It used to be that you could roll into Las Vegas on a whim any time and find a room on or near the strip for around forty bucks.  Not anymore.  We found that out, my brother and I.

            Kevin had called from Phoenix about a month earlier and said he decided to move to Seattle, where I lived.  After ten years in Phoenix, I guess he finally got tired of dry heat, dry skin and dry earth.  So, he decided to head for the Northwest where everything is wet and moldy.  It was typical Kevin—no middle ground.

             He asked me if I would fly down to Phoenix over Memorial Day Weekend and help him tow a U-Haul trailer back to Seattle.  Of course I would.  I love road trips, and there was a big, remote swath of America that I had not yet traversed–Nevada from South to North.  It wasn’t the fastest route, but 2,000 miles or so on Interstate 5 was out of the question.

            After I arrived we busted through the Phoenix blacktop boil-and-wave heat to the U-Haul office to pick up the trailer.  Here, we experienced the first of what would be a long string of comical mishaps and difficulties:  We got six blocks from the U-Haul office when the empty trailer flew off the hitch and slammed into the back of the truck.  Back at U-Haul the break lights on the trailer stopped working.  Since we had the only trailer still available, all we could do was tinker around and try to fix the problem.  An hour later, the lights were working again, the trailer was securely hitched, and we were on our way.

            Finally packed and heading out of town, we made a wrong turn and discovered how difficult it can be to pull off an “Austin Powers” style multiple-point u-turn with a trailer.  We quickly drew the suspicion of a police officer and got pulled over.  The cop looked somewhat relieved and yet disappointed as he walked up to the window, right hand on the holster.

            “Did you know the tags on your trailer expired four years ago?”

            “Uh, know.  We just picked it up from the U-Haul office a few hours ago.  Isn’t that their responsibility?”

            “It’s your responsibility as long as you are driving it.” The cop looked around a bit, and looked at us a bit—a couple of 20-something white kids with scruffy faces.  His attitude lightened as he told us that human traffic smugglers like to use old U-Haul trailers to sneak illegals into Arizona.  He was, apparently, prepared to open up the trailer and find a bunch of people stewing in their own messes.  Instead all he found were boxes.

            “Seeing as the expired plates deal is not really your fault, I won’t bother you with a citation,” he said. “You’ll have to decide if you want to hassle with U-Haul or take the chance of being pulled over again somewhere on your way up to Seattle.  Have a nice trip.”

            We rolled down the Nevada side of the Hoover Dam road about eleven that night, expired plates and all, into the lights of Vegas.  By two in the morning, we had checked every hotel on or near the strip to find that there was not a single room available in the whole damn town.  At the Golden Nugget, we couldn’t get a room that night, but we were able to book an early room that would be available the next morning at ten. 

            “We’ll take it!”

            Kevin looked around, dead tired. “Well, we have about eight hours before our room is available.  Where are the nickel slots?”

            “Screw that,” I snapped.  “I’m taking my hundred bucks and heading for the blackjack tables.”

            An hour later, out a hundred dollars and seven more hours to go, I went looking for Kevin and found him passed out in an empty lounge, head back, mouth agape.  He looked dead.  Nobody seemed to notice, and if they did, they didn’t give a damn.  Only in Vegas.

            We passed the night away in a sleep-deprived delirium of obnoxious slot machine sounds and weak gin-and-tonics interspersed with fitful naps on slippery Vegas casino lounge chairs.  When we finally got our room I was too tired to sleep, so I went to the pool.  The Golden Nugget has one of the most pathetic pools in Vegas, but it was absolute bliss.  After returning to the room, I slept like a bump-on-a-log for a good eight hours and woke up smelling like roses at one in the morning. 

            We checked out and were off by two, headed north on two-lane out of town.  Like a light switch we passed from the flash and dazzle of Vegas into the complete blackness of a moonless pre-dawn desert.  All was totally dark except for what was in the path of the narrow beam of our brights.  Before long, the only radio we could get was the Spirit station playing Christian Rock on FM, or talk of UFO sightings on AM.  We chose the AM.

            This was beautiful desolation.  We were the only vehicle slicing through this part of the desert for miles and miles in either direction.  The black of the desert night brought on the mystery of it.  To the right, or east, we knew we were paralleling the boundary of a massive military installation.  We had visions of hidden-away extra terrestrials and secret weapons, complemented by the crack-pots on the radio.  To the left, or west, was more desert.  Farther west still was Death Valley.  Behind us, fading further and further from us in distance and thought, was the nausea of Las Vegas.  Up ahead were hundreds of miles of pure, raw, American West.  Beautiful desolation.

            Around sunrise we came to the first real town since Vegas.  Tonopah, Nevada is possibly the most remote town of any size in America outside of Alaska.  At the four points of the compass, Las Vegas was now 206 miles to the south.  Reno was 230 miles to the west.  North 250 miles was Winnemucca.  And, 170 miles east was Ely.  In the middle of these great distances was Tonopah, a place where tumble weeds roll, people look at newcomers with a crooked eye, and you wonder how in the hell one makes a living here.  I thought this town must be the image that Easterners who have never been West envision when they think of an American desert town.

            Hours later, on our northward journey, we briefly left the desert and climbed over one of Nevada’s many sub-ranges.  We went from the scratchy desert to an aspen forest in a few turns, and just like that, we were back down the other side, through the tiny Nevada town of Austin and back into the desert where we soon ran over a rattlesnake in the road as a buzzard carved big circles in the sky above.

            Another hour or so and we came to Interstate 80.  A brief 50 mile jaunt west on I-80 brought us to Winnemucca.  In Winnemucca, we gassed up and jumped back on northbound two-lane.  Sixty miles later, just south of the Oregon border, solidly in the middle of Great Basin nowhere, a tire on the trailer blew out.  It was a Sunday afternoon, we were 60 miles from the nearest town with services, it was 95 degrees, and we passed another vehicle about once every ten minutes.  There was nothing to do but wait for something, anything.

            We got out and walked around a bit.  We threw a few rocks.  Beautiful Granite Peak rose in the distance to the southeast.  There were no cars and no buildings in sight.  It was hot.  Just to pass the time I decided to do some sunbathing… in the middle of the highway.  I walked out into the road and laid down on my back, right on the dashed yellow line.  With the warmth of the pavement at my back, I stared up at the blue sky.  It was total silence.  There was not even the faint whisper of a breeze over the dirt.  I knew I didn’t have to watch for cars because I would hear the whine of tires from a mile away.  I laid there.  Right there in the middle of the open road, in the middle of the wide open desert, I just laid there and stared up at the sky, and listened to the absolute silence.  It was a complete and total silence that I believe few people ever experience.  Even in the mountain wilderness, there is usually sound… a breeze rushing through the pines, the soft rush of a creek, the singing of a bird… Here it was absolute silence and it was stunning.  Beautiful desolation.

            I heard one vehicle approach after about 15 minutes and I got up and moved to the side of the road.  As the car rolled by, the passenger, on older lady, stared wide-eyed as if they had just seen a monster, for who in the world would take a nap in the middle of a highway?  About 15 minutes later, another car approached, and I could see the light rack of the state trooper.  We gave him a slight wave and he stopped.

            “They didn’t give you a spare?”

            “Nope.  It’s re-treaded tire, too.”

            The cop shook his head in disgust. 

            “I’ll call a tow service for you.  You’re sixty miles out, so it’ll take ‘em about an hour to get out here.  On a Sunday, out here, it’s going to be a helluva bill for U-Haul,” he said with a smile.  “Uh, you guys don’t really need me to stay here until they arrive do you?”

            “No, we’ll be all right.”

            He stared a bit at our expired tags, shook his head again, and then took off without a word.  An hour or so later, the tow truck arrived with a spare, and we were on our way again by late afternoon.

            Across the border now into Oregon, we had spent the previous fourteen hours in Nevada.  We had traveled the state the longest way possible, from its southern tip to the northern border.  Now in Oregon, we remained in remotest American desert.

            When people think of Oregon, they think tall trees, long Pacific beaches, maybe the white point of beautiful Mount Hood.  All that is true on the west side of the Cascades.  Southeast Oregon is a different world.  It is one of the driest places in North America, and one of the most sparsely populated.  The artificial state border changed nothing for we continued for hours and hours through the Great Basin desert. 

            Our narrow strip of pavement turned westerly just as the sun was grazing the desert horizon.  Gradually, as the day closed, we passed other vehicles with more frequency.  With the increase in traffic we were transitioning from the gut of the empty West into the more peopled Northwest.

            We rumbled into the great town of Bend, Oregon after dark.  Five Redbulls down, we stopped for gas and more Redbulls and continued on.  Eighteen hours in from Vegas, we still had a good six or eight hours of driving to Seattle.  There would be no stopping until the finish line.

            Beginning our ascent over the Oregon Cascades, the brief appearance of the nighttime stars were now concealed behind a bank of clouds.  As we climbed higher it began to snow.  Then it snowed harder.  And, then it was a total whiteout.  It was Memorial Day Weekend and I recalled just a little earlier that day, I was lying on my back on the hot pavement of Nevada highway in 95-degree desert heat.  Now, here we were, just a few hours later driving through a snowstorm over the Cascades.  There were trees now, something we had not seen in great numbers since Phoenix, and snow was collecting on them this day before the start of June.

            Cresting the pass, we crossed into the Oregon of people’s dreams.  Big trees and big mountains were all around us.  The snow soon turned to rain before it stopped altogether.  We were back on dry pavement now as we headed toward the Pacific, but the air was full and heavy.  That barrier, the Cascades, changes the very nature of air, for on this side, the West side, it was saturated, cool and refreshing.

            Through the city of Portland and then north on Interstate 5, we finally arrived in Seattle at four in the morning.  After one run-away trailer, a break light malfunction, a suspicious cop, an expired license plate, a sleepless casino night, a flat tire, a helpful cop and a tow truck, one freak snowstorm, and enough Redbulls to keep my heart rate up for a week, we finally pulled into the Emerald City.  We had passed through the beautiful desolation of the American West, from one extreme to the other.