Jurassic Parking Validation

Today we took off from Redondo beach and hit the road. Yes, technically Route 66 starts at the Santa Monica pier, but it was reeaally not worth the extra couple hours just to get the selfie.

Plus, our first stop was not a route 66 attraction, but totally within the spirit (and a long standing bucket list item).

The Cabazon Dinosaurs.


Inside the mouth of the beast

Just like Jesus used to ride!

While it used to be a crappy creationist museum (like there is any other kind), it's now a gift shop hawking the usual dino-related tchotchkes. They have thoroughly embraced the roadside/kitch aesthetic, which is just as well, since there's already enough stupid in the world. 

After departing the Jurassic, it was the long haul to Las Vegas. We passed the time by me slaughtering Frankie teaching me the German lyrics to Ode to Joy. I was also schooled on the desert ecology with an involved discussion on cheat grass and its effect on native sage brush and wildlife.

Non-native invasives are a real bitch. 

Of course, we had to make a stop in Baker, home the the Worlds Largest Thermometer. 

Possibly the most regal thermometer picture ever

The woman who ran the place was a native who filled us in on all the history of the place, where to take the best photos, and the sad demise of Bun Boy.

Bun Boy may be gone, but we still have the Mad Greek Cafe

Finally we rolled into Vegas, tired, sweaty, and ready to shower. Vegas, however, had other ideas. 

Turns out this was the weekend of the big downtown festival "Life Is Beautiful." I personally associate that phrase with the holocaust movie, but that's probably just me. The festival is being held right next to our hotel, which means that all the surrounding streets are blocked off to traffic, but completely open to drunken bros and a wide variety of people. We finally got into the hotel parking garage, but it involved pass cards, hand signals (not that kind), and practically running over a guy directing traffic (and there's the hand signals you were thinking of). 

Luckily, the room blocks most of the sound (they upgraded us to a room on the opposite side), and the place itself is definitely old-school vegas.

The view of the hotel sign from our window

Classic Cocktail Waitress

Welcoming mints and golf pencil


We took a stroll down the incredibly chaotic Fremont Street. I had a run-in with a busker who was flat out collecting money by calling women bitches and putting them down. 

Me: I think you should know that the fact you are making money by being a mysoginistic white male stereotype makes you an asshole in my book. 
Him: I don't understand what you're saying
Me: I'll use short words you can understand...Fuck. You. 

(and there's that hand gesture again)

I don't really think it changed anything, but I can't let people like that roam free without someone pointing out that they are assholes. Maybe if enough people tell him, he'll understand what a fucking waste of oxygen he is. Hope springs eternal.

We had a lovely dinner at a mediterranean cafe (is there any such thing as bad falafel or schwarma? I've yet to find it) and headed back to the room to plot our day tomorrow. 

It's almost midnight, so I'm finishing this and drifting off to sleep accompanied by the faint "whumpa-whumpa" of electronic music. 





















Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicago Illinois! It's like a shiny toy!

Image
For those of you who aren't familiar with the reference: Leslie Ann Warren is a goddess So yes, today we are in Chicago. It took, however, a truly heroic amount of driving to get here. Lucky for us, overnight the foliage started changing. I have to say that, while very pretty, the Great Smoky Mountains are more like Very Nice Smoky Mountains.  The other thing we could see more of during the day was the alarming amount of kudzu in the area to the north. I didn't get any great shots of it, but there was places where the ground, bushes, trees and even buildings were completely smothered in green vines.  We stopped in Knoxville, home of the Sun Sphere and several Waffle Houses in order to refuel.  Either the sun sphere or the worlds largest snitch The Waffle House is a chain restaurant which, one would suppose, is known for its waffles.  One would be wrong.  As Frankie eloquently put it in their Yelp review: Never before ha...
Read more

Travels With Mommie

Image
My mom, who is a generous and wonderful person, loves to travel and has included her children and nieces on an assortment of adventures. This is my turn.   After spending the evening drinking scotch with my brother-in-law, I got up bright and early to go with my sister to pick up my mom and board the plane to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.   We flew out of Sacramento on Southwest - a nine hour trip. Southwest is your basic shit sandwich. The flights are cheap, the crew is always friendly and sometimes genuinely funny, and they get you there.   But - The first come, first serve seating: we had Mavis in a wheelchair, so we had the advantage. But the tension around seating made the atmosphere boarding the plane like the scene in Do The Right Thing - one wrong move and that place blows like a powder keg.   Food: Neither of us realized that there was no food on the flight, not until we saw people boarding with bags of Popeye’s Chicken that we realized the...
Read more

Dames at Sea

Image
We have two days at sea before we land in Cartagena, a city I know only from Romancing the Stone. All I need are tiny liquor bottles in my purse First real full day at sea and a Sunday, so Sunday brunch was called for. It slotted in easily after morning stretch and shine, port talk, the food talk, etc. After all, brunch is delicious and hard to ruin. At least I thought, until faced with a piece of bread rumored to have relations with an avocado, sitting on a mountain of arugula and in the company of people who found it awful how young people these days don’t think of saving for retirement.   There are lots of interesting, enjoyable people onboard your average cruise. These people weren’t among them. There is not enough alcohol in the world to make people like that interesting. So I sat there, with my pile of arugula and empty glasses, wishing for an iceberg in the middle of the Caribbean so perhaps these peoples exteriors could match up with their interior (I’ll spel...
Read more