The Hoover Dam It was 11pm when we got back on the road. Wendell and I realized we had too much we still wanted to do on the trip, but not enough time to get it all done. We wanted to go see Las Vegas and we wanted time for Wendell to see some of the sights of LA. We faced a hard decision. Was it time to grab a hotel for the night? Or should we push forward? Our decision boiled down to this, we wanted to see Vegas at night in all of it's electric light glory. The only way for that to happen was to keep driving until we reached the gambling mecca of the USA. As for sleep, we would worry about that when we got to Vegas.

We drove down interstate 40 until we got to Kingman, Arizona which is about 100 miles away from Las Vegas. Then we turned our car north and could already see the lights of "Sin City" giving the desert sky an orange glow. One thing was for certain, we weren't gonna lose our way that night. The sight of Las Vegas' aura got me excited. After about 30 minutes of driving toward our goal, the excitement was replaced by exhaustion. The exhaustion was amplified by boredom. The only thing to see along this road was darkness and there was lots of it. The glow of Las Vegas was really cool for a while, but soon we lost interest in it. The Vegas city council should figure out how to project some kind of show up in the sky just to keep the out-of-town drivers entertained and awake. Give them time.

As we were about to hit a state of complete boredom and risking sleeping our way right into a car wreck, a site out of nowhere woke us up. Nestled in a valley between some mountains on the Nevada/Arizona border there is a dam. This is no ordinary dam. Some call it the Hoover Dam, while others call it the Boulder Dam. I understand when it was little, the class bully use to call it the Damn Dam. This made the little dam so mad, it vowed some day it would grow up to be the highest dam in the world. It fulfilled its promise. The place is lit from top to bottom with spotlights. The Hoover Dam was a great precursor to the destination for the night. It gave me a much needed shot of rejuvenation.

Copyright © 2000 The Van Gogh-Goghs