I’m sitting here in my high-school German classroom at the end of another week. It’s about 6:15 PM. I’ve been here in the school since before 8:00 this morning. That makes it…let’s see now…a 10.25-hour workday. That’s how most of my days have been the last two months.
I’m a German teacher outside of Washington, DC, in Loudoun County, Virginia–a county that still offers German at all its high schools and just about all its middle schools. This is a good place to be. The famously wealthy Fairfax County, where I live and where my children graduated high school, is letting German die off slowly and quietly in its schools. Continue reading ‘Constant fatigue’
While Red Rock Canyon is a marvelous example of how the Southwest changed over millenia, the Hoover Dam is a Wonder of the World that was built in less than five years.
The dam is on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona, about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. (We like to tell our friends that we walked to Arizona–across the dam.) It created Lake Mead, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, and it provides irrigation water and electric power to a good portion of the southwestern United States.
The dam is reached by one road and one road only: U.S. Highway 93, which runs through Boulder City, Nevada to the river.
Continue reading ‘A Wonder of the World in the Southwest’
Okay, strictly speaking what I’m about to share with you is not in Las Vegas, per se, but it is just outside of town and is generally considered a “must-see” destination for folks who can tear themselves away from the casinos.
Red Rock Canyon is just on the western edge of Las Vegas. It is reached by driving straight out Charleston Boulevard to the west, until there is no more Charleston Boulevard. As the road continues into the hills, one enters the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Just a few minutes after the straight road began to curve, we realized that we were in real, live desert.
Continue reading ‘Vegas’s natural wonders’
Here are pictures of the rest of the “heritage” hotels we visited on our trip. I meant to blog these from the hotel, but of course, the hotel WiFi would not handle the pictures. Now, two days after arriving home, I’m putting them up.
We’ll continue our pilgrimage of endangered hotels by going down Las Vegas Boulevard South. The one hotel that seems in most imminent danger of implosion is the Saraha, on the north end of what’s considered the Strip.
Continue reading ‘Vegas heritage casino pilgrimage #2′
I’m typing this in the waiting area of gate D-10 in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. I wanted to blog our whole trip this week, but the WiFi in the Hyatt Grand Vacation Club on the Las Vegas Strip is so weak and worthless that I could not even upload my pictures.
I have just accomplished more in 10 minutes of frantic blogging in the airport than I could in a whole week of trying to use the frustratingly slow and bandwidth-limited hotel WiFi.
Thanks, McCarran Airport!
We resolved to see as many of the (apparently) doomed old casinos in Las Vegas as we can. Yesterday (Tuesday) we concentrated on the north- to mid-Strip area.
According to the Las Vegas Casino Death Watch, re-development will probably doom most of these hotels at some point in the near future. I already mentioned the recent demise of the Stardust, whose rubble I can see directly from my hotel window while typing this.
Here is the defunct sign of the Stardust, still standing behind the barrier that separates the curious public from the continuing work of hauling away debris.
Continue reading ‘Vegas heritage casino pilgrimage #1′
My wife and I are spending my spring break week in Las Vegas, to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. This was her idea, really, but I’m glad she pushed it. I don’t know what every would have gotten me out here, and this is a place I should see. Since I’m a part-time pro magician, and since Vegas is the town where magicians come to “make it,” I should have had the Vegas experience long ago.
We’ve been overwhelmed in our first 18 hours here. Too much to see and experience. Continue reading ‘Holy week in Vegas, baby!’
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