to Mr. Benn's changing room having chosen the 'al Capone' outfit. In the
petrol station shop was a row of slot machines, most in use on that sunny
Monday morning! Welcome to Nevada, gambling is legal. The town itself gave
further evidence that in fact everything is legal somewhere in the desert state.
Billboards everywhere prepared us for Vegas, though some of the things they
advertised are not allowed (though of course they still exist) in the gambling
capital itself. For example: 'Madam Butterfly's massage parlour. Baths and
massages and pssst.... there's more!'. Death Valley soon felt like a distant,
alien land, as we pushed on to the neon city via increasingly busy roads.
Fortunately we feel equally at home in the wild as in the towns,
although we grew tired of visiting places like San Francisco or Los Angeles
whereas we never left a national park feeling that we had had enough. In fact
if we ever revisit this part of the US we will definitely try to fit in more time in
Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Death Valley. As for Vegas, well, the
novelty had worn off by the time we were leaving and returning will probably
wait until we have kids – and until they are old enough to visit without having
to be locked in the hotel room or be permanently blindfolded.
Arriving in Death Valley and then Las Vegas was one way in which the
experience of visiting these two very different places was the same. Both
were very daunting and surreal, though the characteristics that caused this
emotional reaction were different for each place. For Death Valley the words
that sprung to mind as we stopped to look down into the national park were:
massive, barren, empty, beautiful, elemental. It was a humbling experience as
we looked ahead at the road with tiny cars in the distance. The scale was so