The thing about Vegas is that even people who love Vegas find Vegas exhausting. When I told people we were going to go to Vegas for a week, they’d invariably remark, “Oh, that’s a long time to be in Vegas!” And they’re right. You really only need a long weekend in Vegas to fully get what it’s about. By the fourth day, you’ll be ready to go home (or at least get out of town), especially if you’re staying on the Strip. So Matt and I very deliberately chose our last full day in Vegas to, well, get the hell out of Vegas and explore the desert, and we were both grateful for the time away from the city.
Any of the main resorts on the Strip should have a car rental agency located within the facility, as it was with the Excalibur. And, if you’ve ever dealt with a car rental agency, you’ll know that they are all inexplicably poorly run, no matter what company. For example, we had reserved our car with Avis some weeks ago, and we showed up to the desk on time, but there were two parties ahead of us and only one person on staff, delaying us to check in a half hour late. And then, when we got to the desk, the staff told us that the car we wanted was not available and we’d have to take something else entirely. As Seinfeld famously observed: “I don’t think you do [know why you have reservations]. If you did, I’d have a car. So you know how to take the reservation; you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation.”
I wouldn’t normally fuss so much over not getting exactly the car we wanted if it weren’t for the fact that all they had left was a half-charged, fully electric Hyundai Ioniq5. Electric cars are totally fine, of course (indeed, they are necessary for the survival of humans on this roasting planet), but at least give us a fully charged car. While the Avis employee assured us that the half-charged vehicle would get us to everywhere we wanted to go, Matt and I had our doubts as we took the car.
Our first stop on our driving tour was at Mr. Mamas, a breakfast and lunch establishment located in Las Vegas’s southwest neighborhood, a recommendation come to us from a YouTube channel. Outwardly, the place is located in a generic strip mall, and inwardly, the ambiance isn’t anything to write home about: a black-and-white checkerboard floor; pale yellow walls adorned with art fit for a dentist’s; tables and chairs that wouldn’t look out of place in a suburban home. The food itself (huevos rancheros and cinnamon roll for me; French toast with a sausage and egg for Matt) was also fine. It served its purpose. It’s one of these places where I’m glad I went but probably won’t ever go back, so make what you will of that.
Our journey continued onwards towards Lake Mead along Interstate 11, deep into the desert. It had been some years since I’d properly been in a desert (I think the last time was probably nearly 30 years ago on a family driving trip to San Diego, which took us through Arizona), so I was really looking forward to this excursion. Our first stop was at the Lake Mead Visitor Center, not to visit the visitor center but rather to enjoy views of Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam. It is a vast, sprawling oasis, deep blue waters consuming the dry, rocky, barren landscape around it. The skies the day of our trip were also similarly expansive and endless, a giant cerulean canvas beautifully and elegantly brushed with heavy clouds bursting with moisture, their brilliant white appearance counterpointed with dark undersides ready to release a torrent. As we viewed the gorgeous landscape, it was immediately obvious how much water the lake had lost since it was created: whole islands once mostly submerged now visible as plain as day, evidenced by perfect lines in the rockface tracing exactly parallel to the water several yards below, demarking dark rocks above from beige rocks below, a visual reminder of the water shortage crisis the area must navigate.
The next leg of the journey took us along Highway 93 towards Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam is one of those places to see where I always hesitate with a shrug and remark despondently, “Well, I guess we should go see Hoover Dam while we’re here.” But then once you see it, you realize what a marvel it is and then feel completely grateful for making the trip.
Hoover Dam really is something else. I recommend you first view the, er, damn thing from the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, an impressive piece of engineering in itself, a bridge that soars 890 feet above the Colorado River, a giant concrete arch emerging from the sharp cliff face, elegantly spanning hundreds of feet to support the 1900 feet of roadway above, suspending tons and tons of steel and concrete in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics. If, like me, you’re terrified of heights, you’ll find the walk across the lookout a tad challenging, especially as giant semis rush by, shaking the entire structure just enough that you hope that really smart people who know how to do math can assure us that the bridge is all working to plan.
Rumbling bridges aside, the views of Hoover Dam from this vantage are simply remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. It’s easy to lose track of your sense of scale how vast the dam is until you notice the microscopic toy trucks below you—parked upon a concrete embankment rising from the river—to help you comprehend the size of it all, 6.6 million tons of concrete rising starkly out of the rocky earth, a behemoth sentinel halting a colossal deluge.
While viewing the dam from the lookout bridge may provide enough to satiate your interest, I still recommend taking a moment to park your car in the Hoover Dam Parking House by the visitor center to take a stroll along the entire span of the dam itself. Not only does this allow you close-up views of the structure, but to the southwest you’ll get to enjoy incredible views of the O’Callaghan-Tillman Bridge you just traversed. While towards the northeast, you’ll be able to view four giant intake towers, rising tall above the river on account of how low the water now flows compared to years past. The design of the whole dam is also clearly of its 1930s era, art deco facades and geometric lines emerging gracefully from the rocky, jagged landscape surrounding it.
As we were worried about our car having enough charge to bring us full circle on our trip, we elected to stop by the nearby Hoover Dam Lodge and Casino where we could charge the car for a bit. While we waited, we went inside where it was a chore to find any bartender who knew what an old fashioned was. By the time we went to the third bar, the bartender, flustered, said, “Oh! I can make that but I don’t have… what are they called?” “Bitters?” I asked. “Yes.” “I’ll just have a vodka tonic instead, then.” Feeling dejected, we quickly finished our drinks and decided to hit the road again only to discover that the slow-charge station added mere miles to our trip.
We elected to forge on ahead regardless along Highway 167 towards Valley of Fire State Park, and this drive was absolutely stunning and beautiful, the road winding through an arid, austere world of brown and beige rocks and coarse sand, olive green bushes dotting the panorama and somehow inexplicably managing to find any ounce of moisture to survive. And in the distance, jagged mountains rising above the distant horizon, painted in shades of blues and greys, while above that a brilliant blue sky replete with giant, fluffy clouds.
We eventually arrived at Valley of Fire State Park, where the landscape seemed to instantly transform to a world of burnt orange rocks and vibrantly red sand. The rock formations were jagged and majestic, rising great and tall from the sandy ground beneath. Our ride took us along Valley of Fire Highway, which meanders through the southern edge of the park, taking us past formations like Elephant Rock, Seven Sisters, and Windstone Arch, a distance of only about 11 miles or about 25 minutes of driving, off which are hiking trails, spurs that take adventurers deeper into the gorgeous landscape.
However, on account of our half-charged vehicle, we became anxious that our rapidly depleting miles weren’t sufficient to take us all the way back to the Luxor. Indeed, when we punched in our final destination, the car’s internal mapping system told us we didn’t have enough charge to return to Vegas. Oh how I would have loved to have hiked any one of these trails we passed, but we felt it was more important to arrive back safely. Fortunately the Ioniq5’s mapping system was smart enough to bring us to the nearest charging station, but how frustrated I was that we had to leave Valley of Fire as soon as we encountered it.
Against our will, we made our way to a charging station right on the northeast edge of town off of Interstate 15, a drab, giant gas station. As we waited for the car to charge—thankfully a faster charging station than the one at Hoover Dam Lodge—we bought some beers from the station’s mini mart and drank them while sitting behind a giant junction box next to a Motel 6. I remarked that I felt like I was behaving like a naughty kid in high school, but what else were we to do?
After about 45 minutes of charging, however, we were surprised to discover that we were now surplus in miles, so we took this chance to visit Sam’s Town, a hotel and casino located off of Highway 582 on Las Vegas’s southeast edge of town, an establishment we wanted to visit on account of the album by the Killers, a musical artist who actually appeals to both Matt and me. As with the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Sam’s Town is also a sprawling behemoth, and by this point in our travels we were well accustomed to these ridiculous spaces, gambling devices overpopulating warehouse-sized rooms, incessant electronic arpeggiations polluting our ears, garish colors spinning and whirling on brightly lit screens, a visual and audio vortex of misfortune and bad decisions. So, of course I ordered an old fashioned (the bartender didn’t even blink when I asked for it here, unlike earlier at Hoover Dam Lodge), allowed a machine to consume five dollars from my wallet, and then it graciously returned eleven after a handful of pulls on the machine’s giant lever.
Sam’s Town itself, however, does celebrate a pretty neat feature, which was fun to explore: a large central courtyard with a gleaming glass roof and at its perimeter a facade of buildings resembling New York walk-up apartments, while at its heart, a winding stone path wandering through abundant trees and fountains all lit by elegant lanterns and lamp posts. All in all, visiting Sam’s Town was a lovely capstone to our driving adventure.
We eventually made our way back to Vegas, leaving our car behind. But we once again found ourselves ill prepared for dinner, something I’ll remark upon more fully in the concluding post. So, we elected to go to Buca di Beppo simply because it was convenient, but remarked that we wished the place would introduce a couples menu, as even one serving of whatever family-sized portion was too much food for two people.
Our evening concluded with one more nighttime walk along the Las Vegas Strip in all its excess and illusions, allowing us a final view of Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue, that intersection we previously marveled on our first night in town, crazy traffic zooming through so many lanes of traffic, the start and end to our confused sense of scale in this ridiculous town all coming full circle. We found a quiet little section of the Strip next to Bliss Dance, a 40-foot sculpture by Marco Cochrane in collaboration with model Deja Solis, a beautiful artwork of a dancing woman constructed of geodesic struts and covered in a stainless steel mesh, lit internally with sparkling LED lights that shifted ever so slowly in various colors. Because of the sculpture’s rather curvy accentuations of an elegant human body, Matt was inspired to remark that the sculpture looked like a lady pooping her pants.
And with that, our final night in Vegas came to a close, and I think we both were feeling pretty ready to head home to poop in our own toilet.
Stray observations:
- While I’ll continue to distrust all car rental companies everywhere for the rest of time, I must say that the Ioniq5 that we drove was a real treat. Its smart technology helped us plan how far we could drive and where to find charging stations, while its steering and braking systems auto-corrected my driving as if it had a mind of its own.
- You’ll find lots of performers on the strip working for cash. One such performer was a young man playing cello on an overpass. It was a rather windy night, and a few stray dollars blew from his case. I quickly snatched them up for him, returned them, and gave him three more.