The week that I left also happened to be the week that my paternal grandmother passed away. My father was very familiar with Vegas because of his 30+ year history with the town, but it seemed that he had a new and not so favorable view of the glitzy desert town. I packed up my car and drove from Seattle with my friend and co-worker Tom and left my family at a fund-raiser in Portland.
The trip revealed Tom's own history with Vegas. 5 years earlier he lived there to run an arcade that my family was involved with and the picture that he painted was not pretty. As we stopped in Reno for the night, Vegas did not seem like the best idea that I had ever had. The drive to Reno was very familiar as we drove through national forests and it smelled like someone had opened a case of Pine-Sol in the car. Reno to Vegas was entirely different.
The eight hours to Vegas was on a two lane highway and you get to experience old ghost towns as you drive right through their cold dead carcasses. Old nuclear testing facilities on the left and prisons on the right. And nothing but scorched earth in between. 120+ on the thermometer and the fear that if the car breaks down so will you.
As we drove into Vegas that mid-August night, we decided to cruise the strip and there is nothing like seeing that road during the daylight. All of the warts are revealed as people are getting ready for the nighttime revelers. Trash, hookers, homeless and millions of twinkling lights. I was finally home.
