Saturday, April 2
It feels so strange, following the routine of two weeks ago in Boulder City. I take a shower at the public pool as before, use the same laundromat, walk around in the park, fill my water bottle and gas tank at the same gas station, attend the Adventist church, talk with the church people, check my email at the city library, which has my info on file for the WiFi. I get a reply from a WWOOF farm in the California desert half an hour from Pahrump, and mention that I will show up on Sunday afternoon. The weather is the same as before, sunny and in the mid 70s, with a light breeze, couldn't be better.
I leave Boulder City around 4pm, going back the way I came along the 515 and the 215 beltway. But it is Saturday night, and I exit onto Warm Springs and make my way up the backside of the Strip along I-15. I park on the third level of the Fashion Show Mall parking deck and set out down the crowded sidewalks. While I have been up and down the Strip before, I have never visited it on a weekend. Shoppers are everywhere in the warm afternoon sun, strolling around with their packages. I don't have a map or guide with me, so I just ramble on about. We are all waiting for the sun to go down. Eventually it does and the Strip comes alive. The tallest Ferris wheel in the world is doing a brisk business. Musicians and performers are all over the sidewalks, crowds of onlookers slowing traffic to a crawl in places. One group of breakdancers at an intersection have well over a hundred people watching. Signs prohibit such obstruction, but they are not enforced. Hispanic women roll coolers around and call out "cold beer, cold beer". Five dollars for a cold Budweiser, yet many customers are buying. I watch as a group of young guys buy beers. The woman folds up the money, then calls into a two-way radio. A man approaches and takes the money, and they talk for awhile before he moves on to another vendor and repeats the process.
Of course, there are the usual card snappers, although they seem to be limited to certain areas and they don't force the cards into anyone's hands. For those who haven't been to Vegas, the card snappers are illegal immigrants who get paid to hand out explicit cards advertising escort services while wearing neon colored T-shirts advertising sexual services. They snap and flick the cards to gain the attention of passersby.
The crowd is thick as molasses near the Bellagio fountains, with a free fountain show every fifteen minutes after eight. Some of the overpasses are so thick with crowds and beggars and buskers as to be unnavigable. By 9:30 I am sick of the crowds and of Las Vegas Part II, and I walk back to my truck and drive down to the truck stop off 160, miles south of the Strip, for the night.
Sunday, April 3
I sleep in late before driving out along 160 to the "farm". After a stop at an unremarkable church housed in an industrial building, I continue on over the pass, turning off onto Tecopa Road before reaching Pahrump. The highway makes a beeline for the border, crossing into Inyo County. I pass the St Therese Mission and continue on into the community of "Charleston View". The desert plain here is cut up with a grid of ungraded tracks. A few of the parcels contain a ragged trailer house. I find the proper road and drive down the track a mile into the desert, reaching a ragged trailer splotched with a faded paint design. A nicer trailer stands nearby, and a Belgian woman comes out to greet me. Her name is Ann, and she has been living here for a few days.
She goes back inside her trailer, and an elderly woman wearing a sun bonnet then comes out of the ragged trailer and welcomes me. Her name is Jane, and she owns the place. Around the back of the old trailer, a trio of men work on a metal shelter that covers the entire ragged trailer. One of them is Jane's son Richard, and the other two are friends of the family. I introduce myself to everyone and then talk to Jane. The projects she has in mind are building a bottle wall. The property is already full of bottle walls; the trailer is almost surrounded by one, and there is a massive bottle wall corral in the yard. She is also interested in earth dome construction, and plans to construct an earth dome.
Meanwhile, the work stops, and conversation on the other side of the trailer gets louder and more drunken, although it is barely 1 pm. I make my way around to find a regular drinking marathon going on, empty cans of cheap beer scattered everywhere. Jane voices her disapproval of the drunkeness, and the foursome begin to bicker. After a while, the friends leave, and Jane, Richard, Ann, and I head off to the Tecopa hot springs for a bath. As Tecopa is in the low desert, it is close to 90 degrees here. I wait in the shade while Jane and Ann chat in French with the resort owner in a cabin that is full of artsy trinkets for sale.
Eventually, we make it down to the hot springs, where anyone staying with Jane can bathe for free. The hot spring baths are inside steamy bath houses. No clothing is allowed in the pools. The water is above 100 degrees, and the bathers regularly leave the pools to cool off before re-entering. The experience would have been far more enjoyable on a cool winter night.
After an hour or so, I leave the baths and sit outside. We regroup and go to the resort restaurant, which advertises "New American Cuisine". Fifteen dollar salad or a five dollar burger, the choice is easy for me. More bickering between Jane and Richard. After the meal is finished, Richard drives back over the pass under the setting sun and across the valley, missing the turn-off the first time. Back at the trailer, he offers me a Tecate and I accept. The womenfolk have already gone to sleep, and Richard turns in soon after. It is 8:30.
Monday, April 4
The next day, after a breakfast of oatmeal, I mix up big batches of plaster for an earthbag building and for a bottle wall. The sun is warm but I don't mind, after all the cold. There is talk of heading to Pahrump for a talk on Tuesday, and a trip to Death Valley on Wednesday. Everyone takes a siesta, and we continue work afterwards until the sun sets. That evening, I light a campfire with fake logs, and everyone gathers around. By 9:00, though, everyone is going back home or to bed. I let the fire burn down an hour longer before turning in to bed. My bed is outside under an overhang, with an unobstructed view of the desert plain and low mountains beyond. It is all BLM land past this tract. The lights of Las Vegas glow orange in the high clouds, and the lights of Pahrump twinkle on the horizon. Route 160 is visible coming down over the pass and crossing the far end of the desert plain.
Tuesday, April 5
There is very little snow on Charleston Peak this morning. The family sits around all morning, talking about French literature. I wait for work but there is none; they are all going into Pahrump for a talk at the library, and then meeting friends in the evening. Richard invites me to tag along in my truck or hang around the compound all day. I decide that this isn't going to work out, and tell Jane. She is disappointed but not surprised. "My guests come first here, and work comes second," she says. We both leave, but I turn left on the highway toward Tecopa while they turn right toward Pahrump.
Tecopa is a region of many springs. The bottomlands here are very green, in contrast to the barren land surrounding it. I pass Cynthia's and the date palm ranch in Tecopa, then turn south along 127. The highway passes through a dry lakebed. Mineral formations stand up from the bed, with layers denoting past lake levels. There is very little vegetation on the low desert here.
2087: Camper-coffee shop in Boulder City.
2088: Looking out toward Mount Charleston across the valley. Two other encampments are visible. Many residents here don't have wells, and instead ship water in from town or a neighbor who has a well.
2089: The humble abode, dwarfed by lowly creosote bushes.
2090: The green valley of Tecopa.
2091: Dried mineral piles on the Tecopa lakebed.
