Primm, Nevada

This was so far a low point in our trip. We're heading to Laguna Beach and needed a place to break our journey before crossing the California Desert. We chose Primm, right at the Nevada/California border. Primm is made up entirely of three casino resorts (all low budget). We stayed at the most low-budget of all, Buffalo Bill's. This might have just been a nice affordable weekend for some folks there; but for all too many it looked like they were spending their rent money. Casinos are really good at separating people from their cash: this place was really dark, so you couldn't tell whether it's night or day (No," oops, the sun's coming up, I should call it a night and head home"), no clock to be found anywhere in the place, the pool shuts down at 8:00 so nothing to do but hit the casino, and all amenities radiate around the gaming area, you have to cross the casino floor to get to the hotel, restaurant, kiddie game area, etc.

On some level, though, the low-end places are more honest about what their business is all about. The industry likes to glamorize itself by calling it "gaming" rather than "gambling" and their customers "players" instead of "gamblers". The fancier places may have nice restaurants, showgirls, albino tigers and Blue Man Group, but, in the words of our President, it's all lipstick on a pig. We were pretty glad to leave.

The Mojave Desert was blazing hot (of course), and where we came through, there were a number of very odd looking mines- salt or gypsum or something. It looked like a scene out of a science fiction movie. General Custer said about another desert "It's like Hell without the fires"; that kind of nails the Mojave in July.

One bright spot: about an hour southwest of Primm, in the middle of the Mojave, we stopped for breakfast in Baker,California, home of the world's largest thermometer and this terrific over-the-top Greek Diner, the Mad Greek Cafe. Photo above.