Day 1

Day One – Tuesday 15^th April

First Impressions

My first encounter with America on this trip was a rather terrifying one that involved being led away from immigration in Minneapolis by a member of airport security, who had taken my passport. Now as it turns out the matter was innocent enough, with the issue stemming from my returning to America so soon after I’d finished my exchange programme in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, they were just making sure I wasn’t coming back in an attempt to immigrate to America illegally.

While I ultimately had nothing to worry about and everything was resolved quickly enough, with plenty of time to catch the connecting flight to Las Vegas, the incident served to highlight just how damaging to the American psyche 9/11 was.  Security has become paramount, to avoid an attack like that from ever happening again, and every possible threat, no matter how small, has to be followed up and investigated. 

Stepping off the plane in Las Vegas it becomes apparent that you’ve arrived in a fantasy land. Slot machines are waiting just outside the gates beckoning you in with the siren like call of easy money, bright lights are flashing all around signalling to the new arrivals that you are about to abandon any sense of normalcy and videos advertise the shows and adventures you can indulge in just outside the doors. The airport is a tunnel that transports you from reality to fantasy, with the cheery tunes blaring from the slot machines acting as your guide on this journey. 

Day 2

Day Two – Wednesday 16^th April  

The Strip

(Walking the Las Vegas Strip)

Perhaps the most striking thing about Las Vegas is its walkability, at least on the Las Vegas Strip, with bridges over the roads, meaning you never have to attempt to navigate the traffic, and wide sidewalks, as can be seen in the photo, that can accommodate a vast number of tourists, make it easy to navigate your way down the 4.2 mile Strip from casino to casino. America after all isn’t famous for being friendly to walkers and Las Vegas at first glance seems to be an unlikely place to buck this trend, Portland maybe but not Las Vegas. Though this walkability only really extends to the Strip, if you were to turn left or right and leave it behind the ease of walking quickly declines, and returns to favouring driving as the form of navigation.

Although this makes sense if you think of Las Vegas, and more specifically the Strip, as more of a theme park than it really is a city, offering attraction after attraction for the visitors to wander between as they explore the Strip. There is even a roller coaster which wraps itself around New York-New York. Las Vegas is selling itself as a theme park based around the ideals of the American Dream. By this I mean it offers tourists the promise that they can visit the city and strike it rich, because theoretically you could walk into any of the casinos with just a few dollars and come out with a fortune. Instead of different types of rides Las Vegas is offering different types of gambling – slot machines, black jack, poker.

 Much like Disney Land all the hotels are designed around a different theme, such as Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Italy and the Big Apple, which allow customers to fulfill their fantasies of staying in a pyramid or the Empire State Building, while also being able to experience the gambling that Las Vegas offers. They offer a fabricated experience that while fake looks believably real, it is an illusion but a very good one.

If you take New York-New York for example, as you can see in the picture above, the skyline does look believably like the one you would see in the Big Apple, and from a distance the Statue of Liberty actually looks almost genuine. However if you take a moment to do the knock test, to see if something is hollow or not, the hotels reveal themselves to be simply plaster board which has be manipulated to suite the theme, meaning that the hotels can be pulled down and replaced quite easily if they ever become redundant.

(Botanical Garden in the Bellagio)

Like all theme parks, the Strip and its casino’s offer other attractions for the less adventurous, those who can’t or don’t want to gamble, such as the botanical gardens in the Bellagio. The casino’s offer family friendly activities so the patrons can bring their children along, it can be a holiday for the whole family instead of just a parent’s weekend away, and when you get bored of the games floor there are pools, art galleries, restaurants, bars and luxury shops waiting to ensnare you.

 In fact the casino’s themselves are very much like Venus flytraps, once you get inside it’s really hard to escape again, with the dark lighting which mask the passage of time, attractions and winding paths, it’s very easy to get trapped inside the belly of the beast. We spent more than an hour in the Bellagio, with a good chunk of that time being spent finding our way out again, because if you venture further into the casino’s, they don’t sign post the exits at all, after all they don’t want you to leave and spend your money in another casino. The more time you spend inside the more likely you are to be tempted to use the games floor or buy a meal or have a piece of jewellery or clothing catch your eye. 

Day 3

Day Three – Thursday 17^th April

Town Square

Town Square Las Vegas is a shopping centre which sells itself as a being in the mould of a European town square, with the shops and restaurants built around a town green.

(Town Square Las Vegas)

As you can see from the picture, architecturally the buildings do look European; this particular shop looks Venetian in style, with others looking distinctly Spanish and Parisian, but much like Las Vegas itself they are fabricated. Using the knock test to examine the buildings further reveals more use of plaster board to shape this illusion of European life, even the grass on the green was fake, and while they attempt to mesh the different styles of architecture together, as has happened naturally over time in Europe, it all feels forced and orchestrated. Town Square is indicative of Las Vegas, in that it’s trying so hard to be a perfect replica of something, in this case a European town that it ends up feeling hollow and empty.

(english’s Quintessentially British gastropub menu)

While exploring Town Square I happened upon this restaurant, called english’s, which as an Englishman was a distinctly bizarre situation, and serves as a case study of fabrication. After all this is a restaurant which sells itself as being quintessentially British but the menu seems to be offering meals which an American thinks British people actually eat, especially the appetizers. Who would ever have chips and curry or a plate of Yorkshire puddings as a starter?

           

(Chair in the Mandalay Bay)

            The games floor of the Mandalay Bay appeared to be aimed at a much more masculine audience, for example the above chair with the skulls and makeshift appearance giving it a rock and roll feel, there was also a tattoo parlour and a House of Blues music venue. This may simply be because the Mandalay Bay Event Centre is home to UFC and therefore perhaps attracts a more masculine customer base, or it could be because the casino believes that it will make more money on the games floor from male customers, while their partners and children are more likely to spend money in the restaurants and luxury shops that the casino has to offer. However this could simply all be by accident and not design, they might not have intended the games floor to feel more masculine. 

Day 4

Day Four – Friday 18^th April

Gun Store and Red Rock

(Me holding a target at the Gun Store)

The world famous Gun Store was certainly a fascinating and extremely American place. Only in America could you go to a shooting range and get to pick between firing every gun imaginable, if you are willing to fork out the cash of course, from the smallest of pistols through to the most brutal of machine guns. I opted for a SCAR semi-automatic assault rifle, and as you can see above, chose the hostage situation target which feature the faces of real people, instead of the plain target or one featuring zombies. Now looking back at it the idea of shooting at the faces of real people should be extremely disturbing, but perhaps because of first-person shooter games I have become desensitised to violence as has American society clearly if it’s socially acceptable for gun ranges to sell targets featuring real faces.

            The Gun Store like the rest of Las Vegas is selling fantasies, in the form of the targets allowing punters to imagine they are in say a zombie apocalypse fight off waves of the undead, or in my case a U.S. Marine rescuing people from a hostage situation – even if my shooting needs a bit of work. Without actually having to be in the dangerous settings that go with these fantasies, as well as the dangers of the guns themselves, since the instructors are there to make sure you don’t injure yourself and are themselves armed to keep people from trying to actually use the guns in a deadly manner. While it presents itself as giving you the freedom to go down and shoot whatever weapon you want, it is a very controlled environment.

            Similarly the Calico Tank trail in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, which is under the authority of the Bureau of Land Managed, was a very controlled environment, because while it suggested a sense of freedom by exploring the outdoors, it is a man-made trail, constructed for the purpose of public used, one which is managed and maintained by the BLM.

Day 5

Day Five – Saturday 19^th April

Boulder and Hoover Dam

(Sign from a shop window in Boulder City)

As I explored downtown Boulder City, with its historic feel and small businesses, the thing that stood out most to me was this sign. It instantly jumped out at me and caught my attention because it seemed to me to represent Boulder City on the whole, a place that harks back to a lost and forgotten America, one that isn’t dominated by franchises and corporations. It demonstrates the intense patriotism associated with America, the flag waving and loud nationalism, as the people of Boulder City and the tourists stopping by are clearly willing to pay that little bit extra to keep Americans working. The sign also suggests a sense of control as the owners have set out to manufacture a store that only sells American made products and not mass produced overseas made clothing, echoing the decision the Boulder City council to keep franchises and chains out of the downtown area, to allow the small businesses to flourish. Downtown Boulder City is therefore just as fabricated as the Strip and Town Square.

(Hoover Dam)

You can see from the picture how far the water levels of Lake Mead, the reservoir which powers the Hoover Dam, have fallen, highlighting the Southwest’s looming water disaster. While you can feel the effects beginning to grip Las Vegas, manifesting most prominently for me in drizzly trickle of a shower in the motel room, as well in the general lack of greenery in Las Vegas, suburban houses now opt for desert gardens, consisting of cacti and other desert shrubbery which don't need to be watered. This was the first time that I really understood the extent of the water problem that Las Vegas is facing. 

Unfortunately my picture doesn't truly capture the dramatic drop in water level, Lake Mead is currently holding half its maximum water capacity, and is undeniably going to drop even further below this in the coming years. Yet what are the solutions to this? If the lake ran dry it would spell the end for Las Vegas and all the other cities in the South West, but the people of the region can’t just stop using the water from the lake to keep it from running out. If they are lucky the current drought will break soon and a couple of wet years will come, but if not the outcome looks very dour. 

Day 6

Day Six – Sunday 20^th April

Route 66

(Route 66 sign)

Nostalgia seems to play a huge part in American history, in particular the longing for perceived better times, such as the freedom of the road and driving just for the sake of it that Route 66 seemed to offer. Perhaps this because America is still a relatively young country and therefore all its history, especially in the West which was still being settled just over 100 years ago, seems much closer than it does in Europe where we have thousands of years of history. As we drove along Route 66 we passed multiple examples of this nostalgia being displayed in the towns that the road travelled by, such as Oatman, AZ and Siegelman, AZ.

            This sign also demonstrates the way America has exported its history around the world, after all driving down Route 66 and following in the footsteps of travellers such as the Joad family has been sold as a must do event the world over, the same certainly can’t be said for the A19. When we arrived in Williams, AZ in the evening there was a group of German bikers, dressed in Harley-Davidson gear from head to toe, who wanted to replicate the true American experience of travelling Route 66.

(Oatman Information Board)

Oatman, AZ is a historic mining town which has turned itself into a tourist destination, selling the idea of it being a genuine Wild West frontier town, with wild burros wandering the streets and midday gun fights outside the historic Oatman hotel. Unfortunately because it was Easter Sunday the show wasn’t running disappointingly, but aside from that the town did have the iconography of a western film, it looked like the kind of place one of John Wayne’s characters would hang his hat. However if you look at the board above, which provides information on the history of Oatman, AZ, the town was formed in 1912, long after the end of the frontier, meaning that gun fights between cowboys would have never taken place in the town ever. Oatman has manufactured this alternate history for tourists to draw them in, drawing on the vast nostalgia and mythology that surrounds the Wild West. It is like Las Vegas a fabricated experience.

(A Gift Shop in Siegelman, AZ)

Similarly the town of Siegelman, which also lies on Route 66, uses nostalgia to sell itself to tourists, but instead of the Wild West it uses the 1950s, which is always looked back on with fondness in American culture as the glory days almost. The town used a lot of cut outs of movie stars from the era, such as James Dean seen above, as well as John Wayne and the characters from the recent Pixar film Cars, obviously trying to draw a parallel between itself and the town of Radiator Springs from the film which had been by-passed by the highway and was dying, much like Siegelman. Outside the main strip of gift shops, the town’s main source of income, there wasn’t much aside from a few run down houses; it was a very depressing place.

            Once again notice the sign promoting American made goods, suggesting that you can only get US made clothing and goods in tourist towns because that’s the only market who are willing to pay the extra money for a genuine American souvenir, in particular the foreigner tourists like the bus load of French people who turned up while we were exploring the town.  

Day 7

Day Seven – Monday 21^st April

Grand Canyon

(Grand Canyon)

Unfortunately no picture can truly capture the magnificent, jaw dropping nature of the Grand Canyon, which if I’m being honest didn’t seem real. Part of me felt as if someone was holding up a giant green screen that would be pulled away at any second. However it felt a little like the other tourists were ruining the experience, especially when we reached the Grand Canyon Village Historic District with the hotels and lodges and ice cream shop, it made the whole place feel manufactured and controlled. As I was standing looking over the edge I felt like I wanted to experience the Grand Canyon as the settlers travelling west must have done, with no other people around, in a true state of wilderness, with no barriers and designed viewing points. It all felt fabricated once again, giving the illusion of being out in the wild but it was still a controlled environment with designed paths, animal control and gift shops. I just wish for even a few minutes it could have been me alone standing by the Grand Canyon in its true natural state before people took control over it.

            

The toilets in the National Park told the tale of the water issues facing the South West, because they were just holes in the ground, even the urinals, as so to not waste water on flushing, and they only offered bacterial hand wash not sinks to properly wash your hands. 

Day 8

Day Eight – Tuesday 22^nd April

Williams, AZ

(Williams, Arizona)

If it wasn’t for Williams proximity to the Grand Canyon it’s highly likely once it had been bypassed by I-40 the town would have died like Siegelman and this mural therefore seemed to me to be tinged with sadness. Williams like the rest of Route 66 is longing for the glory days when it was one of the main attractions, not just a conveniently located stop.

            Route 66 is very strong in the identity of Williams, all of the shops sell memorabilia and tourist gifts emblazoned with the Route 66 logo and the town is clearly proud of its history, in particular being the last town bypassed by I-40. Perhaps because that is all that Williams has to offer, it didn’t seem to have any form of industry particularly and survives only because of the tourism in the summer months.

            You can tell that Williams is a town that thrives on industry not just because of the number of motels and tourist trap shops, one particular store lured me in with the promise of the world’s biggest Route 66 sign, but because all the restaurants had gift shops attached to them. In fact the gift shop in Cruiser’s Café was actually bigger than the restaurant itself, or at least it seemed to be. Tourism is this town’s life blood. Even Sultana the town bar sold souvenir baseball caps. 

Day 9

Day Nine – Wednesday 23^rd April

Wupatki and Hopi

(Wupatki National Monument)

While Wupatki looks like genuine ruins of an ancient pueblo settlement, which it is, according to the information boards in the visitors center a lot of it has been reconstructed by park rangers, due to effects of time and raiders in the 1800s, who stole artifacts from the ruins. It is therefore a reconstruction in a sense, much like Stonehenge which was rebuilt by the Victorians as the stones had fallen over, and again demonstrates this issue of fabrication; it looks genuine, but is maintained and constructed in order to attract the attention of tourists.

            Even on the reservation tourism remains a key part of the economy in this region, which we experienced in the form of a guided tour around the dinosaur foot prints just outside of Tuba City in the Navajo Nation. While our guide clearly didn't really know which dinosaurs had made the foot prints, she kept referring to the dilophosaurus, it was a fascinating experience nether the less because this tourist trap was clearly the only opportunity that was available to these people had to make a living.

            Staying at the Hopi Cultural Center was certainly a unique experience, the stray dogs wandering around in the car park certainly took some getting used to, but it gave us a chance to better understand the native peoples, at least a little. As it turned out the Hopi are a very private people and tended to dodge questions about their culture, when Kim asked one guy about the meanings of the masks in the painting on the wall near reception he responded with “each one does something.” While they were happy to take out money, the Hopi weren't so happy to actually interact with us, almost as if they wanted us gone in a way. Perhaps this was because we were the only group of truly white people in the restaurant, while there were a couple of other white people they were with Hopi partners, and we were therefore just as alien to them as they were to us. 

Day 10

Day Ten – Thursday 24^th April

Monument Valley

(Monument Valley)

Truth be told I’m a massive fan of Western movies and getting to see the famous Monument Valley bluffs that have been the back drop to films from The Searchers to the recent incarnation of Lone Ranger was just amazing. What I didn’t expect to see however was people actually living in Monument Valley, if you look carefully at the picture above you can just about make out the shades of houses in the distance. There was a medical clinic, a Mormon church and even a high school, complete with a green football field, which seemed ridiculously out of place in the arid desert landscape surrounding it. The field was almost like a mirage, it just didn’t seem real, as if I was imagining it.

(Monument Valley High School)

As you can see the football field sticks out like a sore thumb, not just because its existence seems preposterous in the desert but also because of the water troubles facing the region, to keep a field like that green and alive as it is you would have to use a great deal of water, which seems like a huge waste of a resource that they can’t really afford to be wasting. Of course the pitch could be artificial, thus requiring no water, and as we didn’t get out and inspect I’m only speculating but as we drove past it did look natural, the shade of green seemed to be that colour you only get from real grass. 

Day 11

Day Eleven – Friday 25^th April

Marble Canyon

(Display from Navajo Museum in Tuba City)

Nakai is the Navajo word for the Spanish, meaning those who wander around, which demonstrates how strange the Spanish must have seemed to the Dine, as they prefer to be called. Here were a group of people who were just aimlessly exploring the new continent, looking for treasure and laying claim to the Dine’s land, moving around with no real purpose, the Navajo were semi-nomadic people, hunters and gatherers who only moved with the seasons. The Spaniards expeditions must have seemed like oddballs and lunatics to the Dine, thus the playful name.

            As we drove around the reservation you began to notice a pattern with the houses, which on first glance look really run down, with all sorts of rubbish like old car parts making a sort of trash garden, but then you start to notice that the cars parked outside the houses are on the whole really nice. Suggesting that the Dine people take more pride in their vehicles than they do in their homes. Almost all the houses had a traditional Hogan built nearby, which are used for ceremonial purposes, showing that the ancestral beliefs and traditions still remain a strong part of modern Dine culture.

             The tiny town of Marble Canyon, population 31, served in my opinion as a great demonstration of the massive distances in the South West. While driving down the highway with no sign of life for miles showed the scale of distances, the fact that this town was 90 miles away from any other form of civilisation, which became apparent when the waitress told how the lodge burnt down and it took 2 hours before a fire engine arrived. Just highlighting the vast distances that the South West and America as a whole cover. 

Day 12

Day Twelve – Saturday 26^th April

Jacob Lake

(View from near Jacob’s Lake, AZ)

            It was raining when we left Marble Canyon and headed up out of the valley into the mountains of the Kaibab National Forrest, but the higher we climbed the colder it got and soon a good couple of inches of snow were covering the ground, demonstrating the harshness of this environment. The weather is unpredictable, if you look carefully at the picture you can see the desert contrasting with the snow. It’s hard to imagine what it was like for the original settlers and they managed to cope with the huge swings in weather systems.

(Toilet in Jacob Lake)

When I went to use the toilet in the Jacob Lake Lodge I noticed this sign over the urinal, asking customers to only flush once in order to conserve water, highlighting again the water troubles in the South West. Although with the snowfall Jacob Lake must receive throughout the winter you’d think that water wouldn’t be an issue as they would have the snowmelt, but yet it clearly remains an issue if they are trying to conserve water.   

Day 13

Day Thirteen – Sunday 27^th April

Kanab

Since it was Sunday and I’d noticed the night before that there was rather surprisingly a Roman Catholic Church in Kanab, a Mormon town, I decided to attend a mass to see what an American service was like. During his sermon the priest made a really interesting comment, “in a town like this you have to strongly believe or risk losing your faith,” which makes sense when you think about it. After all living in a Mormon town or state while believing in a different faith must be really hard because I imagine you face incredible pressure to convert. It raises a fascinating question about the how competing religions can successfully live together in a small town like Kanab.

(Film Buff)

Just like the towns on Route 66, Kanab’s history remains a big part of the town’s identity, in particular its history in the film industry, with a couple of western films being produced in and around Kanab. All along the sidewalk there were placards to the different Hollywood stars, including Ronald Reagan, who’d filmed films and TV shows in Kanab. The most prominent celebration of Kanab’s past was the Film Buff, a statue of a buffalo made from film real, which once again demonstrates the Americans tendency to memorialise everything, just like the Route 66 sign. Throughout this trip it has become clear that America is enamoured by its own past. Perhaps this is because America has so little history, especially out West, that they have to cling tightly to what history there is. 

Day 14

Day Fourteen – Monday 28^th April

Final Impressions

Overall Las Vegas and the South West is a place of fabrication, a mirage in the desert, an illusion that allows tourists to project their fantasies upon it. The Southwest appears to be a land of great distance, where the people, both Natives and Americans, cling tightly to their history and heritage. 

Word Count: 4388