Nevada Trip

I got to choose the family vacation this year, and it’s about time.  All this camping we’ve been doing is starting to get on my nerves.

I wanted to see Lake Tahoe and Yosemite in California, so my mom booked a trip for all of us to go there during mid-winter break.  It wasn't a smart time to book it because, little did we know, the snow season wasn’t over yet.  When you think of California, you don’t generally worry about it snowing in early April.  However, seeing as it’s the state with most diverse amount of climates, we should have known better (especially me, being the geography expert).  After we landed in Reno, Roger rented us a car to drive to the lodge, which was only about 40 miles away.  Once we got to the mountains it started snowing like it was Christmas in Canada.  Roger did a great job driving us through the snow.   We got a little lost and the snow kept accumulating on the ground, but eventually we made it to the resort at Squaw Valley.

After we got settled in our rooms, the power went out.  We ordered room service but had to eat it in the hallway, because there wasn’t enough light in either room.  It seemed like nothing was going right, but we were still in good spirits.  Jason's always been afraid of the dark, so to take his mind off things we played cards right there in the hallway.  It was eerily quiet in those halls, as if the rest of the world had been smart enough not to drive to Lake Tahoe that weekend.  God, it almost reminded me of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.  Let’s be thankful there weren’t any Jack Nicholsons with axes running about.

The snow kept falling the next morning.  There wasn’t really anything we could do; we couldn’t drive anywhere or see the lake like we’d wanted.  But it was the perfect environment for skiing, which is what Squaw Valley is famous for.  Roger explained the situation to the front desk, that we didn't really come here to ski, and they were nice enough to let us cancel our reservation free of charge.  I got out the map and proposed that we drive south to spend the rest of our vacation in Las Vegas, where not a single snowflake could be found within a hundred-mile radius.  Everyone agreed.  Jason was especially thrilled to finally be going on a road trip with me.  I’d been on all kinds of road trips with Julie and Laura in the past, and always felt strange about him not being invited.

The exciting drive out of the mountains was memorable.  We all wondered when the magical curtain of whiteness would part, and the desert would reveal its sunbaked surface.  After an hour of meandering over a snow-plowed pass, the faint orange glow of the promised land- I mean deadly desert- came into view.

On our way south I suggested we take a detour through Death Valley, because I’d never seen it before and the pictures I'd seen of it in National Geographic magazines were awesome.  Since this was my trip, nobody objected.  As we drove down the plateau of the high desert, the valley looked so hot that there was smoke rising from its floor.  As the sun set behind the far range of the valley, the smoke distorted the colors of light it projected, giving the landscape an ethereal quality that etched itself into my memory.  It felt like I was Roland in The Waste Lands, speeding down a pass on a monorail named Blane the Pain, whose howls could be heard echoing across the desert sands.  It all reminded me of Mike, and suddenly I came to respect the desert as much as he did.

As we approached Vegas, there was so much light that it glowed against the backdrop of the desert.  We stayed at the Excalibur Hotel, where we did a lot of swimming by day and eating at the buffet by night.  And by night, I do mean all night.

The next day I went on the New York New York ride, but nobody else wanted to go on it with me.  And we explored the Valley of Fire, just a bit outside of town, where I got to climb on rocks that were redder than blood.

To top off the insanity of the trip, the rental place in Reno wanted our car back, so we had to drive all the way back there instead of flying home from Vegas.  On the way back I played Velvet Acid Christ for everyone, and they were all like, “What on Earth is this music?"  I can't believe mom liked it.  She's stranger than I thought, and that's saying something.