Nevada

Nevada. Hm.

I shouldn’t have complained so much about California.

We drove across the border into Nevada late Friday night. Our destination? Las Vegas. The drive was very long and full of traffic jams and bad drivers. Eventually we left the palm trees and smog of California and headed into the empty Nevada desert. Around 1:30 A.M., my roommate nudged my sleeping self in the passenger seat and said, “Look! It’s Las Vegas!” and in the dark distance you could see a patch of electric lights. Our Vegas, however, turned out to be fake, a mirage, a trick of the desert! This oasis of lights was only the Nevada Welcome Center, modeled to look like the famous city. We had trouble comprehending this fact with our fuzzy minds. Nevada is pitch black at night, especially around Vegas. We finally did make it to the city, with the same effect: slowly a group of lights moved toward us. Once you enter Las Vegas, the desolate desert is forgotten as you are caught up in the chaos of the casinos and hotels. We stayed at the Excalibur which is, you know, a castle.

Las Vegas is crazy. We made it to our hotel at two in the morning, cleaned up, and went downstairs for some drinks, site-seeing, and people-watching.

Compared to the red rocks of Utah, the canyons of Arizona, the Colorado mountains, and the sprawling farms of the midwest, Nevada left a little to be desired. It was s destination on our trip, and probably worth seeing, but overall I wasn’t blown away by Nevada’s landscape. In my eyes, it was time to drive on to the next state.