The Grand Canyon, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and a casino with a caravan park attached. It’s where the Egg became terminally ill.
The only thing missing when it comes to the Grand Canyon – we will get to Caesar’s Palace in a second – is that unlike Niagara Falls it hasn’t got a Canadian side, but what we do have to work with is the question whether the Southern Rim (easy access) or the Northern Rim offers the most stunning views. Mrs Henry and I wouldn’t know the answer to that question, because both of us have an innate and indestructible preference for whatever is easiest, but maybe the burgers are indeed better at the Northern Rim.
Start your canyon-seeing from the historic Indian watchtower, from the east. National Parks po-facedly warns against vandalism directed against this newly built historical pueblo-style gift shoppe, but it does offer great views through the Grand Canyon.
‘Through’ is the key that unlocks the majesty of the Grand Canyon. From all other points you look down and against the northern canyon wall, which flattens the view.
In Sedona, Arizona, not far away from the Grand Canyon, folks are a bit too refined for gift shops. Sedona has put about that Sedona is “at the centre of vortexes [sic] that radiate the earth’s power” (quote from Lonely Planet). Sedona therefore doesn’t have gift shops, but artist’s shops, that sell glass swans and funny-smelling candles and make you kind of yearn for a gift shop.
There is one point in Sedona from which all rock formations can be seen. You scramble to the top of this great round rock on Airport Road, and you see the Tea Pot, the This and the That (all Sedona rocks, like pets, have names). Naturally, for high-speed tourists such as Mrs Henry and myself the Airport Road rock held great allure. See everything, move on. Three months may seem like a long time, but when you’ve got a whole country to look at, that’s a lot of rocks, and you can’t mess about.
In Las Vegas, Nevada, where Mrs Henry and myself are currently encamped in an ‘ahrr-vee parr-k’ in the grounds of one of the lesser casinos, Circus Circus, they have found an even more elegant solution to the problem of sights being boring. They simply don’t have any.
Instead, they have just filled any little space not occupied by a casino or a hotel or a poker machine with a gift shop. Four t-shirts saying ‘Viva Las Vegas’ for $9.97, who could resist? Mrs Henry certainly couldn’t.
Mrs Henry wanted to gamble in Las Vegas and not in any old casino either. Caesar’s Palace no less. So, on Friday night we strode imperiously through the corridors of our lesser host casino (Circus Circus) and hailed a cab on Las Vegas Boulevard.
“To Caesar’s Palace, please”, we said importantly.
On the way we saw a beggar, or ‘bum’ as it still called in the US, with a sign saying: ‘Ninjas kidnapped my family. Please give 50c for my karate lessons’.
When we got to Caesar’s Palace it was a bit overwhelming. It had been a while since Mrs Henry and I had visited Marrickville RSL, billed as the “Las Vegas of the West”. Caesar’s Palace, no disrespect, looked a bit like a cross between Marrickville RSL and Sydney Central Railway at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. People wheeling their luggage around, stopping off at a poker machine, people hurrying somewhere. People talking importantly on their mobile phones, while seating themselves at a blackjack table.
Blackjack? No, too simple, said Mrs Henry. Roulette? Too simple. Craps? Too complicated. So, pokies it was, just like Marrickville.
We worked out how to put in a five-dollar bill. A cocktail waitress assisted: “Money, yah, here, money money, yah yah!”, she kept saying, pointing at the slot, because the Australian accent leads some Americans to believe Australians don’t speak English.
At a minimum of one cent a pop you can play for a long time on five dollars, and Mrs Henry did. Up and down went the balance of credits. As low as 320, or $3.20, a stunning loss of 36 per cent! Then it went up, and up, and up!, to 780, or $7.80.
“Let’s cash it in!”, said Mrs Henry.
And we did and we strode out of Caesar’s Palace with a 56 per cent return on investment, and we were back at the Circus Circus arrrh vee camp for the evening news had the advertised TV-set in the Egg worked. It didn’t, and we wanted to leave Las Vegas, it turned out that the cabin lights, which come on and go off with the opening and closing of car doors, had sapped the battery.
Call the AAAA! Something we would do on a daily basis until we checked in and out at the Eggenschwiler Adventures on Wheels depot in San Francisco.
