God Doesn’t Play Slots

Today we hired a car and drove out to the Hoover Dam. The scenery is all desert from Vegas to Boulder City where Hoover Dam is. At the dam we took the guided tour and saw the generators at the base of the dam and the story of how the dam was built. It was constructed during the depression of the 1930s so finding cheap labour was easy even given the dangerous working conditions. The dam was made by making tunnels in the surrounding rock around the dam site. The river was then diverted through the tunnels by blasting rock into the river, raising the river bed level until the water flowed around the site of the dam. The blasting of rock was a really dangerous job. Guys would be hanging from rope, they would light the fuse on sticks of dynamite, shove the dynamite into a hole drilled into the rock and then they would swing sideways on the rope and hope they timed it right so that didn’t swing back as the dynamite exploded.

Once the river had been diverted it was a simple matter of pouring tons and tons of cement, only the desert temperatures of more than 400C meant the cement wouldn’t set and so had be cooled with water. The dam is half in Nevada and half in Arizona. I was in a right state, or the left state depending on which way you are facing, when I stood across the state line.

Back in Vegas we drove to the sister hotel and did some recognisance for Sarah’s parents and then drove to Rio hotel. This hotel doesn’t get as much interest as the others we’ve talked about as it is not on the Strip, but they do have a good free show with carnival floats with dancing girls floating around the casino above the fruit machines and card tables. After Rio we drove to downtown Las Vegas, which is where the original casinos were built. There is a great light show on Fremont Street that has 8 million lights and 540,000 watts of surround sound. The casinos here are a lot nearer to each other than the ones on the Strip so it was nice not to have to walk too far. The street shows aren’t so good though. We came across a guy preaching by way of a quiz. He started off giving away money to people who could answer easy questions. I took a dollar off him for knowing that the capital of Australia is Canberra. Naturally we did the right thing with the religious man’s money and lost it in a slot machine. On our way back to the car we saw the preacher still with a crowd around him and we were pleasantly surprised to see that he was having a philosophical/religious to and thro’ with a gang of teenage boys from the hood. They knew more bible quotes than Dot Cotton.

Back at the Strip we tried the Venetian for a $5 black jack table, but again couldn’t find one so we went to Excalibur to play. We were down to our last $5 (from $40), but won back to $80 and we gave the croupier $15 tip. Back at the hotel we watched tv for a bit to relax.