's find Rico!"  Rico wasn't performing last night.  "Let's take a ride down the strip!"  No, no, no.  "It's Friday night, Pam.  We'll be sitting on the strip for an hour and I'll probably still miss the fountain at The Bellagio.  Let's not.  We said never again after the last time," I reminded her.  This was all to no avail.  We put the top down on the convertible and prepared to cruise down the six mile strip from The Stratosphere to the Luxor.  

We sat, and we sat, and we sat.  Traffic, inexplicably, doesn't move on the strip.  In spite of the crush of the crowd and the heat of the cars, it IS always a good time just loitering on the strip.  I even caught more of The Bellagio's fountain show then I normally do.  Then my view got blocked by a Chippendale's moving advertisement.  For a solid 15 minutes I stared at this:

The ads are basically huge billboards positioned on the back of a truck and driven back and forth along the strip all day.  We got boxed in by some similar adds for prostitutes ("These girls want to get to know you NOW!" the truck informed us), but I was too lazy to get my camera back out of my bag at that point.  There is always something to while on the strip. Just don't get too picky about what you're likely to see, ok?

Wash. Rinse. Repeat

Last night we went to Dennis' favorite of the dive bars.  Monday night seems to be open mic night everywhere in Vegas.  Dennis warned me that it would be an older crowd, but I found it to be a lively one nonetheless.  I forgot to bring my camera along, so I can't show you what you missed.  I can, however, tell you that the dance floor looked like a cross between an Arthur Murray student exhibition and a Fosamax commercial, which is to say that there were a lot of elderly people swing dancing, even to Weber's "Music of the Night."  *sigh*  I've heard the same guy sing the same song a half a dozen times at this point.  My question is this: if all of the performers out here are soooo talented, then why do they only sing the same three songs over and over again?

Anyway, I met a handful of new performers.  Vegas is a very huggy-kissy sort of place.  I was just about to say hello to one of the singers when she ended up swooping in for a kiss on the cheek.  She caught me mid-word, and I think I ended up licking her.  Oops.

The best in show for the evening turned out to be our waitress.  She got up at one point to do some violent and sustained hip gyrations to the song "Wipe Out."  It was impressive.  I commented to one of our table mates my admiration, and my neighbor blithely informed me, "She was a pole dancer before this job."  Forget the karaoke singers--get that girl a pole!  I know true talent when I see it!

One of Vegas's most talented saxophonists (so I'm told since I've never heard the guy play) came over to me and asked me if I was a scientist.  Apparently I was sporting a keen and intelligent look for the evening.  "Unemployed philosopher," I corrected him.  Instant approval.  It's funny, but this may be one of the few places where the moniker wins you a hint of street credibility.

Pam told me not to tell anyone this story, which means that I must tell you.

No one is sure what got into her last night, but after dinner Pam decided that the moment was right to take some exercise.  "I'll join you for a walk, if you like," I told her.  No, walking is too much work.  Dennis had just bought himself a new bicycle a few days ago, so now there were enough bikes for everyone in the house.  Spin around the block it was.

Pam warned Dennis and me that she hadn't been on a bike in 40 years, and true to her word, her form was a bit rusty.  It's difficult to describe just how she managed to crash.  The circumstances were extraordinary--the bike was stationary, kickstand out, and still in the garage.  Yes, it's true, Pam didn't even make it out of the garage without injury.  Down she went, yelling at Dennis and me the whole time.  While incapacitated on the ground like a beached seal (that is, a beached seal with a bicycle on top of it), she screamed, "Why didn't you guys help?!  You just stood there as I fell!"  And the accusation was completely true; Dennis and I did nothing.  "It just seemed inconceivable that you'd keep falling.  I thought any second you'd catch yourself."  So went my excuse.

Today Pam has a bruise on her left leg but is otherwise recovering nicely.

For no good reason other than the weather was unseasonably mild after our .08" of rain yesterday, Pam and I decided to hit some of the nearby greenhouses.  Cactus Joe's was pretty awesome.  Tons of cacti and yard art for sale.  I wish I'd had my real camera with me to take some better pictures.  Marta, you'd love the place!

They also had oodles of fossils, glass, rock and mineral pieces, and some nice looking jewelry from a handful of local artists.  I don't normally wear a lot of jewelry, but one little bauble made by a gal named Cece did speak to me.  It's a pendant made from a dip pen nib.  

Crave Attack

You know how in horror movies you see vampires being drawn out into the street owing to their lust for blood?  Their story is my own...only I'm not in it for blood...I'm in it for the fried twinkies!

The yellow cake dissolves flawlessly into the breading, and the cream turns into a delightfully gooey center of unidentifiable mush.  The powdered sugar is a bit excessive.  I got it all over the bar top and consequently made it appear as if I'd spilled some sort of illicit substance all over the place.

Want a fried twinkie for yourself?  It requires a trip to Fremont Street.  Dennis pooped out on us, so Pam started flashing me these beseeching eyes at me that asked, "Will you drive?"  (She herself was suffering under the weight of a White Castle slider craving.  I'm not sure if there are any other places to get those nasty burgers in Vegas outside of the Mermaids casino.)  I-15 on a Friday night?!  I felt more than equal to the task!  Dennis gave me some pointers on how to get my parking stub validated, which involved making a $1 bet on a blackjack machine last long enough for me to flag down a casino worker to punch my ticket.  (Parking is "free" for active gamblers.  Woot!  I'm active!)  I felt my casino savoir faire skyrocketing.  

I was expecting an even freakier crowd on a Friday night, but Fremont Street proved to be fairly tame.  The crowd was smaller than when we went on Thursday, and I'm unsure if this was due to the fact that it wasn't a holiday weekend this time or if the body count was down owing to the wildfire that closed I-15 coming into to Vegas from Los Angeles.  There were a handful of Elvis impersonators and a half dozen naked women walking around in pasties and heels, but other than that the sideshows were tame.  The main band last night was a country cover band, which didn't appeal to either Pammy or me.  We took our fried goods into the street in search of other entertainment.  For a while I tried snapping pictures of people's bottoms who earned Pammy's derision, but it's tough to balance a camera and a fried twinkie at the same time.

While there are plenty of entertainers who set up their act on Fremont Street, there are also scores of entertaining civilians who are just caught up in their own joie de vivre.  

Pam got a wee bit restless though and decided it was time to move on.  "Let's go to The Orleans for some blues music," Pam insisted.  "Where is it?" I asked.  "I don't remember," Pam admitted.  Thank goodness for GPS.

The Orleans, based on size and layout, looks like the typical off-the-strip casino.  The cars you see to the right of the picture made up three lanes of an extremely backed up valet area.  

There was a lounge area directly in front of the stage, but Pam and I could only find seating around the bar.  There was a decent view of the stage and a fascinating look into the world of Vegas novelty drinks, including $24 margaritas served in a giant plastic leg.  

The music was enjoyable enough, though one of my gripes persists--every artist is a cover artist. There's not a lot of original music to be had.  As at any casino, gambling consoles are built directly into the bar.  As Pammy sat and sipped, I decided to get $5 worth of blackjack in.  The machines are interesting.  If you click around enough it will tell you about the gaming algorithm.  (The dealer holds on anything over 17, holds after six cards no matter what, that it's using a 52 card deck, etc.)  However, it tells you nothing about the card dealing algorithm.  What a load of crock!  For every one blackjack I was dealt right out of the gate, the dealer managed about seven.  I lost holding a 20 way too often.  The thievery is blatant and shocking.  It did lead me to wonder about different card dealing algorithms for different parts of the casino.  They say the loosest slots and games are near the high traffic areas because the owners want patrons to see people winning and thus entice them to try their hand.  I certainly wasn't at a loose machine, but $5 did give me a surprisingly long amount of play time considering I'm a rapid fire player.  I began to wonder if I was being miserably drawn on (as opposed to being mercifully busted in quick time and forced to feed the machine more money) in order to encourage me to drink more at the bar.  Whatever the casino's nefarious plans for me, they got no further than my $5.  I've had my fill of gambling for the decade now.  I'll try again in 2025.

Another thing I love about Vegas is the valley at night.  Coming home, the lights of Anthem (another Vegas suburb) stretch up the hills and to the base of the mountains.  It's a beautiful sight and impossible to photograph properly with my little camera.  The building to the left is South Point Casino.  

Lest their be any doubts in your mind, unemployment is hard.  All of my skills are put on hold while I'm left to float around with an idiot smile on my face.  Oh the indignity!  Is this not the face of suffering and strife?   (Pam thought it was very important to include the alligator in the image.)

I've gotten multiple requests to reveal the state of my legs.  As you can plainly see, I've not managed to score a tan at all after three weeks in the sun.  That's the power of SPF 10,000!

Toes up!

Life on the green and in the rough

Another slow news day, so today I'd like to talk about AstroTurf.  While there are a few places (a couple parks, golf courses and luxury communities) that boast real grass, AstroTurf is the way to go out here.  Perpetually green and no water required, it's a low maintenance marvel.

Supposedly, it's also hideously expensive, which explains why front yards are diminutive.

As you can see, it does collect real bits of debris.  Pam says it can be vacuumed.  I have yet to see anyone vacuuming his yard.  Rest assured, dear reader, my camera will be ready if someone does whip out a Kirby near the curb.  

The backyard is also diminutive.  You can lay out on the grass if you can arrange yourself comfortably within 300 square feet.  It's a good thing the pool takes up most of the yard.

As a matter of etiquette to you out-of-towners, one isn't supposed to call it AstroTurf.  "Artificial turf" has a less declasse sound to it, so I'm told.  Ha!

Linguistic moment!  The term AstroTurf may have a declasse ring to it, but consider how amazing it is when a company has such market dominance that its brand name becomes synonymous with the generic product.  Other examples include:  "I need to make a Xerox of that form," or "Do you have a Kleenex?"

Other randomness I just thought of!  The surface surrounding the pool is called cool rock...or something like that.  It doesn't matter how hot it is outside; one can always walk on the stuff barefoot.  Not so for the rest of the paving stone.  Pam was cleaning up the humming bird feeders and flicked some invader ants onto the paving stones.  They immediately cooked on the paving stones resulting in little bits of burnt bug bits.  Intense.

Bootlicker....err, Bootlegger

Monday night is open mic night at Bootlegger, a famed restaurant/bar on the boulevard, just south of the strip.  It felt a lot like the Italian America Club, which is to say that I have my doubts as to the Snow White cleanliness of the startup cash for the place.  Several things struck me as odd about the joint,  For one thing, besides the emcee, all of the staff members were male and none of them wore glasses.  (Okay, the musical director wore sunglasses....)

The picture below is dark, but understand that the place itself is dark.

The food was excellent.  The entertainment was hit or miss, but I suppose that's the risk you take when you have an open mic.  The weekly emcee, Kelly Clinton, didn't just introduce acts--she's an engaging performer in her own right.

The acts are anything that the performers want them to be.  There was a great a cappella group, a solo guitarist, a recent high school grad with dreams of Broadway stardom, some improv jazz singers, a quartet that somehow escaped The Lawrence Welk Show, an aging thespian puffing out Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes, a country singer (accompanied by Mark Miers from Unkle Kracker), and a truly embarrassing act by a guy whom I swear was the love child of Truman Capote and Carmen Miranda.  So Kelly informed us, the cozy table stage right was populated by entertainment big wigs, whom I suppose must scope out the clubs constantly for new talent.  While there are lot of decent singers, I've been consistently struck by how good the musicians are who provide back-up music for the performers.  Singers walk up there and tell them what they want the three or four piece band to do, and these guys deliver.  It's impressive.  I think the musical director last night was formerly a star on "Starsky and Hutch."  As I've said before, everyone seems to skirt the outer regions of fame without actually being famous.  

There's special love at our table for Lisa Gay (former back-up singer for The Fifth Dimension).  I've seen her perform a handful of times already, and she always joins us at our table for dinner.  She's an extremely personable lady with a great lounge/jazz sound.  

We stayed until after midnight, which means that Pam and I missed the latest installment of "The Bachelorette."  What a terrible show.  What a must see on On Demand tonight!

Down and Dirty

Never one to waste an educational opportunity, I sat out in the garage today with Dennis and learned how to change brake pads on his truck.  I don't think he believed me, but I really enjoyed it.  He had some really clever ways of loosening bolts that I'll store away in my memory bank for future reference.  I'm also glad that I got to loosen the lug nuts to see just how hard it would be to change a flat tire.  (With the right tools, it wasn't so bad.  Now trying to do it with the cheap tools that came with my truck would probably be a different story.  I don't rate my ability to get the spare tire off of the bottom the truck very high either should the need arise, but I'm taking baby steps with this whole DIY car repair.)  An empowering afternoon!

Good Show!

Dennis scored Pammy and me some free tickets to Mariah Carey's show for Sunday evening.  Neither Pammy nor I are huge fans, but free entertainment is free entertainment.  The theme of the show was a performance of her eighteen #1 hits, sung chronologically.  That was good news for me since I don't remember liking any of her songs since 1997 and don't think she's had more than a handful of hits in the past fifteen years.

Since Pam has confessed her fear of driving outside of her suburban southwest Vegas surroundings, it has fallen to me do the metro driving when Dennis isn't around.  (He was working the show this evening and couldn't take us.)  For the record, I'd like to say that I did a fabulous job navigating I-15 and the backroads of the strip and getting us where we needed to park.  No problemo.

The Colosseum at Caesar's Palace isn't a bad little venue.  Not too big, but not too small.  As with the rest of Vegas, the people watching is top notch.  There were the extremely tall, middle-aged farm boys in striped polo shirts and red heels.  Dennis tells me they made out in the third row the whole night.  There was the Chinese tour group with lanterns on their shirts....that is, lanterns with hundreds of actual bulbs.  Those dudes were bright, literally.  There were lots of ladies in party dresses.  Since some of them were so silly looking, I might dare to call them prom dresses.  I powdered my nose for Ms. Mariah, but that was about as far as I went.

Mariah started 20 minutes late, but when the show was ready to start, it started in a hurry.  Lights went down and the curtain went up in a quick 20 seconds.  The girls behind me immediately began to scream and swoon.  "Oh my God, I love her....I've been waiting for this my whole life....I'm crying you guys!  I can't stop crying!"  And on and on it went...for the whole night...much to Pammy's irritation.  It didn't bother me so much.  I must have been in one of my rare moods in which I tolerate tween behavior.

Dennis says that of all the shows he has worked, the Mariah Carey crowd is the rowdiest.  Tons of screaming and crying fans (of both sexes) and a lot of coming and going of the crowd did make for a rambunctious audience.  There was a serious security breach when a Jesus freak ran up on stage and asked Mariah to read a prayer.  It took security a surprisingly long amount of time to rescue her, but to her credit she did well with the guy.  She read the prayer and thanked him for it, all the while keeping a sharp lookout for when someone was going to appear to help her.  Like I said, she had a while to wait. 

Pam insists that Mariah was off-key for much of the night, but I thought she sang really well.  I'd forgotten just how many of her songs I like, and as a performer she didn't fail to amuse.  For one thing, she can't really walk.  Like a Barbie doll with feet too small to support her body, Mariah needed a handler for most of the show whenever she walked more than twenty feet.  She was wheeled in for the bulk of her songs and carried out after others.  A combination of some tight dresses and  high heels meant that the rest of the time she had to waddle about slowly on her own.  We all held our breath waiting for her to fall.

The greatest shock of the evening occurred at the very end when I looked at the screaming and swooning tweens behind Pam and me.  Turns out they weren't overheated teenagers; they were incredibly immature adult women.  Thank goodness I was deceived for the whole show.  Had I known how old they were I would have been ticked over the distracting ruckus they were kicking up.

At any rate, for an evening that started out with me not knowing if I even really wanted to go or not, I ended up being happy that I did.  Good show!
 

Some coin toss

In January 1942, Carole Lombard, wife of Clark Gable and a native of Fort Wayne, attended a war bond rally in Indiana.  She was originally scheduled to take the train back to L.A. from Indiana, but she was in a hurry to get home.  Her mother and Clark Gable's press agent, who were also traveling with her, weren't too keen on flying to get back to California, but Lombard was insistent.  They tossed a coin to decide if they would return by train or by plane.  Lombard won the coin toss.  After refueling in Las Vegas, the plane crashed a few miles later into Mount Potosi.  There were no survivors.

The search for the wreckage was based out of Good Springs, Nevada, about twenty minutes outside of Las Vegas.  Well after the search was over, Gable used to return to Good Springs to drink his pain away at the Pioneer Saloon.  That's where I went today.

The bar was built in 1913, and apart from the general store next to it, there isn't much else in Good Springs.  Back in its day, the bar was famed for its shootouts, and bullet holes still riddle the walls.  By the end of the 1940s, the bar top added Gable's cigarette burns to its dilapidated image.  Today the bar is a mixture of cowboy watering hole and leather biker bar.  Their specialty includes sandwiches topped with Ghost Sauce.  (The place is, of course, haunted by the many shooting victims through time.)  Ghost Sauce is some mighty tasty stuff and well worth the drive out of Las Vegas.

Smooth Operator

Today was a peaceful, do-nothing day filled with grocery shopping and sitting around the pool watching the sun set.  Because it was a slow news day, I figured I'd take this opportunity to tell you about my bed.

My bed is too tall for me.  I'd like to say I fell out of it the other night, but it's more accurate to say that I fell trying to get into it.  After returning from the bathroom late one night, it seems my jump didn't have enough spring in it to get me over the top.  Like Icarus, back down to earth I fell.  Thank goodness no one was around to witness my smooth moves.  But wait!  I can give you a silent movie visual so you can appreciate what kind of physical exertion I'm put through just to get into bed.  Really pushing my body to the limits, let me tell you! Watch.

Nelson?! Where's Nelson?

Another day of gorgeous weather.  Ninety degrees feels just right out here.  Being such a beautiful day, Pam, Dennis and I jumped in the car and drove to Nelson.  Nelson, apparently unknown even to most Vegas locals, is an old mining town once known for its huge gold and silver deposits as well as its concentration of rowdy Civil War deserters.  It's roughly 20 miles southeast(?) of Vegas, and it's a wonderful drive through the desert and into the mountains to get there.  The outskirts of the town are made up of trailer homes.  They look kept up, though we never actually saw any people.  Leave that behind and head further into the mountains.  That's where the fun begins.

After driving through a mountain pass, Nelson comes into view, looking very much like I imagine it did in 1861 when it was established.  

Okay, the metal roofs probably weren't around at the time,  And of course, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Nelson is filled with a bizarre collection of junk.

Apart from a handful of tourists, I'd venture to guess that the population of this part of Nelson was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5.  Two of those five work at a small shop, which is also filled with junk.  It was hard to tell what was for sale and what was out for decoration.  

Notice that the building below is called The Willard.  Every city needs a Willard, even the ghost towns.

After Nelson, we drove to Boulder City, home of the Hoover Dam.  There's a little bit of everything in Boulder City.  Parts of the place look like they date back to when cheap housing was put up quickly to house the Dam workers back in the 30s.  The main drag has been spruced up with lots of fun antique places and little restaurants.

There was also an Area 51 themed store, called Area 52, catering to all of your alien and anal probe needs.

I snapped a quick picture of my favorite of the antique stores.  Of the many I've seen since heading west, this one reminded me the most of Midland in Indy.  Certainly not as large, but they had some awesome furniture for cheap.  

My absolute favorite piece that I saw is the toreador pictured below.  He is missing his right arm, but if you looked at him at just the right angle, he looked like he's inconveniently adjusting his pants from behind.

Poor guy.  Will he never be comfortable in his pants?!