OUR FAMILY HOLIDAYS
0248 Californian Holiday – The Grand Canyon & Las Vegas
From Scottsdale we drove up through the great redstone mountains, eroded by the wind and beloved of Hollywood directors for their cowboy films, to eventually reach Flagstaff. Flagstaff was seemingly almost at the end of the world. This was exemplified by the fact that we sat in the coach, in the coach station which was filthy, all the time we were there. All that happened was that the drivers were changed and the bus was serviced.
Once we came out of Flagstaff we travelled north to the Grand Canyon. We reached our hotel just south of the Grand Canyon late in the evening. There was only time to go down the country road, in almost pitch black, to the nearest McDonald's. The place was pretty basic but comfortable – and compared with Flagstaff seemed the height of sophistication!
The next morning we went to the Grand Canyon itself. It is a stupendous gash in the surface of the earth, a mile deep, carved by the water of just one river; the Colorado. Fortunately we didn't go down to the bottom, that took two days by mule train, instead we had a helicopter flight over the gorge and right down into it; something that is banned these days. That's really all I can say, for it has to be seen to appreciate just how magnificent it is.
Grand Canyon
and in the Helicopter over it
From there we drove
on to Las Vegas. By now the American roads had become monotonous in the
extreme. It was still three days for each change of scenery. The children had
by then started playing games with some younger members of the party at the back
at the bus, so we saw very little of them. All I can remember of that the drive
was reaching the T-junction at the edges of Kingman and going into an Arbies for
lunch. At least it was a different type of meat (sliced roast beef rather than
hamburger) in a bun.
At the Boulder Dam
From Kingman we drove to the Boulder Dam, en route to Las Vegas. At the Boulder Dam, no longer referred to as the Hoover Dam (how transitory is fame!), we did the obligatory tour. It was what everyone did, but there was no denying that it was immensely impressive. Going down in the lift, and through tunnels in the body of the dam, we began to realise just a complex it was. When we got to the turbine halls it became even more impressive. Most impressive as all of all was standing next to the tunnels through which the Colorado River was diverted. The force of the flow through these was such that the very ground itself vibrated, bouncing up and down, and gave an indication of the vast power that was available.
From there we made our way to Las Vegas. For many this was the highlight of the tour, but for us it was something of a cultural interest -- but that was all. We stayed in a hotel which was really a series of apartments, and we had kitchen and lounge as well as the bedrooms. I had once more tried to visualise what it would look like, at a distance as we were travelling across country to reach it. My picture wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to show that I was still capable of clairvoyance.
Needless to say Las Vegas was all about gambling. We did the tour to downtown, the original Las Vegas. There we went into the casinos and were shown something of what went on behind the scenes.
The fascinating
thing about Las Vegas was that, as compared with the casino at Cannes, the
stakes being put on the
tables were miniscule. I put 10 dollars down on one table, and everyone looked
at me in astonishment. Nobody ever bet more than one or two dollars. The
reason for this was, I guess, that the real gambling was in private rooms
behind the scenes -- and was probably based on poker rather than roulette. The
main moneymakers, with hundreds of punters taking part, were the gambling
machines. The air was constantly filled with the sound of people pulling on
levers and losing their money. Just occasionally we heard an alarm go off as
someone won. But winning was a rarity, the trade depended on gamblers’ hopes of
a win rather than the reality.
Thereafter, for the two or three days we were there, we did go to a casino each day; since there was little else to do. As we had the children with us -- we went to Circus Circus. This was a family casino with acrobats flying above the punters. The good thing about it was that you got very cheap meals, which were a way of attracting people in to play the machines. We didn't make any money on the machines, but equally we didn't lose any. That was because we didn't play them! I guess if you can resist the temptation when surrounded by hundreds of different ways of losing money then you can resist gambling as a whole.
We did go, one evening, to a show that was in another casino. It was a cabaret. It was most notable for the fact that the girls were topless. It was the first time that Miles was exposed to anything like this, and his eyes stood out almost on stalks. I guess it later made a good story for him to tell back at school.
That then was Las Vegas. From there we went north to towards Death Valley. En route we pulled up for a stop opposite to a series of buildings which were not explained by courier; though presumably the driver knew what he was doing. It was only when we got back home, and my films were developed, that we realised that it was in fact one of the legalised brothels!
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