Chapter Thirteen
A Big Win in Vegas!
May 6, 2009—Vegas to Zion: We were going to walk somewhere for breakfast, but I realized it would be simpler (and cheaper) to have some granola from the car. So I brought up the cereal and milk, and we had a wonderful meal in our faded hotel room.
I then worked a bit on the journal. Since Wi-Fi is $12.99 at the hotel (in Vegas, it's all about money), I just worked offline—writing the text and editing the photos.
It was lunch time when we checked out and drove off, and Lena noticed an appealing billboard for a 1 pound NY Strip steak dinner at Terrible's Casino. We dropped in, and split it. A great lunch!
Like hillbilly tourists from West Virginia, we’d so far avoided all of this immoral (at least in the Tightwad church) gambling stuff, but on the menu was an application for the gambler's club, which came with $5 of free slot machine play. You also got a free T-shirt for signing up. "Hey," I thought, "What a perfect graduation gift for Jenny!"
So we signed up and headed to the casino.It turned out that I had to add $1 of our own money to start playing, so I bit the bullet and put the money in and made all the maximum bets until the free $5 was used up.
It turns out I have a great talent for the gambling thing, and I ended up with $7.15 (a 715% profit). Instead of sinking the rest of our dough into the machines, we cashed out and got out of town. I wonder how many gamblers leave Vegas with this kind of windfall?
More praise for Gunilla: We needed a library for internet access, and an auto parts store for some "Heet" (alcohol that we use for the Pepsi can stove—see the chapter entitled “Pepsi Cooking”). We just told her what we wanted and she took us there.
Next it was 75 MPH most of the way to Zion. Great desert driving, with an interesting change at Springfield. As we approached the town, a ridge of abrupt hills made an apparently impenetrable wall that the freeway seemed destined to crash into. At the last minute, a crack in the wall became visible, and the freeway squeezed through it. A very neat thing.
We arrived at Zion National Park at about 6:30 PM and were surprised to find that all the campsites were taken, even though it was a Wednesday. However, the ranger let us stay in one of the group sites with three other sets of campers. This turned out fine, as there was plenty of room, and we had a dramatic view of the surrounding cliffs.
The temperature was somewhere between 85 and 95 degrees, which is above the maximum operating temperature for Swedes born in Jokkmokk, but it cooled fast, and there was a delicious breeze.
For dinner, we cooked the freeze-dried chicken stew which had literally been in our closet at home for 10 years. Coincidentally, it was set to expire on May 9, 2009. It was as delicious as the breeze.
The temperature was now perfect, and we had a cozy night, sleeping from about 10 PM to 7:15 AM. I woke at 3 AM to hear a strong wind and what sounded like rain. In the morning we determined that it was tent catepillars dropping on the tent.