T w e n t y S i d e d

I’ve been gone for the last couple of weeks driving my parents on vacation. And I apologize if this is a bit incoherent; as soon as I got home I came down with a severe head cold. I have been taking NyQuil and sleeping non-stop. Coughing is torture. I think I am actually feeling a bit better now than I was a few days ago, but time will tell.

I was driving my parents because my mother doesn’t trust my dad’s driving anymore, and she also has increasingly been stressed by taking care of his physical needs. He can’t walk very well anymore and refuses to use balance or stability aids like canes or walkers. He absolutely refuses to consider a mobility scooter. This has been a “neither here nor there” issue in the past but recently his endurance has decreased quite a bit. To clarify, looking back, I don’t mean it’s a sudden change. This has been building for a while. I think it’s more fair to say he quit pretending it was temporary or situational and finally started acknowledging he just can’t walk for more than a few minutes without rest. His refusal to use walking aids or substitutions is simple: he refuses to be seen with anything that makes it look like he *needs* help. Canes, walkers, scooters; they’re all blatant admissions that he isn’t as capable as he wants to be. I have no doubt there is a strong psychological trigger involved. After all, many people have no problem using a cane or something else if it allows them the mobility they need. But he is very guarded on this issue; so I may never know.

My parents first visited Las Vegas, Nevada in 1995. It was a special vacation. Not necessarily a dream goal, but something they had consistently dismissed as impractical and largely a waste of time and money. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point-of-view, they loved it. My mother literally enjoys gambling, mainly the various poker machines. My dad has never been too big on gambling; he’s done a little of everything just to try it, but usually plays video poker as well. $20 per session, and if he spends it all or goes over $20 he cashes out and leaves to do something else for a while. He used to love just seeing the sights of Las Vegas; walking around downtown or up and down the strip. Seeing the free shows, finding a place to eat. This, of course, was still in the era of Las Vegas becoming a family resort destination. Casinos competed with cheap, all-you-can-eat buffets and room comps. My parents got where they would travel to Vegas once or twice a year. Half of each vacation trip was paid for through comps. (I’ve used that word a few times, and I should probably explain it for those who may not know: ‘comps’ is short for complimentary rewards. In mainstream stories you’ll see or hear about ‘high-rollers’ getting free rooms or other things paid for by the casino simply because they spend a lot of money with THAT casino. While it’s less-common now-a-days, this does extend even down to people who spend even small amounts. In fact more often than not for normal people it works like a frequent-user rewards system. Buy nine hamburgers and get the tenth one free, except it’s more like ‘spend $500 gambling get a free night.’ That’s regardless of payout, as far as I know.)

The environment in Vegas started to change in the 2000’s; you’ve probably heard something about it. 9/11 of course crimped travel temporarily, but also put in place procedures that made flying less-comfortable for many people in the long-run. The Covid-19 epidemic essentially shut the casinos down for a while. But that coincided with the boom in on-line gambling. Millions of people realized they could meet their needs, or come close, without leaving the house anyway. But at the same time the country entered a new stage of economics. As Dan Olsen has so eloquently put it, “the line must go up, always.” That can’t exist alongside longevity or stability. It’s a race to extract profit just as strip mining is a race to extract resources.

As Las Vegas diminished, my parents decided to try a new destination. In fact they had taken a tour out of Vegas to see this place. Laughlin, Nevada is about an hour and a half southeast of Las Vegas and is the first community built below the Davis Dam; which is the first dam on the Colorado River after the Hoover Dam. The town began as South Pointe; serving as a home for workers on the Davis Dam and “services” for gold and silver miners. And also fishermen, I’m told, but…really? Not to dismiss fishing at all, but is the river and lake fishing community a big mover in politics? Apparently not because the town basically shut down when the Davis Dam was completed. Fast-forward a few decades and Don Laughlin, a casino-owner from Vegas and broad-spectrum rich white man, flew over the area and decided to build a resort there, betting on the area’s confluence of Arizona, Nevada, and California to drive traffic. (I will point out that regardless of intentions or charitable work, if you look up pictures of Don Laughlin he LOOKS like someone who’s only goal in life is to sell you something.) Anyway he built an establishment, Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort Hotel & Casino, which is somehow still operating under the same name and in the same location. I say “somehow” because he started with six slot machines and two table games and the place now is a maze. It looks like room tacked on to room. To be fair, if you WANT something and don’t know where it is in Laughlin, it’s probably at Don Laughlin’s. I saw two movies there (I don’t gamble and there’s not a lot to see) because they have a six-screen theater showing current movies. When my head is back on straight I will likely talk about them: Forgotten Island and Resident Evil.

Laughlin has a reputation as “the Branson of the west,” although you have to go through a few rounds of reasoning to get to that. Branson, Missouri had “family-friendly” and “christian values” hard-coded into their push to be a country music alternative to the Nashville area. Laughlin didn’t; Don Laughlin just thought it was a good money-making location. In fact Vegas made its own “family-friendly” push in the 1980’s and 1990’s. At some point in there, though; I don’t know where, Laughlin specifically started targeting “retirees.” You can even see in recent attempts to have the town incorporated locals tend to fight back citing “the cost to retirees” such an action might enable. But that’s how you get the comparison between Branson and Laughlin: Laughlin is for older, slower people who want routine and cheap options, not flash and glitter. The day I saw Resident Evil was “Movie Monday” day at the theater; a senior citizens’ special that combined discounted tickets with a small drink and small popcorn. I was one of two people (the lobby was already full behind locked doors when I got there) who didn’t sign in for the package. I will also point out every single senior citizen went to see Verity or Digger. Most went to see Verity. The only other non-senior-citizen movie-goers went to see Resident Evil with me. With their less-then-ten-years-old kids. But I’m pretty sure the kids were asleep by thirty minutes in.

And yet, the Aquarius casino was advertising a Nelly concert. I don’t even associate Nelly with GenX, let alone the Boomer and Silent Generation that comprises most of the visitors…so maybe I’m missing something.

There are seven operating casino resorts in Laughlin, all on the west side of the Colorado River. Six more-or-less directly on the banks of the river. There is an excellent water taxi service that visits each bank-side casino. I am told this started out free in the good-old-days, but now it’s $5 per trip or $25 for an all-day-pass. Only annoying-but-otherwise-harmless bugs and the wait on less-busy days might prompt you to drive instead. Or walk, for those able. As each casino is about 1/2 a mile apart the walking is excellent exercise but is too strenuous for those like my father. (He tried toward the end of our stay, but got weak and nearly collapsed at the destination while looking for the location he wanted to visit.) And considering most days we were there the outside temperature was 95 to 100 degrees F; walking may not be the *wisest* thing to do even if you’re able.

(Two doses of NyQuil later) I set one day aside to visit the opening segment of Fallout New Vegas. You can take State Highway 163 west out of Laughlin to Federal Highway 95, which players of the game will recognize. I then traveled up 95 to Searchlight, a location I have avoided in-game so far, then turned west onto State Highway 164 which passes through Nipton, California (another game location) and continues on to Interstate 15. I-15 continues west to Wheaton Springs, approximately the Mojave Outpost in-game. I-15 turns north at the junction to run past a California Highway Patrol station (a small version of which features in-game) and on to Primm. Also in this area you will pass the *real* Ivanpah Solar Power Facility which features three boilers heated by solar power reflected by mirrors. In-game this installation is represented by HELIOS One and is located north of the fictional Novac just off Highway 95. Speaking of Novac, it sort-of has a real-world basis, but much like HELIOS One it’s located elsewhere. On the trip from Laughlin, just after you turn north onto Highway 95 you will pass through the tiny community of Cal-Nev-Ari, comprised of a small hotel and a few dozen houses. No dinosaur, though. Although it should be noted Novac is *intentionally* fictional, with the nearest real-world analogues taken from Henderson, Nevada.

Back in Primm we stopped to see Buffalo Bill’s Resort & Casino and the Desperado roller coaster; the real-world inspiration for the Bison Steve Hotel.

I have to remind myself 3D rendering has come a long way from the Gamebryo engine, but the scaling impositions really hit you up close and personal. This establishment is mostly closed down now; there’s only one operating resort in Primm; the Primm Valley Casino Resorts across the road (which owns the Buffalo Bill’s property). In fact the operators of that business also bought the “Bonnie & Clyde Death Car” exhibit, parodied in New Vegas as the “Vickie & Vance Death Car,” from the defunct and much-worse-looking Whiskey Pete’s location across the interstate. The roller coaster is closed,too.

From Primm we got back on I-15 and traveled north to Jean. Jean isn’t marked *as such* in Fallout New Vegas, the location exists as “Jean Sky Diving.” There is a closed-down Terrible’s Casino here, a couple of Terrible’s travel stops (there are Terrible’s all over the southwest)…a skydiving business…and the intersection with State Highway 161 to Goodsprings, the starting location in Fallout New Vegas. This is the most erie place to visit in real life, as the Pioneer Saloon and the General Store LITERALLY EXIST:

And the rest of the town is familiar. Here’s Doc Mitchell’s house up the hill:

It’s harder to see it through the camera lens; being there in person it all locked in. The houses even look the same.

After returning to Jean, rather than continuing to Las Vegas on I-15 I instead crossed into “town” and turned north on Las Vegas Boulevard. Yes, the same Las Vegas Boulevard that runs all the way through Las Vegas into North Las Vegas, and beyond. Until it just ends a few miles outside of town. We did stop and see the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada” sign, which is in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard just as you get into the busy part of town (there’s a parking lot). I had read once this isn’t actually the original sign, but I can find no information to back that story up. But there have been several replica and knock-off signs. So it may have been one of those. Las Vegas Boulevard continues north through Vegas, forming “The Strip” and intersecting the downtown area. Leaving Las Vegas proper we hit road construction as we entered North Las Vegas so we drove through the Sunrise area and got back on the Interstate, this time I-11; and traveled back around Las Vegas through Henderson to Highway 95. From there we drove south to Searchlight again and retraced our path back to Laughlin.

The biggest takeaway from seeing the real-world locations is something I understand: the section of the beginning from Nipton to Novac is just about entirely fictional. While the locations up to Nipton scale the real-world fairly precisely, there really is NOTHING from Nipton to Novac. Not just given that Novac doesn’t actually exist; the entire desert is empty. Resources from elsewhere had to be moved into this part of the game to give you things to do. Which makes sense; the leveling and story journey works out. But there is no railroad “cutoff” east of Nipton you can take to Highway 95 to bypass Searchlight. Searchlight is the only intersection. Vegas itself, of course, is highly-compressed. FNV renders a triangle framed by I-15, 95, and an amalgamation of I-11, SH164, and the southern stretch of Loop/Beltway 215.

A full exploration of Fallout New Vegas in real life is possible, but would take several days. And that’s leaving out the made-up places, and mostly inaccessible locations in the mountains. And leaving out the DLC which add entire new territories. I could have gone to Hoover Dam, for example; but I’ve been before and it’s a tremendous amount of walking. And since I took my Dad with me that cut off walking locations, mostly. On a related note, and touching on a previous subject, it didn’t occur to me until after we got home how inaccessible some things in Laughlin were; considering how accessible they made other things. (The cynic in me would like to point out that ALL gambling options were accessible, but I saw many that *I* would have trouble reaching, because they’re packed into too-small spaces.) After all, they do seem to tailor their business to retirees. Retirees who attend Nelly concerts, apparently; but still. A dinner cruise my father has been wanting to try for years was only reachable by stairs, no ramp which is common for most river-side attractions. There WAS an elevator; but it was out-of-order. The stairs aren’t a problem for my Dad, or haven’t been; but his flagging endurance means he can only do four or five steps at a time before resting.

We had some good food on the trip. The best value for the money was the Golden Nugget’s house restaurant Claim Jumpers and the Best Western in Williams, Arizona’s house restaurant, Western View Steakhouse. The Guy Fieri’s Mexican food restaurant in Harrah’s seriously surprised me. Being from from West Texas near New Mexico and not too far from Mexico itself I’ve spent a lifetime around “authentic Mexican food” and TexMex, AND have had plenty of encounters with “authentic Mexican food*”. Guy Fieri’s was VERY good. Sure, the famous “Trash Can Nachos” aren’t authentic Mexican food, but the genuine article was a grade above any knock-off I’ve ever had.

(One dose of NyQuil, a long nap, and a dose of Robitussin later) There was a Saltgrass and a Bubba Gump’s available. Not the best Saltgrass I’ve ever had. Bubba Gump’s was a first for me, although I know the same company owns both establishments and also Landry’s Seafood; which I have eaten at a few times and found to be good but overrated. Same with Bubba Gump’s, it turns out; but with extra points deducted for being based so thoroughly on nostalgia for a film that doesn’t bear close inspection. (I was a huge fan when I was young, but it seemed like every year that passed I noticed another red flag that just didn’t sit right anymore) Also, we had pretty bad service. Friendly, but inattentive and infrequent. (I did find out later the “Run, Forrest” and “Stop, Forrest” license plates mounted at each table are *meant* to be used to let the waitstaff know you need attention…that may have made a difference.)

I wanted to grab In-N-Out Burger before leaving, as there are none in my part of the country; but it just didn’t work out. Instead on the drive home I took my parents to a Carl’s Jr; the first time they’ve had food from there. I am pleased to report it was a good location and both of them were very impressed with the burgers and fries.

I’ve been writing this for three or four days now. I believe I’m finally on the mend, although still shaky. Something more than just cold symptoms is still not right but I can’t put my finger on it. Caloric intake, sugar levels, or vitamins I would guess. I’m about to go down a few glasses of Emergen-C and see if that helps. Sorry for the prolonged absence; be back soon!

Paige Francis He/him