A Giant Mantis Tries to Eat Me and Cosmo in Downtown Las Vegas
I woke up by Lake Mead, AZ. The sunrise was soft pinks and oranges. It was overcast and the subtle colors on the still lake were comforting. And yet I still felt antsy. I needed to move that day, to head toward Las Vegas where I was meeting up with my friend Tom. Tom had come from Berkely to visit his friend Mark who lives in North Las Vegas. I was to meet them in Boulder City and I knew it was at least an hour to get there, barring anything unforeseen on that horrible road that lead into the lake from the south side. I drank my coffee, cleaned up and got on my way. The road was just as rough on the way out as it had been on the way in. I was so afraid I’d meet a vehicle coming in the opposite direction at a point where there was not enough room to pass, and one of us would have to back up. I couldn’t imagine backing up on one of the hairpin turns with the road falling off into oblivion on either side. Fortunately, I just passed one person, at a place where the road had widened. I got to my destination without incident.
I arrived at Hoover Dam Lodge and Casino about an hour ahead of when Tom and Mark were to meet me. I had another cup of coffee and Cosmo and I walked. The parking lot was level and when I looked out the window of my van, I could see down into the valley where Hoover Dam was located. The parking lot side wasn’t much to look at, so I set up camp so I’d be looking out over the lake and valley. It was as comforting as the morning sky had been.
Tom and Mark arrived in Tom’s rental car, and we went to Hoover Dam, and then to lunch in Boulder, NV. It was a sunny afternoon and we wandered around the small town. I was grateful for it being a quiet Sunday in a small town. The longer I’m out on the road, the less I’m able to face big cities and the noise and people that inhabit them. After our visit, Cosmo and I went back to the casino parking lot, and I watched YouTube videos until it was time for bed. I slept with the van windows open for the first time in many months. The cool air moving through the van was quite refreshing. It did drop down below 60 during the night, but I was tucked into my sleeping bag, with Cosmo lying across my chest. I slept soundly and had many pleasant dreams throughout the night, though I couldn’t remember them once I was fully awake the next morning.
When I got up, I went into the casino to get my morning coffee. I thought I should make at least a token effort to show my support for them allowing RV’s to stay the night for free in their lot. The place was deserted. A bartender sat on a stool at the bar, playing some game on his iPhone. Another man was sweeping and the lone woman in the restaurant was writing something on a pad with a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. Chairs were still turned upside down on most of the tables. I went into the adjacent shop and got coffee and headed back to the van. It was pretty lousy coffee, but I felt I’d made at least a minor gesture to show my support and appreciation of the free night’s stay. Then I drove into Las Vegas and met Tom at Planet Fitness. I took him in as my guest, and we worked out and I had a long hot shower, shampooed my hair and put conditioner on it. That’s such a luxury for me. Afterwards we drove downtown and went to a Vegan restaurant for lunch. I had some wonderful tempeh tacos. We shared a chocolate brownie sundae for dessert. It was nothing short of spectacular. We walked around a bit and Tom tried to remind me of the last time we were in Las Vegas on Fremont Street. I had only a foggy recollection of fragments of that visit. The downtown is starting to build up an art district. It seems more suited to the locals than tourists and made me think Las Vegas might be less awful now that it has a trendy section to go to for food and drinks.
Later in the afternoon, Tom headed back to spend a final night at Mark’s and Cosmo and I drove off to Cracker Barrel (again) for one night. There are only a few free spots in Las Vegas, and there is no BLM land or nice parks to sleep in. I found a level spot in the back parking lot and settled in for the night.
In BLM land there are a certain type of people. They are often divided into the vans and small rigs and those towing their McMansions behind a 2-ton, 4 door pick-up truck. There are full-time nomads, and serious campers. But in a parking lot, it’s hard to discern life stories. At dusk, a very average-looking van backed in next to me. It was just a “socker mom van.” But the fact that it backed in, was a giveaway that it was someone who sleeps in Cracker Barrel Parking lots often enough to know how to do it correctly. A heavy woman with white hair climbed out. She opened the back hatch, and both side doors. She began rearranging totes and got reflective window coverings out and put them on the insides of all the windows to block out the light and keep people from seeing in . She was slow and not very efficient. I didn’t pick up a vacation camper vibe. I’m betting a nomad of some sort, but also probably not by choice. I suspect she was probably homeless. So am I, but I worked long and hard to reach this status; others are not so lucky and are homeless not by their own choice. She walked her dog and locked herself in the van, the world completely shut out by the mylar window coverings.
In the morning when I awoke, there was a van on the other side of me as well. This one had a bit of a “warrior feel” about it. It was a newer model Mercedes Sprinter painted a swampy green color. It had solar panels, a ladder and some other storage trunks attached to the back. When the door finally slid open, an extremely attractive GI Joe type exited with a tiny dog. He had a beard (GI Joe, not the dog) was wearing cargo pants and a black t-shirt that sort of gave him the air of a mercenary. He looked like he’d be at home wearing a Kevlar vest. And then there was me in between him and the older woman—an aging hippie, complete with tie-dye shirt, long grey hair and my pork-pie hat, exiting my old-school Roadtrek van. Three different types, all sleeping at Cracker Barrel for free, all (I’m betting) living in vans, and all living quite different lifestyles. I wanted to talk to them. I said hello to both and the old woman smiled back, the young man said “Good morning” but both turned back and went about their business. There’s not much privacy sleeping in a van in a parking lot, so when you do, you learn to pick up on cues as to when it’s OK to strike up a conversation and when it isn’t. I finished packing up and headed to Walmart to pick up a few items. I’ll always wonder where GI Joe was heading and if things would have been different had we met out on BLM land. Perhaps our paths will cross again someday. It happens more often than I ever would have guessed.
After Walmart I headed to a paid RV park for the night. It was pretty nice as far as RV parks go. Most of the people there were seasonal residents. I didn’t see any other vans there—mostly just 5th wheels and large pull-behinds. They had a swimming pool, and laundry facilities. I was in a spot with full hook-ups, so I plugged in and connected my water hose. I ran my fridge on AC power while there, and topped off my freshwater tank.
Angie and her husband came and picked me up and took me back to their place, less than 10 minutes away. I’d never met Gary. We went back and Angie and I caught up on the last 39 years, and I got to know Gary. He is a bartender and made us blue drinks. When Angie and I were friends back in the early 80’s, I was a learning to hang glide at the time. I don’t remember how it started, but we’d go in search of “blue drinks” some nights after I’d spent a day in the mountains hang gliding. I said I needed a drink the same color as the sky. I don’t recall if we ever found them, but Gary did not disappoint that afternoon. He made fresh lemonade, with vodka and blue curacao. Delicious. We sat at the bar in their kitchen, Angie and I on the “customer side” and Gary behind the sink, refreshing our drinks. He seemed pretty at home behind the bar. They got out a tennis ball and played “fetch” with Cosmo who seemed totally delighted to be getting so much attention and to have so much room in their open concept home. Gary later got us take-out Thai curry for dinner. We ate, drank and were merry. It amazed me to pick up with Angie so quickly, so easily. After almost 40 years, it seemed like no time had passed at all. Gary too was easy to get to know. I was so impressed with his love of Angie. Little things. When Angie got in and out of my van (for the “tour”) Gary held her hand to be sure she didn’t mis-step. I noticed immediately he looked at her the way I look at Cosmo—And you know how I feel…there is no greater love than that between a man and his dog, so to look at someone like I’d look at a dog means True Love for sure! We had a really nice afternoon together.
Gary drove us back, and after our good-byes, I took Cosmo for a walk and discovered the hot-tub at the pool. I took Cosmo to the van, put on my swim suit and joined a pretty boisterous bunch of RV park residents. They seemed to range in age from 30’s to late 60’s. Most were staying there full-time and knew each other; some were there only for the week. I talked a lot with a Czechoslovakian man who has been in the U.S. for a month. His English was limited, but we managed. He started the conversation with “Come in my friend. This water, it make us young again.” I said “Well why the hell didn’t someone tell me that sooner?” He looked to his wife for translation, and after she said something in Czechoslovakian he laughed and said “You will be my friend.” There was a very handsome man from Minnesota, who later stated he was 43 (after my Czech friend announced that he had been married for 43 years, the younger guy said that’s as long as he has been alive.) He (Minnesota man) had clearly been drinking and had a laser beam focus on a young woman next to him, who was either drunk, stoned or perhaps mentally impaired. Maybe a combination. She was very nice, but she was (I have no idea of the politically correct way to say this) Simple. Her speech was slurred, very slow and deliberate, but I don’t think it was from alcohol. She talked like an adolescent girl, even though she was at least in her early 40’s. I believe she talked like this all the time. The Minnesota man seemed quite bright, and knew several languages, and said he had traveled much of Europe, the U.S. and Mexico. He hung on every slow word coming from the woman. He kept trying different ways to invite her back to his RV. She had said she was hungry and he said he had pulled pork for his crock pot and shredded beef that he could cook up and then made several other suggestions of meals he could prepare if she wanted to come over. He had a slightly desperate air about him, as if he just had to score with her that night. My Czech friend at one point said loud enough for everyone to hear “I think this is the look of man who wants in love.” He didn’t know a lot of English, but he clearly understood the mating ritual in any language. Everything closed down at 10:00 so at about 9:55, I headed home. The hot soak took the day right out of me and I slept long and hard until almost sunrise. I have no idea how the Minnesota man fared the previous night, but I did see the couple from Czechoslovakia packing up in the morning and wished them safe travels. They were so nice, and the man especially was quite humorous and his accent added to the whole effect.
That morning, I took another soak in the hot tub. The pool was icy cold, so I took a pass on that. I showered and packed up. It was just a short drive back to Lake Mead. This time I went to the north end at my friend Ben’s suggestion. The road in was much easier. It costs $25 to get in, but my Senior National Park Pass admitted me for free. When I got to BLM land, the paved road ended. Ben suggested that I take the first left and go away from the main road leading in and out. He said it would be more sparsely populated, offer me lots more room and I wouldn’t have to deal with all the weekenders coming and going at all hours of the day and night. It was sparsely populated, but I couldn’t get even close to the lake due to bad “roads.” I parked and got level on some big rocks off to the side. It felt like I was on the moon.
Cosmo and I walked to see if I could find a passable road down to the lake. I met a man who works for SNORR. Southern Nevada Off Road Recovery. He said if I got stuck, I can call them and they will come get me out. He seemed surprised I came in as far as I did on this side of the land. He suggested I go back out to the parking lot where I came in and take the main road down. He said it was a much easier road to maneuver, and that I could get much closer to the lake. I decided I would wait a day or two to move. Last week when I was at the southern end of Lake Mead I was near the main road and I had cars coming and going past me all day and all night. It wasn’t so bad during the day, but at night, to have high beams coming through my windows every half hour or so was a bit annoying. I’m not sure why people were coming in or leaving at 2:00 a.m., but they were.
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By morning I’d changed my mind. Even though there were no actual roads, or anything resembling a road where I was, I seemed to be on the flattest part of the rocky expanse off the main road. There weren’t many people parked over in that area, but of the few who were, some decided to go (and some came back) in the middle of the night. I don’t know if they drove up to use the pit toilets, or if they decided to go into Las Vegas to gamble, but there was light traffic and since there wasn’t really a road, people felt it was OK to drive within feet of my van. It wasn’t really bad, but the primary point of me being where I settled was the idea that I was out of the way and wouldn’t have to deal with folks coming and going and shining their high beams in my van at night. The terrain I was on was primarily rocks with some sandy spots interspersed. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t really even walking distance from the lake. My reason for coming here was to be by the water, so I decided to explore and see if I could get closer to the lake. I took Cosmo for a long walk, and realized I was walking mostly uphill, and to keep on any semblance of a path or road, I needed to head in the direction away from the lake for a bit. I decided to just go back, pack up the van and drive around and see how close to the lake I could get. I actually got right up to the lake. There were short “fingers” of land, going down to the lake off the main road (Government Wash Road). Of course, all of them were occupied, so I turned around and took the first level spot I could find. That put me about a 10 minute walk to the lake.
After getting settled, we walked down to the lake. The temps were in the mid-90’s so a dip in the lake would have done us both a world of good. Unfortunately, there was no easy access to the lake itself. There were a couple strips of land going out to the lake, but they were occupied, and to access the lake from them would mean having to go into someone’s campsite. The rest of the access was extremely steep, just short of being a cliff that drops off into the lake. So we walked back home, and tried to keep cool as best we could while getting a plan for where to go next. I wanted to head to Sedona and Flagstaff on Monday. My friend Ben texted from Sedona and said “Don’t come.” He said that all the BLM Land is over-crowded, perhaps due to Spring Break? Or maybe just spring in general? He said they were packed in tightly at the BLM land and there was zero cell signal due to way too many people pulling a signal from the cell tower. He advised that it is a long drive out of BLM land to a real road and then a longer ride into Sedona and Sedona is packed with tourists. They drove there and it was so bad they turned around and left. So it didn’t seem like a very good option for me this week. I wanted to go to Flagstaff when I visited Sedona, but Flagstaff is still freezing at night, so that wasn’t an option either.
Here at Government Wash (west side of Lake Mead) it was blazing hot. The temps were up to mid-90’s and zero shade. I didn’t sleep well last night. It was quite hot with little air movement. I went to sleep easily, but within half an hour, a loud truck drove past, Cosmo barked at it and I was wide awake for an hour or more. Each time I began to doze off, another car would come past, and either the bright lights shining through my window or the sound of tires on gravel would wake me up. I thought about leaving in the morning and heading north, but traveling on Saturdays is never a good idea. And changing spots on a weekend means dealing with weekend campers. Spots are often hard to come by and roads in and out are often crowded. So instead, I decided to move back down the ridge, toward the original spot I had and the spot I was in with so much traffic.
Even thought it was a Saturday night, the area had few campers, and since it was not a through road, there was very little traffic. I guess we’ll ride it out until Monday, and then head to the northern tip of Lake Mead, where I believe we can actually access the lake. I’m craving water!
Lessons from the Road: I’ve spent much of this week contemplating homelessness, and Home-free-ness. While visiting friends in Las Vegas, it has become clear that many communities don’t want someone who lives as I do to park on their streets, or even in their neighbor’s driveways. Most HOA’s have very restrictive rules about RV’s. Of course this always gets me thinking about rules in general. “Let’s make as many rules as possible so that no one can do anything that might offend anybody else’s sensibilities.” That will be another rant for another time. So, while visiting Las Vegas, I stayed a night in a casino parking lot (they welcome RV’s for an overnight stay, hoping the occupants will come in and eat and gamble) and Cracker Barrel (they hope for the same, and have designated RV parking for bigger rigs to pull through without having to maneuver and take up several car parking spaces).
The morning I woke up in Hoover Dam Lodge and Casino’s parking lot, I was surrounded by vans—all makes, and models. Some were new and quite fancy; others were old and clearly had seen better days. Some were fully equipped while others just looked like regular work vans, that may or may not have anything more than a mattress inside to sleep on. When I took Cosmo out for his morning relief, a forty-something woman got out of a work van next to me. She smiled and said “Good morning!” She was relatively attractive and carried a small pot and a bottle of water. She moved to the grassy area and washed her pot with the bottled water before returning to the van. A few minutes later as I sat at my laptop, I saw an older woman get out of the van on the opposite side of me. She was disheveled, overweight and walked with a pronounced limp. She was muttering to herself. She carried a bag of garbage to the trash can at the edge of the parking lot. Like it or not, these are my neighbors, and I guess, they are part of my tribe. They live in vans; I live in a van. I’m guessing our circumstances vary… maybe a little, maybe a lot. I’m living my dream. Maybe they are too, or maybe they are living their nightmare. I don’t know. What I do know is that we mostly acknowledge each other. We at least smile and say “Good morning.” I think we are mostly invisible to the people coming and going from the casino, hoping to increase their fortunes at the slot machines. They probably notice the Class A RV’s, with sliders out, and satellite dishes up. I suspect they recognize them as being well-to-do tourists, coming to the casino for fun and the chance to win a fortune. But I don’t think they see those of us in vans. We are on the periphery. We stay low-key. By and large, we are invisible except to others who live a similar lifestyle, for whatever reason.
My friend Kitty who I met in Joshua Tree BLM land last fall bought a good-sized camper to pull behind her truck. She drove it once and decided it was way too big to tow behind her truck to all the places she wanted to go, so she set it up in an RV park and now lives in it. She bought a camper shell for her truck, and fixed it up inside with a single bed, a camping stove, water, and whatever she needs for long weekends out in the boonies. It’s a very cozy set-up and she spends most of her time outside of it, cooking on the stove on the tailgate and setting up a chair and table to eat. She takes long weekends and is figuring out what she needs and what she doesn’t need when she goes on the road full time in a couple years. It’s a good plan. Meanwhile, she told me this week that they were remodeling her laundry room at the RV park, so she went to the laundromat. She put her clothes in the washer and moved to her truck and settled into the back to read and lounge with the tailgate down, instead of hanging out in the laundromat while her clothes were in the washer. A guy walked up to the truck and tried to give her money. She was confused, until he said “I just want to help a little. I know it’s hard being homeless.” Kitty thanked him and took the money. When her laundry was finished, she went to the Dollar General where a homeless guy named Dave lives out back. She bought some water and snacks and took them out to him.
I thought that was such a cool story and I told her it was win/win/win. The guy who gave her money gets to feel good for helping a homeless person, even if it wasn’t the person he had assumed was homeless. Had she explained her situation, he may have felt embarrassed and may never have offered money to a homeless person again for fear of insulting them. Kitty took the money that was intended to “help a little” and did just that. Dave got water and snacks. Everybody is happy and feels just a tiny bit better about humanity. So do I.