Las Vegas: experience Fremont Street

If you go to Las Vegas, peel yourself away from the fabulous Strip and spend at least one evening at the Fremont Street Experience, where Vegas was born. Here you'll find some of Vegas's oldest casinos: the Golden Nugget, Pioneer, Horseshoe, 4 Queens and others.

Before there was a Strip, that incredibly cool four-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, Vegas neon and nightlife lived on Fremont Street. Follow Las Vegas Boulevard east for about five miles and you'll find the Fremont Street Experience, a Vegas must-see.

While some of Fremont Street near Las Vegas's original downtown is a bit dicey after dark and not recommended as a place for tourists to stroll, the Fremont Street Experience is a great venue for everyone from die-hard gamblers to families.

An electronic canopy the length of five football fields pops with free hourly light shows. It soars 90 feet over your head and connects the blocks of shops, restaurants, hotels and casinos into an indoor pedestrian zone ablaze with lights, color and neon.

Just outside the entrance to the Fremont Street Experience is the Golden Gate Casino, which offers "The Best Tail in Town." For $1.99 you get a parfait glass chock-full of shrimp cocktail. Our family of four downed five of these luscious bargains: Adam had two.

I love Vegas. Great fun. Can't wait to go back.


www.LoriHein.com

Las Vegas, Lake Como and Living National Treasures

Don’t overlook small museums.

They often have great stuff that you can enjoy without the hassle, crowds or ticket prices of their stuffy, celebrated sisters. Four miles from my house, in Brockton, Massachusetts – birthplace of fighter Rocky Marciano and a shoemaking mecca in its heyday – sits the Fuller Craft Museum, a rare Brockton cultural gem. (The city is trying mightily to revitalize itself, and a few seasons ago it scored a home run by enticing actor Bill Murray and a group of investors to fund the Brockton Rox, a pro baseball team whose home field is a beautiful new stadium next to Brockton High School. Working as a Rox usher has become the cool summer job for area teens. Bill Murray Bobble Head Night is in the lineup for July.)

Brockton is the last place I would have expected to encounter great art. But it’s at the Fuller that I discovered the masterful work of glass artist Dale Chihuly. Chihuly’s ethereal glass creations have graced some of the world’s most renowned museums, but the tiny Fuller managed a few years back to get hold of roomsful and mounted a special exhibition.

As the kids and I wandered the galleries blooming with back-lit, blown-glass Technicolor flowers and other crystal creations, I understood why Dale Chihuly was honored, in 1992, as the first National Living Treasure by the Institute for Human Potential at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Just as places are designated as treasures because of their cultural or historic importance, so are people in the arts. In 1950, the government of Japan was first to begin selecting accomplished artists as Living National Treasures. Japan's model of honoring valuable cultural contributors, and subsequent selection guidelines espoused by UNESCO, have since taken root in countries, institutions, states like Hawaii, and tribes like the Cherokee that wish to recognize their human, "intangible treasures."

Having been turned on in Brockton to the work of a National Living Treasure, naturally the first thing I wanted to do when I got to Las Vegas was see Dale Chihuly’s Fiori di Como, Flowers of Como, the 40,000-pound blown-glass explosion that hangs on a 10,000-pound steel armature and covers the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel’s lobby.

Before I could view the glass masterpiece, I had to get the kids past Bill, the Bellagio security guard, who, thankfully, was having a mellow day and providing only spotty enforcement of the hotel’s "Under 18 Policy." Families be warned: the Bellagio does not want you.

Bill was stationed next to the "Must be 18 or registered guest to enter the hotel" sign. I chatted him up and found he was from Watertown, New York, a place I pretended to know something about: "Watertown... nice quiet place..." Bill, either gullible or homesick, lit up, pointed to the sign and said, "They enforce it more on the weekdays, less on the weekends, so go ahead."

Dana and Adam were the only kids in the entire place (save for two tow-heads, coutured by Gap and pulling cutesy backpacks on wheels, who were checking into a suite with their flashy parents), and it was weird. I couldn’t wait to see the Chihuly ceiling and hightail it out of the Bellagio.

If you’re in Vegas, see the Chihuly ceiling, even if you have to leave the kids at the door while you dash in. (Bill’s probably retired, and the Bellagio now makes a point of posting its exclusionary policy on its Web site, so the odds of sneakin' the young ‘uns in are slim.)

Probably easier to fly to Italy to see the real Bellagio, a dreamy town on Lake Como, home to George Clooney, and just an hour’s drive north of Milan.

When I dug out a photo of Bellagio, taken from the lakefront balcony of our lovely, high-ceilinged connecting rooms at the Hotel Britannia Excelsior in Cadennabia (to get special treatment at the best price, deal directly with the owners by e-mail or fax when booking a non-chain hotel), I could see how Bellagio’s color and magic inspired Chihuly’s Vegas masterpiece.


www.LoriHein.com

Wildfire Awareness Weeks in the West

States throughout the West have declared "Wildfire Awareness Weeks" this spring to remind residents and travelers that small acts like tossing lit cigarette butts or leaving smoldering campfires can ignite fiery, potentially deadly devastation.

In Texas, Wildfire Awareness Week came in April. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger picked this week, May 7-13, to put fire awareness on the front burner, as did Washington's Governor Christine Gregoire. The Web site of the Oregon State Fire Marshal offers a how-to guide and tool kit for public officials around the country interested in running their own fire awareness weeks.

Once you've seen wildifre, you never forget what its fury feels like. As the kids and I rolled through the West on our cross-country summer road trip, wildfire or wildfire threat was a constant companion. We first met it in Utah, and it stayed with us through several weeks and seven states. An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:


After Lee Vining, we were renewed. Even New Paint took to the road with sparked vigor.

But the heat didn’t let go for long. We’d feel it again before we hit Tahoe. Antelope Valley’s Walker River ran beside us for a while. Clear, green, and bouncing fast and white over tan rocks. It led to the town of Walker, its mountainsides burned. Three virgin wildfires were building strength in the hills above the road. At Coleville, bad went to worse, and the earth was on fire again.

Coleville High School had been turned into a firefighting command center. Two fires raged. And they got bigger, before our eyes, gaining on us most of the way to Tahoe.

A card table marked “Check In “ sat at the high school’s front door. Inside the fenced-in schoolyard, workers catching a break ate from Stewart’s Firefighter Food Catering trailer. A water tanker driver slept in his cab, boots sticking out the truck’s window.

It was a big operation. Signs at the command center thanked “Marines, Pilots, Firefighters, Law Enforcement.” Planes circled the fires, and a massive Chinook dropped loads of retardant from a huge, hanging red bucket. It was eerie to be in the thick of this. We were glued to the windows, watching the fires spread and water tankers race south toward us on 395 out of Reno, Nevada. People had started to pull off the road to sit it out and watch. Everyone’s headlights were on. The smoke cloud chased then caught up with us. It blocked out the sun and took on the look of an atomic blast- orange, yellow, sick gray and brown. I stopped to take pictures. We’d never see the likes of this again, so close. Dana shouted, “My seat is red!” The dashboard was orange, the road and cows outside the van a frightening shade of fiery crimson.

At Topaz, California, population 100, we drove above Topaz Lake, elevation 5,050 feet. The lake below us was peppered with weekend boaters and jetskiers who flitted about in noon darkness, the water and air turned gray by the gargantuan smoke clouds that would soon send everyone indoors. People were eking out a last bit of Sunday fun before the fire put an end to it. It was surreal. People buzzing about on fast boats, and water-skiing, while a hideous mountain of flame, ash and smoke bore down and ate more of the land just beyond the lake. I looked at the water the people played in and thought if it could only be lifted up and delivered to the hills, it might be enough to stop the fiery advance.

At the state line, cars traveling south from Nevada waited at the California Agricultural Inspection Station, everyone looking up at what they were driving into. The air was heavy with the smell of burning pine. Tiny pieces of ash floated around New Paint and settled wherever they could take hold. The day turned brown. We rode down into Nevada’s Carson Valley, through Gardinerville and old, brick Minden. Sierras embraced us. The fire followed us.

“Tahoe Horse Shows in the Sun,” said the sign. From the road, I’d seen a few riders fly over jumps. I pulled into the show site. “Any chance this young horse lover from Massachusetts might watch for a few minutes?” I asked the old man sitting under an umbrella by the dusty parking lot. “Go on through,” he smiled. This was serious stuff. Professional riders, wealthy owners, incredible equines. The scene was moneyed, electric, regal, privileged. And surreal.

As these impeccably-postured people and equines flew, seemingly without effort, around the arena and over the jumps, as rapt owners and spectators watched every turn and hoofbeat, two wildfires raged not more than a score of miles away. The fire we’d driven under was eating the sky to the right of the small grandstand, and a second fire, wholly in Nevada, was gaining momentum and height to the left. No one looked at, spoke of or paid any attention to the wildfire-filled sky. They rode and watched their horses. Over our heads, firefighting tanker planes came and went, landing at an airstrip next to the show site, reloading with slurry and water, and taking off again. And again, and again, and again, while people rode five-figure horses and tried to win blue ribbons.


www.LoriHein.com

Valley of Fire

Las Vegas, while ecologically criminal, is a great vacation destination for those seeking a temporary suspension of reality. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but Vegas was great fun. We gambled, up to a limit we'd established before leaving home: Mike put 25 cents in a slot machine at the Mirage. When we got home, we told people we’d lost everything we'd bet.

Vegas is weird and unnatural, and that’s its appeal. Some of my favorite moments came during dawn runs down the Strip. The megawattage of round-the-clock casinos lit the way through the 6 a.m. still-dark, and I noted that, save for the homeless and a few locals on their way to work, I was pretty much the only person in Vegas up for the new day at that hour. Lots of people were still working on yesterday and hadn’t been to bed yet. Limo drivers ferrying all-night partyers back to their hotels tooted and waved, often through the din of inebriated passengers shooting through the cars' sunrooves, arms in the air, mouths casting loud, happy, unintelligible mumbles into the pre-dawn.

When you need a break from Vegas’s bright lights, buffets and bacchanalia, rent a car and head for the Valley of Fire, a remarkable state park one hour northeast of the Strip . This compact, beautiful place serves up the full spectrum of Mojave Desert scenery and topography in one short road trip. A six dollar entrance fee puts you on a series of roads that run through the park and past a visual feast of red rock, sandstone formations, cactus and desert scrub, fields of petrified wood, magenta mountains and ancient petroglyphs.

At massive Atlatl Rock, a wooden staircase takes you to a high viewing platform built next to a magnificent collection of 1,500 to 3,000 year-old petroglyphs carved into the stone face. At the Beehives (photo), orange sandstone mounds eroded into busty, elegant swirls, the kids did some rock climbing and hid from the hot sun in cool niches worn into the formations' sides.

Park your car at Arch Rock and walk around to its back side, where nature over eons has carved two stories of rooms into the monolith the arch rests on. A giant stone condo. We sat inside and thought about the Fremont and Anasazi people believed to have spent time in this valley and thought to be the artists of the Artlatl petroglyophs. They probably rested, perhaps lived, where we sat. Today, you can get married at Arch Rock. For about a grand, Las Vegas Weddings 4 You will transport you from Vegas, get you hitched, and broadcast your wedding video over the Internet. (What would the Fremont think?)

When you’ve had your fill of this beautiful place, head back to Vegas the way you came, or continue up to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam before returning to the Strip. The road through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area yields views of the biggest, bluest desert sky you’ve ever seen, mountain goats standing atop great ridges covered in scrub, oases of wild palms nurtured by natural springs, gentle curves and undulations falling away from the road down to Lake Mead, which shimmers in the distance. Stop at boat put-ins like Callville Bay to ogle the seriously tricked-out houseboats (they're for rent) tied up at the marina.

We made a quick visit to Hoover Dam. You can take the expensive Visitor Center tour into the bowels of the dam, but we skipped that, opting instead to stand, for free, on the road that runs atop the mighty dam and connects Nevada to Arizona. Mountain and Pacific time zones meet atop Hoover, and one clock tower tells "Nevada Time," the other, "Arizona Time," an hour later. We took in the powerful view – Lake Mead on one side, the Colorado River on the other.

Hoover Dam is 25 miles from Vegas. We were back in time for happy hour.


www.LoriHein.com

Travel America

I have a book reading tonight at the West Bridgewater Public Library here in the Boston area. (At 7 p.m., if you're from these parts and looking for a TV alternative.) This "Evening of American Travel" will mix excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America with a slide show of images from across the U.S. Here's an excerpt I'll be sharing:

We crossed the southern Nevada desert on a morning when forecasters down in Vegas promised 110 degrees. I knew we were in for a challenge when we hit Modena, Utah. On the map, it looked like a sizeable border town, and I’d planned to fill up there and take a mental deep breath before we jumped into Nevada.

In real life, Modena sat in an elbow-shaped depression off Route 56. We looked down on its tiny entirety from the highway, and I saw nothing inviting. The Nevada crossing was the only point in the trip I’d had any concern about, as the map showed few towns and great, hot distance between them. Looking down on Modena, it hit me that maps are collections of comparisons. Whether something’s written big or small on a map depends on what’s around it that cartographers compare it to. Modena was near nothing, so they wrote it big. That doesn’t mean it has a gas station. If it did, I didn’t see it.

We came to the Nevada line and entered eight hours of utter brown desolation. Leaving Utah felt like stepping off into a giant superheated void. This was the trip’s longest day.

Through all of Nevada, we’d climb about 1,500 feet to the crests of 6,000-foot summits, plateau at that elevation for a while, then drop 1,500 feet to do it all over again. We crested Panaca Summit at 6,719 feet, then coasted about 10 miles downhill into the town of Panaca. We needed gas. We had half a tank and all of Nevada in front of us. Like Modena, Panaca was big on the map. And, it was the last place writ large for a long, long stretch. If Panaca didn’t have gas, we were in trouble.

The town was a shock. Route 319 cut through downtown, where we saw not a soul. There was Panaca Market, a Mormon church, and the Spud Shop, which sold something called spudnuts. No gas station. Was this a joke? Were we in a bad dream? People could buy spudnuts in Panaca, Nevada, writ big on the map, but no gas? My hands clammed up on the steering wheel as I looked clear to the end of Panaca where Route 319 dead-ended at Route 93. I knew we couldn’t leave this town without buying gas, because the map showed a whole lot of hundred-degree nothing beyond it. I made plans. I’d call AAA on the cell phone and have them deliver. I’d flag down passing cars and pay them to siphon gas into New Paint’s tank. I’d find a local rancher and buy up his supply of tractor gas.

Just as I had us putting down temporary roots in Panaca, (“Hi, Mike, it’s us. Just wanted to let you know we’ll be a few days late meeting you in Fort Bragg because we’re living in Panaca, Nevada until we find gas.”) an old service station appeared. It was a full-serve. I laughed out loud, because New Paint needed an oil check, too. Hot dang. Good joss, this!

Two guys were working under the hood of a white pickup. We sat at the pumps for a few minutes, waiting to be full-served. We were three feet from these guys. Neither looked up. There was an old man inside the station. He didn’t come out. I got out of the van and waited. Nothing. I popped the hood and stood there. Not so much as a “be with you in a minute.” Adam got out of the van and stood next to me. We were invisible. “I guess we’ll have to figure out how to check the oil,” I said so they could hear. Nothing. None of the three grown men at this blistering outpost paid any attention to a woman traveling across the desert with two children. Yes, this was a joke, and we were in a bad dream.

I filled the tank and went inside to pay. A trio of slovenly, overweight people was stocking up on 9:30 a.m. chips and soda. The leathery old man behind the counter took my money without looking up. He said nothing. I read all the signs and newspaper clippings he’d tacked up. I figured he wanted me out of there, so I took my time. “Dear IRS, Please Cancel My Subscription.” “If you’re grouchy or ornery there’ll be an extra $10 charge for puttin’ up with you.” “It’s easy to call branding inhumane when you’re sipping wine in Las Vegas.” And the handwritten chart showing mileage between Panaca and other populated places. Beyond nearby Pinoche and Caliente, every other place was triple digits away. I went outside feeling bad. We’d just started Nevada, and it hadn’t shown us anything good.

When I got to the van, one of the guys who’d been working on the pickup had just finished checking the oil and coolant and was teaching Adam how to do it. He told me everything was full, that everything “looked good.” That was all. No other conversation, no questions, no lingering.

But that’s all that was needed to redeem Nevada.

Excerpted from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America. Copyright Lori Hein, 2004