You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Vegas poker success? Not so much. Touristy stuff, more than enough.
Tikay10
Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 159,814
in Poker Chat
Evening.
Not much success to report on the poker front so far. In fact, none at all, I'm 0/5.
So instead, a few words & photos from a day out we had yesterday, when he headed across to California in the car for a little look-see at outback America.
I actually wrote this for another site, but hopefully you'll manage a modicum of mild entertaiment from some of it.
Comments
We set off on I-15 (Interstate 15) in Vegas, which is Nevada's answer to the M1, but a zillion times bigger.
McCarron Airport was soon in the rear-view mirror, & within 10 miles, heading in the direction of LA (250 miles west), we were in a barren landscape, ringed on all sides by Mountains.
Barren? Just rocks, desert & mountains. No trees, no soil, no grass, no traffic lights intersections or roundabouts, just a ribbon of road stretching as far as the eye could see.
Despite being arrow straight with no junctions or whatnot, it's apparently an accident black spot with more deaths per mile than almost anywhere in Nevada or California. It seems folks drive from LA to Vegas for the weekend, don't go to bed for 2 nights then head home with their weed & alcohol addled minds, only to fall asleep due to the monotony of the drive. And get killed.
Every now & then there were the most magnificent strings of electricity cables & pylons you ever saw. Pylons don't come sexier than these.
That apart, nothing, no sign of civilisation at all.
Soon, we approached the State Line between California & Nevada, announced by a mandatory stop at what looked like a Border post. It's almost like visiting another country.
Now in California, we were soon back in an utterly barren land, no sign of civilisation, no houses or industry, just miles & miles of nothing.
Then, suddenly, on the horizon, I spotted a roller-coaster. WTF? Was it a mirage?
Soon, we could also see a collection of neon lights & buildings. And Whiskey Pete's Casino.....
It was like we were dreaming. WTF was this doing here, a zillion miles from anywhere? Wiki had the answer.
The community's economy is based on its three casinos, which attract gamblers from Southern California wanting to stop before reaching Las Vegas 40 miles (64 km) to the north, or as a last chance to gamble before leaving Nevada. Most of Primm's residents are employees of the casinos.
It's in a town called Primm, population 436, all of whom are employed in the Casino & associated gas station.
And it has a Premium Outlet. In the middle of **** nowhere. Who in their right mind would want to go shopping there? Well Gill for one, & she disappeared inside, emerging an hour later laden with bags.
We pushed on for another 20 miles or so, over a huge mountain pass which goes by the name of.....Mountain Pass.
Here, apparently, is the world's biggest Rare Earth Mine. Don't even ask what "Rare Earth" is as I have no idea. Google says....
Uses of Rare Earth Elements. Rare earth metals and alloys that contain them are used in many devices that people use every day such as computer memory, DVDs, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, catalytic converters, magnets, fluorescent lighting and much more.
Whatever it is, they have dug a chuffing great hole to extract the stuff.
Eventually, we spotted the sign we were looking for - Nipton, which sits just inside the Mojave National Park.
The road to Nipton is about 18 miles. No junctions, no side roads, nothing. Just the road to Nipton, population 20.
Quite a recent history, has Nipton.
In September 2017, Nipton was purchased by American Green Inc., for $5 million USD with plans to turn the town into a cannabis tourism destination. The CEO of American Green Inc hoped to make this into the first "Pot Town, USA". American Green Inc. sold the town in March 2018 after failing to attract the capital investment necessary to continue the project. The town was sold to Delta International Oil & Gas for a total of $7.7 million USD in debt assumption and Delta preferred stock, along with a provision that it continue with the project to transform the 80-acre town on the edge of the Mojave Desert into a cannabis-themed resort
Proper ramshackle olde-world town it was, too. This is it. All of it.
We went into the Trading Post, a sort of corner shop, staffed by a young guy who was clearly off his head with weed, & why not, nothing much ever happened there.
"Don't forget to go look at our Modern Art sculptures" he optimistically advised.
Gill is a little less worldly-wise than me in such matters, & so unwisely asked "What sort of Modern Art?"
So the bloke told us that they have a sculpture of "two big wheels made of Walmart shopping Trolleys".
I have some fairly odd tastes, I admit, but there is a limit.
I did rather enjoy these sort of tombstyle plaques though....
Especially this one.....
But wait.....
The exciting part was yet to come - the BNSF Freight Railroad runs through Nipton.
Even better, they still use timber railway sleepers, which are almost extinct in the UK now.
Timber railway sleepers smell simply wonderful, as they are soaked in vats of creosote for longevity. You'd not believe how many uses they can be put to.
And see those metal pins that secure the rail to the sleepers?
I'm a-guessing they were the inspiration for the Johnny Cash Track "John Henry's Hammer".
[youtube]
And unlike the UK, if you wanna go walk on the track, go ahead, help yourself.
Isn't this just the most exciting thing ever?
Reckon this is a great photo. I look a bit like Bruce Springstein, or some symbol of masculinity, stood there straddling the track.
Oh, & if you can tear your eyes away from that photo of me momentarily, far left you can see the shipping trolley big wheel sculpture.
What a photo, huh?
Soon, we were back on the road, heading for the Colorado River via a town called Searchlight, population 539. No idea why it has that name, but we had a mooch around, & it's real poverty-stricken trailer park stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searchlight,_Nevada
Despite that small population, it has a Court House & a Police Station, outside which were parked 4 Police cars. Not a place to wander around alone at night I'd say.
Next, we headed for the Colorado River & Cottonwood Cove Marina, via the Joshua Tree Highway.
Soon, we could see the Colorado River glistening in the distance, and we made for Cottonwood Cove, which is a sort of lake where the Colorado widens.
It was closed. Pfft.
We had fancied the idea of hiring a couple of fishing rods & seeing if we could catch a fish or two. Can't have been hard, the things were tame & as soon as you approach the water's edge, they come right up to you, hoping for food.
We headed back to Vegas via US-95 & Gill fancied some eats, so we spied a Panda Express & decided that would do.
Panda Express?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_Express
A Chinese restaurant chain, takeaway or eat in, with 2,000 branches & 39,000 staff. Incred, as in the UK, there are almost no "chains" of Chinese Restaurants, they are mostly family-owned single location affairs, where Mum & Dad close at 2am & head to the local Grosvenor with the takings.
It was cheap & cheerful pap, exactly what we like. Good value too, $25 for two meals & two sodas. We made the mistake of asking for "large" sodas. Blimey. That's not a trick of the camera, they really were huge.
I'd never heard of it either.
A little googling informs us that the town was originally known as "State Line", but with 50 States in the US of A, & so thousands of miles of state lines, there were many towns with the same name. So they re-named it after the chap who founded the town, Ernest Primm, who was, by trade, a Casino developer. He named his first Casino in Primm.......... Primadonna.
After he died, his son took over & went on to develop & open New York New York in Las Vegas, which, by chance, I dined in a few nights ago.
Thanks @SidV79
I do enjoy a good waffle.