Las Vegas Adventure—The Final Chapter

After discussing my concern about my return trip home by air with my physician cousin Kevin, I decided to drive home because of my age, medical history and the enhanced threat of being exposed to Covid-19 in a crowded airplane. I booked a car on Priceline.com for a one-way rental from Las Vegas for about $670.

I was already renting a car from Budget for the duration of my Las Vegas stay, and I checked to see what their deal was. It turned out they would charge me an additional $450 to convert my rental from a same location return to a one-way. But, because I planned to return the car two weeks early, I would recoup much of that fee. So, I decided to take Budget’s deal.

My last week in Vegas, I went to two of my three OLLI classes and began to strategize my trip home. I still wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but that the would take more than half a day and make my other travelling days longer. I had driven across the country last year from El Paso to Ohio and found that the fourth day driving was when the fatigue really set in. I wanted to avoid any extremely long days on the road.

Also, I planned to visit my brother Tim in western Illinois and calculated a route that wouldn’t affect the total time and distance of my route.

Another factor was the weather. While Las Vegas had high temperatures in the 70s for the first week in March, it turned cooler and cloudier the last week I was there. It even rained pretty steadily two of the evenings and early mornings. Also, the national news about the coronavirus was not good and it was causing many cancellations and business closings. I began to get concerned about the availability of food, fuel and lodging on my trip home.

So, I decided to leave on Friday, March 13. I texted my Airbnb hosts Lori and Ernie about my plans to check out early and I said good bye to Ernie and hit the road. The weather was cloudy and cool with an occasional sprinkle of rain. I headed southeast out of Henderson and took US 93 towards Kingman, AZ, and then picked up I-40 heading east.

I still had the Grand Canyon visit in the back of my mind, but the weather convinced me otherwise. As I passed Williams, AZ, the exit for the primary approach road to the Grand Canyon from the south, it was snowing and the cloud ceiling was hiding the tops of nearby mountains. It was only in the upper 30s, so it was not good weather for sightseeing.

So, I pressed on with my original plan and continued on to Santa Rosa, NM. As I passed through Flagstaff, AZ, with an altitude of 7.325 feet the temperature was only 33 degrees and it was snowing. Fortunately, it wasn’t sticking to the road surface and I continued across northern Arizona and New Mexico. I crossed the Continental Divide, altitude 7,800 feet and then got stuck an hour-long traffic jam near Joseph, NM.

As it got dark, there was a 20-mile stretch of highway where it was pretty foggy. I finally reached Santa Rosa at about 9:30PM and the only restaurant nearby that was still open was a McDonald’s. So, I feasted on a Chicken sandwich combo including diet Coke laced with bourbon once I got back to the motel. The Best Western motel was full, so I was glad I booked a room beforehand.

The next morning was sunny and cool, and it was back on i-40 heading for Oklahoma City. The weather was much better, partly sunny with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. As I approached Oklahoma City, it turned cloudy but it was still dry. After 11.5 hours on the road, I arrived in Joplin, MO, my second night’s stop.

I was ready for a more substantial meal, so I had dinner at a nearby Cracker Barrel. Fortunately, it wasn’t very crowded and I was able to avoid close contact with a lot of people. When I got back to the room I went online and found out that my niece Angela and her husband in Washington state might have Covid-19.

Her husband Kevin works in IT for Boeing but he also officiates high school basketball and football games. The previous weekend he attended the Washington high school boys’ basketball state championships in Tacoma. He didn’t officiate any of the games, but helped coordinate the activities at the scorer’s table and worked closely with another good friend and longtime official named Steve.

After the tournament ended Saturday night, Kevin went back home to Chelan, WA, and his friend Steve left for Palm Springs, CA, to visit his son. On Monday, Steve became ill and was hospitalized in intensive care with Covid-19. Steve Colby fought the disease for nearly a week, but passed away on March 16. He was 72 and had a history of heart problems.

My niece Angela and Kevin have quarantined themselves at home in Chelan, WA, and were tested for Covid-19 over the weekend, but the test results still hadn’t come back as I write this.

On day three of the trip, I went to get breakfast at the hotel at about 7:45AM and there was no one else there. The hotel parking lot was not that crowded and only three other people eventually showed up while I was eating. I was on the road by about 8:15AM.

Central Missouri is not unlike Ohio, rolling farm land that was beginning to turn green as spring was arriving. It looks like the number one farm product there is beef cattle, as I saw thousands of them in fields in both Oklahoma and Missouri. I proceeded northeast across Missouri and crossed the Mississippi River at Hannibal, MO, the birthplace and boyhood home of Mark Twain.

After a couple of more hours, I arrived in Macomb, IL. My brother Tim, his wife Shannon and I went to a bar restaurant on the central square in Macomb. We had a nice dinner and discussed how the Covid-19 situation was affecting the country and our families. It bothered me a little bit that the restaurant was very crowded, but it appeared to be the only business still open in central Macomb. After dinner, we went back to my motel and talked some more before they left. The only person I saw at this motel while I was there was the front desk clerk who checked me in and the one who checked me out. There were only four cars in the parking lot when we went back there after dinner.

Macomb is the site of Western Illinois University, and it had closed earlier that week. There was a surreal aspect to my evening and next morning there as I saw very few people out and about. After getting breakfast in a bag at the hotel, I hit the road at about 8:15AM. It rained steadily at times for the first two hours of the trip, but the rain eventually stopped by the time I crossed into Indiana. As I drove through Indianapolis, the traffic seemed very light for a Monday. After another five hours on the road, I arrived home in Stow, Ohio.

It was a long four days that had a bizarre feeling because of the impending health crisis and the way it seemed to be affecting travelers. For the most part, traffic seemed lighter than I would have expected and the motels I stayed in were virtually deserted, except for Friday night in Santa Rosa, NM.

These are indeed strange times and, although it was tiring and costly to drive home, I’m glad I cut my Las Vegas vacation short. In times of trouble, it’s much better to be home.

Las Vegas Adventure—Week Seven or “Coronavirus Interruptus”

As the week began, I was becoming more concerned about the coronavirus or Covid-19, but I’ll talk about that in a moment. First, I want to tell you about Las Vegas as a booming market for major league sports.

Right now, the local sports coverage is dominated by stories about the Las Vegas Knights hockey team and its quest for the playoffs in the National Hockey League. This is only the third season for the franchise and the team has garnered rabid support here. There are people wearing team jerseys and other clothes with logos all over the place. And it seems like about a quarter of the cars I see have either a Golden Knights decal or license plate frame.

A lot of that support is the result of the Cinderella first season for the team. The Golden Knights won their division and made in all the way to the Stanley Cup finals before losing 4 games to one. Not bad for an expansion team!

The other major sports story is the arrival of the former Oakland Raiders to play in a brand new 65,000-seat stadium in downtown Las Vegas this fall. The outside of the stadium is clad in dark glass with a giant video board on the side that faces the Las Vegas strip. The official opening of the stadium in August will feature a concert by country music superstar Garth Brooks.

Henderson, the Vegas suburb where I am staying, is building a 6,500-seat arena in the center of town and it will host a minor-league hockey team that will be affiliated with the Golden Knights.

The other big story for me here is the threat of the coronavirus. Because I am over 70 and was a smoker for about 30 years (more if you count secondhand smoke while growing up because both my parents were heavy smokers) I am very concerned about this disease.

At the end of the week, I drove across the desert to Palm Springs, CA to meet with one my cousins. Kevin Patrick is a physician who taught at the medical school at the University of California in San Diego. His specialty was and is public health and we talked over lunch at a Mexican restaurant about coronavirus.

He advised me find a different way to get back to Ohio than flying. He said my age and asthma condition made it dangerous for me to be exposed to this disease. And spending several hours in a sealed environment with people very close make the situation favorable for spreading illnesses. We talked about how both of us had become sick after flying in the past and now it could be dangerous.

After I returned to Henderson, I contacted Budget and changed my rental car to a one-way rental and I will return it in Ohio when I get home.

Kevin and I had a very nice lunch and discussed our families and the pleasant things about being retired.

Later that afternoon, he returned home to the San Diego area and I checked into my motel. With temperatures in the mid-80s, I headed to the swimming pool and had a nice dip and rest after what had been a tiring 4 and-a-half-hour drive earlier. Later that evening, I cruised down the city’s main street on my way to dinner.

Palm Canyon Drive was lined with stately, lighted palm trees and sidewalks were packed as people made their way to the many restaurants, bars and shops. This Friday night it was pretty warm and that added to the festive mood.

The next morning, I drove around Palm Springs and nearby Indio to check out the area. The desert climate makes this area a candidate for a future winter sabbatical. Palm Springs has nicely laid out neighborhoods and lots of amenities for a resort community of 45,000. Nearby Indio is different, with lower-priced housing and more Mexican shops and businesses. North and west of the city, I saw several large farm areas.

While driving around Indio, I also saw a large fenced-in, flat area west of the center of the city that is the site of the Coachella Music Festival that attracts a couple of hundred thousand people to this relatively small city. When I returned to Henderson on Saturday night, I heard on a newscast that this year’s festival was being cancelled because of the threat of the coronavirus.

So, I have decided to head home early after taking a couple of more classes at OLLI at UNLV. On the way home, I plan to stop and see the Grand Canyon and then visit my brother in western Illinois. I’m not looking forward to four days on the road to cover the 2,100 miles between Las Vegas and Stow. But, I think the health risk to me of air travel makes the decision to drive home a wise one.

Tune in next time for my account of the journey home.

Las Vegas Adventure-Week 6

This particular week was dominated by two news events that overshadowed things that I did. First, the Democratic Presidential Nominating Caucus for Nevada took place on Feb. 22 and it dominated the airwaves here for a least a couple of weeks beforehand. Local newscasts were full of coverage of visits by the candidates and a plethora of political commercials. Some station breaks between programs consisted entirely of ads for one of the several candidates still in the race. Once, the caucus was over, the regular mix of commercials returned. Thank goodness for Netflix, that allowed me to escape the political ads on TV.

The other event is the Coronavirus illness that is getting worldwide attention. As I write this, there haven’t been any reported cases in Nevada or the Las Vegas area. However, local news media report that several conventions have been cancelled and this is sure to hurt the local economy dependent on tourism and conventions.

Because of my age and my history of asthma and pneumonia, I am becoming increasingly concerned about this. My biggest concern is about flying home and spending several hours sitting with 150 or more people in a pressurized, sealed tube breathing recirculated air. I am continuing to monitor local news reports and considering going home early. If I do get sick, I would rather be quarantined at home or in an Akron hospital than here for obvious reasons.

Getting back to the election, the day of the caucus, it rained heavily at times in the morning and let up by afternoon. I worked out in the morning at the Black Mountain Rec Center and then came home to watch some basketball.  Because Las Vegas is in the Pacific Time Zone, the games are on TV earlier in the day and that’s still an adjustment for me. By mid-afternoon I was able to see Kansas beat Baylor and my Kentucky Wildcats beat Florida.

After dinner, the Nevada Caucus results were coming in so I spent the rest of the evening watching coverage of that event.

Sunday the sun returned and I tried out another new church, an ELCA Lutheran church in the Green Valley area. The pastor greeted me wearing a shirt decorated with guitars and he was also wearing sandals. He played guitar and sang as part of a five-piece band that provided music during the service. His wife is co-pastor of the church and the service was really enjoyable.

That afternoon, I went hiking on a trail near the entrance to the Lake Mead National Recreation area. Then it was back home for dinner and some TV free of candidate ads.

One problem I am having here is I keep getting up earlier than I want. The sunrise here is pretty early, a little after 6AM because we are on the very eastern edge of the time zone. So, I tend to wake up by seven, something that hardly ever happens at home. Also, the house across the street has two large dogs that stay outside and bark at anything all hours of the day and night.

In fact, I saw two police officers visit another house nearby one afternoon and I’m pretty sure it was about the dogs. That’s because, the amount of time they are outside now has decreased considerably.

My “big” excursion this week was to drive about 45 minutes on I-15 towards LA and get off at the town of Primm, NV. This enclave is located on the border between Nevada and California and is surrounded by miles and miles of desert on all sides. It consists of three large casinos, a truck stop, an outlet mall and several restaurants. The three casinos are the first that travelers from California see as they cross the border.

I went to see a display at Whiskey Pete’s Casino that is reputed to be the car that legendary robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were using when they were ambushed by police and both killed in 1934 in Louisiana. For more than two years they had terrorized the Midwest and South with a string of robberies and murders that gave the duo national notoriety at the time.

Director Arthur Penn’s 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde” starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway ends with a very violent and graphic scene of the death of these fugitives in a hail of machine gun and rifle fire. Here’s the clip and viewer discretion is advised because it is very gory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwPrX8e5xd4

Anyway, the display seems authentic and has loads of documentation. There were copies of news articles, police reports and the like on display. The local coroner reported that each of them had more than 50 bullet wounds, so many he couldn’t get an accurate count. The car itself is riddled with bullet holes. Here’s the car.

Also on display is the car driven by gangster Dutch Schultz that features bullet-proof glass and armor plating. After Schultz was jailed for a variety of offenses, gangster Al Capone allegedly used the car until he too was imprisoned.

I walked around the casino for a bit, but there was a heavy odor of cigarettes in the air so I decided to leave. I had a delightful gyro at a restaurant called the Mad Greek, drove by the other casinos and went back to Vegas.

That evening I went grocery shopping at Smith’s, which has several stores in the Las Vegas area, and discovered that it has Kroger store brand products. A reminder of Ohio out here in the West.

I spent the rest of the weekend enjoying sunny weather on the patio and watching some basketball on TV. Sunday was March 1 and that means March Madness, my favorite sporting event of the year, is just around the corner.

So, until next time…