Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

My trek across country has ended, and I am now officially a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, a city founded on the vices of its visitors. I will have nothing to do with any of the vices--I will become an English teacher for the severely depleted Clark County School District, and whether Las Vegas is as fabulous place to live as to visit I will find out quickly.

Most of my drive today was through Utah, which in its own way was as beautiful as Colorado, but in a different way. The mountains in Utah are more rugged, with less vegetation. The hues are tan and brown, the mesas and buttes chiseled by the wind. At times I had to swerve a little bit after being awed by one of these huge castles of rock.

There was also no sign of human habitation. There were sections of the interstate that went 100 miles without any exits (which mean I had to hold my bladder for a considerable stretch). But imagine this landscape looks pretty much like it did a hundred years ago, or a hundred years before that, when the west was really wild.

A quick but equally spectacular drive through Arizona led me to Nevada. Of course Nevada is a desert state, but it is also mountainous, by some measures (it has 172 summits of over 2,000 feet) it is the most mountainous state in the country. But you know you're in Nevada immediately by your first sighting of a casino, which is immediately over the state line.

I hope to get back to my regular posts starting tomorrow.