Nevada flew by like a dream. We entered it in a mid-morning snowfall, at a bleak place called Jackpot, which consists of some casinos, hotels, gas stations and nothing else, stuck in the middle of a grey emptiness that can obviously support nothing else but greed.

We drove for a day through breathtaking scenery, once we left behind the clouds snagged along the southern edge of Idaho. Highways wandered across flat plains onto which the gods had plonked great lumps of rock during some immense game of hopscotch.

The sun moved from left to right as we desperately continued to flee the cold. As dusk fell, a herd of deer stopped to watch us chug past. It was still chilly when we ate in a small town where trains rumbled past a few yards in front of the restaurant. Hale Bopp glared down.

We decided to go on driving — it was still too cold. We drove through Las Vegas at midnight, skipping across the sea of lights like a stone in Ducks and Drakes.

Finally, with a wriggle past the Hoover Dam, we were in Arizona...

A return visit

We did revisit Las Vegas for a day, on our way north. It's a fascinating, weird place, and our time there was too short to really come to grips with it. Trouble was, though Lenore was happily feeding coins into slot machines, Ralph was anxious about the van full of possessions left baking in a hotel car park and couldn't relax. Another entry on the lengthening list of "Must go back!" places.

LENORE'S TRAVEL DIARY

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