Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Good ol' fashioned family holiday - Part III
The Death Valley Suite, continued
Movement 2 - 12/27/00: Largo, stacatto e bianco
It feels almost sinful waking up late in the desert, where people rise with the sun and the free “continental” breakfast in the motel lobby is cleared up by nine. We microwaved bland, mealy breakfast burritos at the Union 76 Mini Mart (Beatty’s jumpin’est joint, 24/7), and were on the road by noon.
Our first stop was Furnace Creek Ranch, where we stayed when we were little; the first people we saw there were a little boy of about eight and a little girl of about six playing together in the date palms. The place was hopping with tourists from all over the world. Just standing on the veranda outside the steakhouse I heard Italian, Chinese, French, Japanese, Hebrew and Spanish. I decided the Valley must be in the midst of a very serious international P.R. kick. After buying a twelve-dollar bottle of bad Coppertone for my face, we went to check out the Furnace Creek Inn, a madcap, pink 1920s oasis a little further down the road, with a terraced garden that must use up millions of gallons of water a week in its quest for eternal greenness in the midst of the dust. The place had been redone recently, a little too Hilton-esque for our taste, and the grotto-like underground restaurant with a natural spring and waterfalls running through it had been replaced by a formal dining room on the second floor that looked like a swanky Sizzler, so that was another comestible establishment crossed off our list. It would be back to Beatty for dinner again for the Campbell kids.
But first, a visit to the lowest point in the western hemisphere: Badwater, an immense salt flat in the basin of the valley, 282 feet below sea level. This is one of Death Valley’s major attractions, so the little parking lot off the road by the outhouses was packed with cars, and the near end of the flat was teeming with people for about half a mile out. But we had already decided to hike all the way across the flats (five miles each way), and we left the crowds behind after fifteen minutes. Half an hour later, the people looked like ants, and soon they disappeared altogether. Time passed secretly as we crunched across the salt, which had cracked into a series of fragmenting discs, curled up at the edges, sometimes inhabited by hordes of tiny stalagmites. It looked like a mega-magnified image of dry skin under a microscope. Sometimes, corners of discs would break and crumble, but it was impossible to leave footprints on the salt. There was no telling how many people might have navigated the discs before us. For all we might have known, we were the first.
Suddenly, something caught our eye way off to the south. Lynnie thought it looked like a sculpture of a horse. As we approached, it became clear that it was no such thing. Instead, it was a rudimentary scientific instrument made out of PVC piping, wire and metal boxes, designed by a team at the U.S. Geological Survey in order to measure the rate of water evaporation in different parts of Death Valley. Lynnie took its picture, and it soon disappeared behind us as we continued across the flats, swallowed up by the vast white glitter of the salt.
On the other side, after two more hours of crunching discs, we came upon something that looked like a placid lake from afar, but turned out to be another spread of salt, this one flat and curved at the edges, uncracked and pristine. We lay upon it and listened to the most intense silence I have ever experienced, disappearing into the salt. When one of us finally moved, it sounded like an avalanche, and the outside world jumped back into its cloak of reality before I could slip through a rip in the fabric. The walk back, like all walks back, was shorter for some reason. Our car was one of the last left in the parking crescent, and we drove back through the Artists’ Pallette (near the Devil’s Golf Course) at sunset while a tiny sliver of moon appeared in the sky like the Cheshire Cat’s grin.
We spent our cocktail hour in the bar at the Furnace Creek Ranch. More hardrock from the jukebox courtesy of Lynnie, including “Fat-Bottomed Girls” by Queen and “Tube Steak Boogie” by ZZ Top, in which the vocal track had been tuned down so that easily-offended travelers couldn’t decipher the lyrics.
Stoney was our cordial and capable bar manager. We stood by while he had a long discussion with two blonde dykes about how white wine was not supposed to be served at refrigerator temperature, which was usually a frosty mid-40s (Fahrenheit), but at a cool, not icy, 56 degrees, at which their “wine cellar” (a waist-high fridge with a glass door) was faithfully set. Stoney’s wine offerings went far beyond the usual burgundy, chablis and rose (wine-in-a-box) to include several California cabernets, merlots, chardonnays and sauvignon blancs, and anyone could tell that Stoney was proud of his expert ways with the nectar of the grape. The lesbians conceded huffily and retreated to their rooms with their 56-degree chardonnay, which was strictly against house rules. Stoney rolled his eyes and shook his head as they left. There was this old guy who looked like George W. with a bouffant staring at me a little too intensely from across the bar the whole time, with that expert mixture of curiosity and fear that people like the George W. clones of America have developed in order to scrutinize people like me (i.e. “weird,” according to them) in public. Outside, a tiny Chinese couple in a huge rented Land Rover smoked cigarettes and looked at pictures of their day on their digital camera while an Italian family stood on the stoop between the steakhouse and the coffee shop arguing about which one to patronize that evening.
As for us, we went back to the Phoenix, watched a dorky reality show on the Learning Channel about friends setting up (soon to be ex-)friends on blind dates, bundled ourselves up and walked to the Stagecoach, Beatty’s premiere casino, whose searchlight could be seen from a hundred miles away, a white shadow swaying on the dark desert sky. Our way was lit by the stars and three or four streetlights, each of which was decorated with a heartbreaking little Christmas doodad, my favorite being a single red candle meekly glowing in a ring of holly.
The holiday quickly evaporated in the every-day’s-a-holiday monotony of the casino. Something unmistakably groovy was going on in the far corner: A bearded man in a black suit and hat sat on a low, dimly-lit stage at the far side of a large, empty dance floor, playing the theme to the Pink Panther on two slide guitars splayed before him like a harpsichord, with lots of puckish slips and glitzy slides. The walls were punctuated with pink-lit columns filled with water, tiny bubbles constantly rising upwards, wiggling to the wa-wa of the music. We dissolved into those tiny bubbles for a few minutes, then went to Rosa’s Diner for dinner, where the usual cows were tending the pasture, and my “petite filet migon” was a not-very-good New York strip folded up to look thick and wrapped with bacon to hide the seams.
I was rewarded however, with eighty dollars off a five-dollar investment on the Triple-Seven slot machine. And then the universe gifted me the spectacle of Dora, the floor manager, gruffly paying off a jackpot on a Wild Cherry slot, taking a Polaroid of the winning spin for the bulletin board with a cigarette hanging out of her eternally frowning mouth. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Categories: backstory, holidays, travel
Movement 2 - 12/27/00: Largo, stacatto e bianco
It feels almost sinful waking up late in the desert, where people rise with the sun and the free “continental” breakfast in the motel lobby is cleared up by nine. We microwaved bland, mealy breakfast burritos at the Union 76 Mini Mart (Beatty’s jumpin’est joint, 24/7), and were on the road by noon.
Our first stop was Furnace Creek Ranch, where we stayed when we were little; the first people we saw there were a little boy of about eight and a little girl of about six playing together in the date palms. The place was hopping with tourists from all over the world. Just standing on the veranda outside the steakhouse I heard Italian, Chinese, French, Japanese, Hebrew and Spanish. I decided the Valley must be in the midst of a very serious international P.R. kick. After buying a twelve-dollar bottle of bad Coppertone for my face, we went to check out the Furnace Creek Inn, a madcap, pink 1920s oasis a little further down the road, with a terraced garden that must use up millions of gallons of water a week in its quest for eternal greenness in the midst of the dust. The place had been redone recently, a little too Hilton-esque for our taste, and the grotto-like underground restaurant with a natural spring and waterfalls running through it had been replaced by a formal dining room on the second floor that looked like a swanky Sizzler, so that was another comestible establishment crossed off our list. It would be back to Beatty for dinner again for the Campbell kids.
But first, a visit to the lowest point in the western hemisphere: Badwater, an immense salt flat in the basin of the valley, 282 feet below sea level. This is one of Death Valley’s major attractions, so the little parking lot off the road by the outhouses was packed with cars, and the near end of the flat was teeming with people for about half a mile out. But we had already decided to hike all the way across the flats (five miles each way), and we left the crowds behind after fifteen minutes. Half an hour later, the people looked like ants, and soon they disappeared altogether. Time passed secretly as we crunched across the salt, which had cracked into a series of fragmenting discs, curled up at the edges, sometimes inhabited by hordes of tiny stalagmites. It looked like a mega-magnified image of dry skin under a microscope. Sometimes, corners of discs would break and crumble, but it was impossible to leave footprints on the salt. There was no telling how many people might have navigated the discs before us. For all we might have known, we were the first.
Suddenly, something caught our eye way off to the south. Lynnie thought it looked like a sculpture of a horse. As we approached, it became clear that it was no such thing. Instead, it was a rudimentary scientific instrument made out of PVC piping, wire and metal boxes, designed by a team at the U.S. Geological Survey in order to measure the rate of water evaporation in different parts of Death Valley. Lynnie took its picture, and it soon disappeared behind us as we continued across the flats, swallowed up by the vast white glitter of the salt.
On the other side, after two more hours of crunching discs, we came upon something that looked like a placid lake from afar, but turned out to be another spread of salt, this one flat and curved at the edges, uncracked and pristine. We lay upon it and listened to the most intense silence I have ever experienced, disappearing into the salt. When one of us finally moved, it sounded like an avalanche, and the outside world jumped back into its cloak of reality before I could slip through a rip in the fabric. The walk back, like all walks back, was shorter for some reason. Our car was one of the last left in the parking crescent, and we drove back through the Artists’ Pallette (near the Devil’s Golf Course) at sunset while a tiny sliver of moon appeared in the sky like the Cheshire Cat’s grin.
We spent our cocktail hour in the bar at the Furnace Creek Ranch. More hardrock from the jukebox courtesy of Lynnie, including “Fat-Bottomed Girls” by Queen and “Tube Steak Boogie” by ZZ Top, in which the vocal track had been tuned down so that easily-offended travelers couldn’t decipher the lyrics.
Stoney was our cordial and capable bar manager. We stood by while he had a long discussion with two blonde dykes about how white wine was not supposed to be served at refrigerator temperature, which was usually a frosty mid-40s (Fahrenheit), but at a cool, not icy, 56 degrees, at which their “wine cellar” (a waist-high fridge with a glass door) was faithfully set. Stoney’s wine offerings went far beyond the usual burgundy, chablis and rose (wine-in-a-box) to include several California cabernets, merlots, chardonnays and sauvignon blancs, and anyone could tell that Stoney was proud of his expert ways with the nectar of the grape. The lesbians conceded huffily and retreated to their rooms with their 56-degree chardonnay, which was strictly against house rules. Stoney rolled his eyes and shook his head as they left. There was this old guy who looked like George W. with a bouffant staring at me a little too intensely from across the bar the whole time, with that expert mixture of curiosity and fear that people like the George W. clones of America have developed in order to scrutinize people like me (i.e. “weird,” according to them) in public. Outside, a tiny Chinese couple in a huge rented Land Rover smoked cigarettes and looked at pictures of their day on their digital camera while an Italian family stood on the stoop between the steakhouse and the coffee shop arguing about which one to patronize that evening.
As for us, we went back to the Phoenix, watched a dorky reality show on the Learning Channel about friends setting up (soon to be ex-)friends on blind dates, bundled ourselves up and walked to the Stagecoach, Beatty’s premiere casino, whose searchlight could be seen from a hundred miles away, a white shadow swaying on the dark desert sky. Our way was lit by the stars and three or four streetlights, each of which was decorated with a heartbreaking little Christmas doodad, my favorite being a single red candle meekly glowing in a ring of holly.
The holiday quickly evaporated in the every-day’s-a-holiday monotony of the casino. Something unmistakably groovy was going on in the far corner: A bearded man in a black suit and hat sat on a low, dimly-lit stage at the far side of a large, empty dance floor, playing the theme to the Pink Panther on two slide guitars splayed before him like a harpsichord, with lots of puckish slips and glitzy slides. The walls were punctuated with pink-lit columns filled with water, tiny bubbles constantly rising upwards, wiggling to the wa-wa of the music. We dissolved into those tiny bubbles for a few minutes, then went to Rosa’s Diner for dinner, where the usual cows were tending the pasture, and my “petite filet migon” was a not-very-good New York strip folded up to look thick and wrapped with bacon to hide the seams.
I was rewarded however, with eighty dollars off a five-dollar investment on the Triple-Seven slot machine. And then the universe gifted me the spectacle of Dora, the floor manager, gruffly paying off a jackpot on a Wild Cherry slot, taking a Polaroid of the winning spin for the bulletin board with a cigarette hanging out of her eternally frowning mouth. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Categories: backstory, holidays, travel
