Vegas Baby!

Two nights turned in to three as Isi was feeling tired and we both enjoyed the break to do admin and just be off the bikes for a bit. Far too quickly, the third morning arrived and we loaded the bikes for departure but…. Our departure was to be delayed for a few hours as I reached for the tool kit…

The screen was hanging off Isi’s bike and, on closer inspection, mine was about to give way too. One of the mods we had fitted was a screen riser - a 3D printed kit that allowed for the stock screen to be raised around 6 inches, to provide more wind protection. However, I found that raising the screen directed the wind flow to the top of my helmet and increased the buffeting from the sides. The screen was not made for touring as many others had found out. We didn’t want to fit massive plastic ‘windows’ to the front of the bike and we both just had the screen on the lowest setting. The 3D printed mod had effectively become redundant but we had not removed it.

However, the plastic around the groove to allow the sliding up and down, was shredding, making the groove bigger. The retaining bolts were able to fit through the groove and so the screen was falling off. Isi’s had come away on one side and mine did the same with very little encouragement. Simple solution, back to stock by removing the sliders - a 15 minute job AFTER removing some off the luggage and emptying the pannier to reach the tool kit (at the bottom to keep the weight down low).

Finally we set off for Las Vegas and the search for maps.

I’m sure I have mentioned it before and you will have seen from the YouTube videos (you haven’t? Why not?! Link on the Homepage - go as soon as you have finished reading this blog) that Isi incorporates a map of our journey and, for this, we need maps! Getting a hold of maps ranges from young gas station attendants asking what they are, to “use a GPS” or pick one up from a American Automobile Association branch, as they give them free to members and were reported to give away free maps (or charge) to non-members. We were not members and happy to pay for the maps. Having been given some, we knew their quality and were exactly what we needed.

We had programmed the bikes to take us in to the AAA branch, west of Las Vegas and, after another fabulous, sunny, warm ride across the desert, we could see Vegas as we topped the last pass. As many will know, Las Vegas is famous for the “strip”. Huge, lavish hotels, casinos and themed parks, all designed to part you with your money in oxygen-fed, 24hr gambling establishments, designed to keep you awake and unaware of what the time of day is - they want you feeding slot machines or whatever gambling poison you may have.

Las Vegas was founded in 1905 as a stopover point on the newly built railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and fresh water was piped to the settlement. However, it was not until 1930, when the Hoover Dam was being built, that the Mafia started building small hotels, theatres and casinos to meet the desires of the predominately young, male workers who needed to let off steam after working at the dam. Electricity from the completed dam then enabled the building of bigger and flashier establishments, to attract the many customers. Fame of the liberal gambling views attracted some outsiders to visit just for the gambling but, it was not until Howard Hughes reduced the mafia mob influence from 1966, that Las Vegas started to become a family destination and is now referred to as a Mega-resort.

Seeing Las Vegas reaching skyward from the surrounding desert, I couldn’t help but think of the two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, that God had destroyed for their sinful practices yet, from the ashes, they devolved further into debauchery and violence. Obviously this is now not the case but the opulence and arrogance of man is still very apparent and, maybe, God is still seeking revenge as Las Vegas continues to sink in to the desert (through the acts of Man, as subsidence is blamed on aggressive underground water extraction) with many neighbourhoods being relocated from the worst effected areas.

And so it was that we dropped from the surrounding mountains and in to the suburbs of Las Vegas, on the hunt for maps. Whilst I remained with the bikes, Isi went in to the AAA store and returned nearly in tears of frustration and empty handed. The store had plenty of maps but had been told by their manager, not to give or sell them to non-members. This was compounded by the sheer arrogance of the manager that appeared to relish in the anguish and pleas. Isi tried standing outside the office and asking those that were entering if they were members and, if so, could we buy some maps that they could get for free. Unfortunately, not one member was found and so it was my turn…

The staff seemed sympathetic to our needs and even felt embarrassed to maintain the strict line the smug manager had. When the manager again appeared, he was the only one allowed to deal with me and I asked what the cheapest membership would be, so I was invited to take a seat. I refused the seat saying I didn’t intend to stay long and as the manager started a sales pitch with all the benefits and membership duration (we didn’t need a year or the discount that would follow in year two if we didn’t claim), I asked him to cut to the chase and just tell me how much I would need to pay to qualify for the free maps. With a smugness I have never seen before (I may have but at the moment, this was the worst secondhand car salesman I had ever met), he said it would be $90 dollars and I wouldn’t qualify for the monthly payments as I was not a resident. To this, I just turned and left, feeling the smug look of victory boring a hole between my shoulder blades. I had a feeling this was another (minority) American who still thrives on the result of the war of independence in 1776.

And so we left for the Strip, not feeling great about the AAA and our inability to source maps we so needed. After getting confused with a turn or two, we fell in to the Strip and the huge venues all competing to be the biggest and the best. Throngs of people walked the pavements in search of the next beer or the next slot. Scantily clad ladies were handing out flyers to some event that night, or encouraging punters to venture in to their doors. Open-sided vehicles with benches along either side and a table in the middle, akin to a picnic bench, would be powered by the chain and pedals at each seat. A scantily clad lady would be filling glasses with beer as the (predominately male) customers drank and pedalled to their next destination. We laughed at Superman fighting against the flow of traffic, carrying his lunch box, to whatever venue he would appear at, asking ourselves, why didn’t he fly? Other cartoon characters would be giving ‘high-five’s to adults and children and we laughed again as many punters would leave them hanging.

F1 stands and Superman looking for a seat to eat lunch

But we were not laughing for long…. The traffic flowed to a standstill and crept inch by inch down the strip, worsened by the lane closures as Las Vegas prepared for the Formula 1 race in a few weeks time. Little Venice was empty of water, as stands were erected along the length of the straight. The temperatures rose as the bikes fans kicked in to cover us in a flow of hot air from the engine, the relentless sun bore down upon us, the tarmac burnt our feet and surrounding cars engines and exhausts added heat and oppression to the stillness of the air. The bike thermometer registered 38C and whilst we felt it were true, it would have been effected by the direct sunlight and the bikes lack of movement. Having seen most of the Strip and wishing to extricate ourselves from the jaws of hell, we turned off and headed for shelter to give the bikes a chance to recover and the satnavs to restart after their warnings and resulting failure due to heat exhaustion.

A new destination input and it was time to head for the Hoover Dam. It may have been a boring main road, but the relief of air flowing through our jackets was enough to make us smile and whoop for joy. We had ‘done’ the Strip and neither of us were remotely interested to return!

As we neared the Hoover Dam, we saw a sign for the Lake Mead visitor centre and, with both in need of a break, we pulled in and parked up in the far corner, in the shade of some taller trees. Isi went off in search of the toilet as I stayed with the bikes and just ‘chilled’. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Ranger approach and, as is my tendency with authority, I thought “what have I done wrong now?”. But no, just as Isi would have scolded me with, Vic was a really, really nice man and absolutely loved the area he worked and lived in. He was a bike rider and told me of many trails and places to wild camp and feeling sorry he had other commitments or he would have happily shown us around.

Isi returned close to tears (happy this time) and with a grin from ear to ear. She had taken a punt and asked the lady on reception if they had any maps of Nevada and Arizona. When she was greeted with “yes, how many do you want?” Isi almost collapsed in tears and blurted how extraordinarily grateful she was. It didn’t matter that they were also free, it was the fact they had some and were happy to provide. The lady and her colleague laughed and empathised with the pain we had had in gaining these maps.

After leaving Vic and armed with maps, we left to the Black Canyon and the Hoover Dam, on the border of Nevada and Arizona. Nice twisty road off the main highway and we reached a security checkpoint. The Hoover Dam is considered one of the primary infrastructure locations and security is taken seriously. As with other security checkpoints, they were totally relaxed with a couple on bikes, packed for a long trip. A few questions and a bit of banter and we found ourselves riding over the dam and finding a suitable place to park the bikes. It was getting late in the day and the sun was dropping in to our eyes as we looked in awe at the size of the dam, seemingly wedged in to a tiny crack between two steep walls. The water level was very low, adding to the majesty of it. We could not see but only imagine just how deep it was on the other side.

The Hoover Dam is yet another dam on the ever-mighty Colorado River, constructed to control flooding, provide water for irrigation and hydro-electric power. The Hoover Dam was named after President Herbert Hoover, then later renamed Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration, but later reverted to its current name. The dam took 5 years to build, competed 2 years earlier than scheduled and at the cost of over 100 lives. The nearby Boulder City was built to house the workers and to give them less reason to visit Las Vegas. On an inspection visit by the administration, one worker was found to be extremely drunk, made worse by being the time of prohibition. Boulder City was a dry town and the only place for drink was at the illegal gambling dens in Las Vegas. The administration took this so seriously, they banned the workforce from visiting Las Vegas, manning blockades etc., but still the dedicated gamblers and drinkers found a way through. This was a time when Las Vegas was at its more lawlessness, feeding off the needs of the young men imprisoned within Boulder City.

When the Hoover Dam was complete and the Colorado river diversion was undone, Lake Mead started to form. At its highest levels, it is 112 miles long, 532 feet deep at its deepest point and has a surface area of 247 square miles. It is the largest capacity reservoir in the US. However, the lake has remained below capacity since 1983 and, as of May 2022, the reservoir was at 26% capacity and still dropping. This was as a result of numerous drought conditions but primarily due to over extraction of water before reaching the lake. The dam allows more water to leave than it receives upstream. Attempts have been made to reduce the dam output but this would be at a cost of the communities and businesses that use the water downstream. The dam and the resulting lake flooded huge swathes of indigenous tribes land, leading to their displacement from homes and lifestyles living with the environment. Further, the lands that the water and electricity easily reached, enabled settlements by non-indigenous Americans, with complete disregard for the indigenous people.

As a side note, dams were built on nearly all river systems across the US, to provide electricity and water for the new settlers but with no consideration for the environmental impact to the ecological balance of the river systems above and below. The main change was the prevention of salmon to reach traditional spawning grounds. Salmon not only provide food for numerous animals, including man, but they carry rich marine mineral content and by dying in the spawning grounds or being eaten by wildlife, their carcasses release these nutrients in to the soil. Dams are now being removed and river systems are returning to their pre-dam conditions but not without serious amounts of lobbying from primarily indigenous peoples. As leases on dams expire, power companies way up the cost of upgrading and providing fish ladders etc, against that of removing the dam - it is cheaper to remove as the hydro-electric benefits are considered minimal against other electrical generation sources. There is a whole lot more that can be said but that’s not for this blog.

It was time to move on. The sun was getting very low and we did not wish to be riding in the dark, even in a country such as the US. A ‘quick’ look at Google found a cheap hotel in Kingman, just 75 miles South-East, so a quick blast down highway 93, whilst watching the sun finally set on our right-hand side, found us in the darkness we did not want. In the desert, it gets dark quickly and not helped by me wearing sunglasses and a mildly tinted visor. Unlike most highways, the 93 needed some work doing to it! It was getting hard to dodge the potholes and areas where the top level of tarmac were just missing. Our sense of danger was not helped by the huge number of vehicles that had no consideration for the road condition, the speed limit or the need to use lights. Even lorries saw lights as being superfluous to their needs as their un-governed engines drove them to our tails and past, at speeds well in excess of the speed limits and our comfort zones. It got to the stage where we could only make out a rearward approaching car, because it was blocking out the lights of the vehicle following it. Madness!

However, we survived and reached our hotel for the night. Not the best but a room for the night and fast-food places just across the road.

The next morning after a “breakfast deal” that consisted of half a sandwich, a muffin and a small bottle of water overseen by an ever-vigilant receptionist that made sure you could NOT take any extra, we headed out to sample some of the Route 66 and avoid the highways. The tarmac of Route 66 was no better than the highway but the traffic was very light. It was a delight to drive through historic places emblazoned with the Route 66 emblem and relics of the hay-day that were rusting in the forecourt of places promising to provide the authentic feel. To us, it was a very nice ride through the valley and on to the desert plateau that runs South and West of the Grand Canyon.

As we reached the end of the Route 66, to be forced on to a short stretch of highway as it had obliterated the original road, we stopped for a photo with the iconic sign. As we were getting our bikes in place, Jack pulled in and asked if he could take our photo for us. Jack was driving a small 4x4, towing a teardrop trailer and had stickers all over, showing the places where he had been. Jack was really easy to talk to and we spent ages talking about our trip and what life was like on the road. He really wanted to know how we managed to remain together when living in each others pockets 24/7 and we said it was not easy. Personally, I have found it harder than Isi and I still do. Small things become big things very quickly and can leave ‘bad air’ in which I stew for many hours or even days (Isi manages to move on quicker). We had no secret equation other than to try and find the time to understand how the other may be feeling and to talk issues through - easier said than done, I can assure you.

It came time to part ways and we wish we could have chatted longer. As we parted, Jack did provide details of some really nice roads we should ride and Isi duly wrote them down in the notes on her phone, just for this purpose - listen to people you meet and see if their locations can be adopted into our vague route.

As we left Highway 93, we headed North and started rising, slowly, across the flat plains that would eventually lead to the Grand Canyon. However, our destination was a cheap motel we had booked for two nights, with the idea we could ride to the Grand Canyon and back in the same day, with far less luggage.

From the outside of the Grand Canyon Inn, it looked clean enough but, as we entered our room, it was apparent the outside was all that was cared for. The window was broken with a sign saying “do not open”. The fridge was working in all aspects except to cool stuff, making it a better slow cooker than a fridge. The microwave had seen far better days. The coffee maker (we use for ‘hot’ water) stopped working soon after we arrived. The bed linen was not clean. There was dried blood behind the beds (evidenced when we had to re-make the beds), together with a huge accumulation of dust and dirt that was probably as old as the rickety (sorry, ‘authentic’) beds that swayed on worn joints. The floors had been mopped with dirty water, leaving tide-mark streaks across the chipped tiled floor. The smoke alarm was missing from the ceiling and later found languishing in one of the drawers, which didn’t matter as there was no battery anyway. I’ll not even mention the bathroom but that was another list. Finally, having made a note of all the problems, I went to reception to at least have them recorded as not being issues we caused. The receptionist could not care less and only noted some of the points when I insisted they be noted and reported. The queue behind me listened in with increasing rates of alarm and I heard the next guy ask for a room but not one like ours - the receptionist was not phased and just continued to process his booking.

As the sun was setting, we walked around the area, admiring the numerous metal-fabricated statues depicting the days of the Wild West when Indians were the bad guys and those with guns were the good guys. The restaurant was much better than the room and whilst the food was basic, it was very nice and set us up for the epic day to follow…

The BIG Canyon!

Death Valley is cold…