a long one here. it’s been a week, and what a week. last journal entry came from the town of Beaver where we had an entirely unsuccesful night out at the Renegade Lounge, the bar that promised much but only delivered a strange woman who insisted on playing us at pool and then refused to say anything to us. we left after two drinks.

after that we hot-tailed it 26 miles across to the rather more pleasant town of Milford where we were taken in and made to feel very at home by good people Mike and Camilla, Kevin and Chalys and Teddy and Lola. home-made burgers, barking dogs, Busch Lite (check the soon-coming pics of the Busch Lite Christmas tree Mike constructed) and a comfortable night’s sleep in a small trailer for me.

next morning (last Monday) I got my latest set of medical tests (no results yet) in the morning and we hit the road in the afternoon for one of the most isolated sections of the trip yet – Milford to Baker, 83 miles of absolutely nothing (no offence to the small town of Garrison on the Utah-Nevada border but, hard as it may try, it can only qualify as a town of absolutely nothing. well, absolutely nothing and a limited genepool as a side dish, but that’s another story (it was an extremely strange place, the people we met were, er, a little funny looking)). we posted a new WTS career best of 57 miles in two days, and received the giant blisters and knee problems that come with such an acheivement. it was a pretty good experience on the whole though – hardly any traffic, giant wide valleys which took hours to traverse and two days in a row when, as if by magic, cars stopped by us at dusk to deliver soft drinks. the road provides.

we reached the little village of Baker just over the Nevada border on Thursday morning at 8.30am (nb. parents of us – we are now on Pacific time, which means we are 8 hours behind you). Baker was one of those surprising small places with a funky cafe with an interesting menu and great coffee, and some forthright people who we took to straight away. I have a good feeling about Nevada – the people seem to speak their mind (sample from a woman we had spoken to for about a minute: “You went to Burning Man? That’s just a load of city people taking drugs, getting naked and f**king. I don’t like to see the desert screwed up that way.”) and there is a real wild west feel out here. mostly because there is hardly anything out here.

Thursday afternoon we started hitching. and how. for four windswept hours we sat by the side of the Route 50, now officially recognised as the ‘Lonliest Highway in America‘ and our friend for the next 300 miles or so. we could see traffic coming from 20 miles away and none of it stopped. it’s funny how when we walk people stop to offer us lifts, and then the moment we actually need one, they drive past at 80mph looking like they think we want to kill them.

anyway, after a very barren spell broken only by the amusement of Dave’s hitching signs being blown away on the wind and his desperate limping attempts to run after them (Dave has worn down his ‘special’ insoles to the extent that he is now suffering a recurrance of an old knee injury – we need to sort this situation quick as it has dire implications for the continuance of our walk if we can’t find new supports for the Toolan) we were finally picked up by Linda Davenport and her son Rafe from San Francisco (Ralph? not sure how to spell that but we hope to see you both in a few weeks) and taken some 30 miles to the junction of the 50 and the 93 – our direct line south to Vegas. here we endured another three hours of passing RVs, terrified pensioners and trucks with no room for weekend party people.

dispirited but not totally despondent, we repaired half a mile up the road to the only building withing 25 miles – Majors Place RV park and bar, and we made ourselves busy with the beer they served. we were treated like kings by the manager Kathy and were lucky enough to finally shower (four days without) and do laundry (I think it was about 8 days without. not good). we got a bed for the night, chatted politics with truck driver Michael Carrick (and you lot thought he just played for Manchester United – no! he is in fact the leader of the people who really run America (as he said): the truck drivers) and marvelled at the number of antlers on display in the bar. these people love their hunting.

yesterday morning we were back at the junction desperately performing for lifts. we tried dancing, signs that said ‘We’re not hippies’ and all sorts of lame goofing, but still they would not stop. after an two hours, however, our saviour appeared – Gary from Ely. he stopped, jammed us into his Ford Bronco II (both of us in the front passenger seat for the first 100 miles) and took us south. after about 45 mins of conversation  Gary remarked to himself that he really wasn’t doing anything today, and that he would take us all the way to Vegas. sweet.

some 250 miles later and here we are. we got in about 5pm last night after a tour of the Vegas speedway (Gary used to be a drag racer) and have been adjusting to Sin City life ever since. as expected, it’s quite a scene. and, as with all good tourists, we came expecting to stay in a cheap motel off the Strip and have instead installed ourselves in the same hotel that Hunter S.Thompson memorably had trouble with the carousel in, as described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Circus Circus. there is actually a fully fledged circus in here somewhere, I’m not sure if that includes the rather ornery tiger that tried to eat Siegfried or Roy a few years back but Dave and I are on the look out. if there is a sighting, there will be a picture.

so far it has been an obvious trip. we’re here with our friend we met in Ohio last year, Ulane from Estonia, and she has sister V in tow as well as friend Mari. last night we first hit Dino’s Neighbourhood Bar, a supposedly ‘local’ bar which was right up our street in that it was dirty, and cheap. they were doing weird kareoke though, so we went down to the south strip and hit a right swanky club that Ulane’s friend Mike owned – Asia something I think it was called.

I say think because by the time we got there Vegas was already taking its toll through a variety of cocktails and killer beers. Dave and I have no posh clothes, so we’re doing this whole thing in our hiking outfits (hiker chic, a quality look) and we did look kinda outta place in this posh club with girls wearing next to nothing and fellas looking like they had too much money. my running shoes were a real hit. despite our shabby appearance we were treated by Mike to the run of the VIP room and received more cocktails on the house. we failed to see Pamela Anderson (rumour was that she was there, but all I saw was any number of generic pneumatic blondes siliconised to look the same) but did rule the dancefloor for a short period of time before we all realised the DJ was awful. the evening ended quite spectaculary – Dave running out of the club at 3.30am with a look of fear on his face shouting at me ‘Stu! We’ve got to get out of here – they’re all swingers!’ (it is true that the VIP room seemed to have more than its fair share of couples who kept chatting up Dave in ways not found at, for example, the Renegade Lounge or the Majors Place RV park and bar), Ulane’s sister V disappearing somewhere (we still not know where she is) and me waking up in an entirely different hotel to the one I checked into earlier in the day.

viva Las Vegas.

in light of all this, I therefore predict that this evening we shall do more of the same, only with more Elvis impersonators, rollercoasters and faux everything. the strip is incredible, faux people in faux buildings and shows and lights and neon and Everything Is A Little Too Much. I like it way more than I expected to.

anyway, all for now. there are plenty of slot machines in this town that need playing (mostly by people who look really desperate) and I’m off out to try and find a Bar X, the only one I know how to play because there used to be loads of them in the Herne Bay seafront arcades…

Stuart                                 Have a comment? Please sign the guestbook