Las Vegas in the Rearview

The pre-dawn departure from Nashville has evolved into a necessary ritual when flying west. Otherwise, the day cannot begin upon arrival. My usuall cabbie came at 4:45, I boarded for Denver minutes after hitting the gate, and in Denver I barely paused for a piss before the next flight called its passengers.

Despite its massive size and tram system, McCarran International Airport was easy to navigate. After collecting my bag, rental car and then Braif, we set out for the In N Out Burger pilgrimage. It opened at 10:30 a.m. and never of us had eaten more than a snack. Forgetting all I knew about the restaurant's hidden menu items, I stuck to the basics and never looked back. I rarely bother with fast food, but the novelty of In N Out cannot be avoided.

This journey had been conjured up by my old friend Crites, who wanted a birthday away from Ohio's cold. He couldn't have picked a better set of days, as winter storms stalled both Columbus and Nashville, which received a blast of Arctic ice. I cannot skip any chance to head west, and reveled at the chance to actually travel with other people (my preferred pace does not work for most).

The second wave of our party - Crites, his brother and his brother's friend Coop - would not arrive until early evening, so we need time to kill. Unfortunately, it was not enough time to venture northeast up the Virgin River Valley to Zion National Park. Leaving from the In N Out Burger, we could have driven the 150 miles in three hours, but would have had less than two hours before we had to return. So Zion awaits a future trip.

We cruised up the Strip, all the way into Downtown Las Vegas and into parts of town strongly resembling Phoenix and Tempe. Take away the eye-grabbing Strip skyscrapers, and the southwestern scenery, palm trees and low houses behind stucco walls take over.

From North Las Vegas we followed Lake Mead Boulevard through heavy sprawl, which abruptly broke into uninhabited desert with a lone road wedged into the khaki hills. Across those plains dappled with low, durable vegetation.

After a small toll, we returned to the desert and journeyed through the series of overlooks, enjoying brief lapses of total silence broken by air traffic at McCarran International and the occasional black helicopter cutting a low path above the blue depths.

Only a few people bothered with the beaches on this clear, balmy day. A bright band of white rock ringed Lake Mead, marking the dramatic water loss drought incurred in recent decades. With the suburban tracks fanning out around Las Vegas, it was not shocking, but still sobering. As we wound south toward the reservoir's southern terminus at Black Canyon, the islands which barely broke water on the maps naming them had grown more pronounced.

Rather than return to Vegas early, we soldiered onto the dam, and an unexpected pleasure. Like most, I knew about the O’Callaghan-Tillman Bridge, the U.S. 93 bypass which finally ended decades of cars driving across the top of Hoover Dam. The only time I crossed the dam, back in 2003, I had no idea the windy road actual twisted across dam until we descended into traffic and the crawl past the damn towers

Following a few checkpoints, a little turnout announced a path up to the bridge and the new stretch of U.S. 93. Interpretative signs outlined the construction. In a few minutes, we left its safety and stood on the bridge deck, looking out at Arizona and down at Hoover Dam. I looked forward to walking across to Arizona -- until I put my hand on the railing. An 18-wheeler roared past and everything shook ferociously. At that height, the bridge was obviously designed with pedestrian safety in mind. There were no worries. But I had no desire to stand above the Colorado River any longer than I had to.

With its Rube Goldberg-esque maze of escalators, stairs, moving sidewalks and diversions through shopping malls, he Strip does an excellent job of ensuring people don't walk far. After checking in, we took to the Strip, dodging phalanxes of Hispanic men handing out Girls!Girls!Girls cards (yes, it was worse than the Motley Crue song), and finally returning to seek out the Freakin' Frog and escape from the maddening crowds.

We finally met Crites and his brother after 9 at the Luxor, the pyramid-shaped casino anchoring the Strip's southern end. It connected with the Excalibur, the castle-shaped hotel where Braif and I landed. A little time at the Wheel of Fortune machines preceded departure for a few beers.

Thanks to Crites and Braif, I finally managed a pre-dawn start with company. We left Vegas at 6 a.m. with a full moon blazing before sunrise. In a few miles, the superhighways surrounding Vegas condensed down to a series of rural roads crossing mountain passes.

F We buzzed past rows of Joshua trees that grew more massive the further we drove. After mocking of the new Decemberists album's heavy REM tendencies concluded, the latest Iron & Wine served as the perfect soundtrack, complicated music for a complicated landscape. or all the desert splendor spanning Las Vegas and Pahrump, especially the yellow warning signs for bighorn sheep, a curiosity at the state line held me captive. Just shy of the Amargosa Opera House at Death Valley Junction, pools of water bubbled and lapped at the road, in some places nearly spilling over.

The wind buffeted the car as we rolled up to the park entrance. Aside from a credit card machine and a sun-bleached map, it wrapped itself in the same desolation as the preceding 30 miles from Pahrump.

Fourteen miles later, we got our spectacular first view of Death Valley. The road climbed steadily, then broke to a 14 percent grade for the last turn into the parking lot, which laid bare all of Death Valley to us. At a height of 5,400 feet, words failed me. My hands failed me too, as the bullying wind quickly numbed my digits to where I couldn't operate the panoramic feature on Crites' camera.

For a few moments, we loitered at the rolling rocks of Zabriskie Point. The sun's angle gave us great shots of the mountains, along with the shadows of us three displayed on a nearby boulder.

We left the visitors center and stopped on the other side of the Zabriskie Point formations at Golden Canyon, a deep, shaded gully with tight turns and too many branches to count. Crites disappeared up one. After a few minutes, Braif and I followed. At first, the terrain was manageable. But these canyons had been pummeled by floodwater just weeks before. The path grew thick with tiny, loose rocks which ruined my traction. Every time I lurched upward, the eroded rocks almost slid me back to my starting spot. Finally I gave up, and soon enough, the others descended.

Rested from our hike, we breezed past the oxidized rock of Artist's Palette, a collection of hills renown for the sparkling colors. I saw little since the one-lane road required more attention than I expected, even at 25 mph.

When we reached the valley’s renown low point, the floodwaters has formed a great brackish lake where people waded and the salt flats no longer mimicked the appearance of water. What looked like water from Dante's View actually was.

We would travel another hour without passing more than two or three souls.

As we turned away from the muddy basin and the salt flats resumed, our first and only taste of wildlife bounded and dashed across the road. It wouldn’t be Death Valley without a handful of persuasive coyotes corralling motorists exiting the park.

With their doglike demeanor, this upbeat trio obviously encountered people before and almost certainly scored a meal. On cue, they struck majestic poses, trying hard to hide their reputation for scavenging. Seeing them up close brought me back to the passage from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley that had rattled in my skull all day.

When crossing the Mohave Desert, Steinbeck plays God, watching two coyotes at a distance through his rifle’s scope. Rather than kill them, he lowers his gun and opens two cans of dog food for them. As the coyotes paced the asphalt, invigorated by the mild Death Valley winter, I wondered if this bunch were not descended from Steinbeck’s coyotes. If he had experience them at 5 feet instead of 50 yards, he might have marveled at their resilience in this brutal landscape, but their chicken-stealing tendencies. Granted, Steinbeck dealt with them regularly during a western boyhood; I know them better as a suburban nuisance.

That thought had little time to linger – when driving so far from civilization, my mind shouldn’t have the chance to wander. We blasted across 40 more miles of desert, returning to Pahrump and followed the Joshua trees back to Vegas. With six hours of Death Valley filling our cameras, Red Rock Canyon was skipped. It took a brief bit of maneuvering to get back to the airport to deposit the car, as the highways branching into McCarran fell under heavy construction and several traffic lanes collapsed down to one.

In minutes we returned to the Strip to prepare for our Crites' birthday dinner at The Sinatra at the Encore. It was a great dinner, with good wine and a sighting of billionaire developer Steve Wynn at a corner table.

Later we found some mild debauchery at the Encore’s blackjack tables and multiple beers at New York New York. A conspiracy of two days of desert driving and alcohol drove me to retire hours before the others, but not without rich desert visions from Dante's View still wafting across my closed eyes. Yet the AC unit couldn't come close to mimicking the feel of the valley wind.