American Odyssey III

I start the Journey East by going West then South.

I’ll take 93 through Nevada to Las Vegas from Burley.

Eight hour drive.

Easy.

I’m passing wheat irrigated with wheel lines, windmills and gently rolling hills. The sky is blue, wispy clouds.

The fields have green potato leaves with purple flowers.

“Smile, God Loves You” reads a sign hanging from a wheel line.

Fine dust is thrown in the air by a red Case tractor discing up some earth off the road.

I pass my Uncle’s dairy.

500 miles to Las Vegas.15 miles to Nat-soo Pah hot springs.

Hay neatly bound in bars on one side of the street; on the other side is freshly cut but yet to be bound.

South of Jackpot, Nevada a sign reads: Open Range Cattle On Highway.

I descend through craggy bluffs, staring into the jagged edges of the Pilot mountains.

Respect your public lands.

Goose Creek 4 miles.

I got gas in Wells.

I ate two string cheeses and drove down towards McGill, where there was a swimming hole.

Dropped trou and slipped out of my tie behind a towel, took a swim in a cold spring with what seemed like the whole community.

In Ely I talk to a kid at the gas station that was from outside of Pocatello he liked a better down here. Left Ely on Grand Army of the Republic Drive. Three hours down to Vegas. Outside Ely, Nevada driving up into the mountains. It looks like the road from Las Vegas New Mexico to Santa Fe. This is the Humboldt National Forest.

I’m on the down slope of the Murray Summit 7316 feet. These are my favorite kind of mountains down there; multilayered, ghost like apparitions in front of each other, geographically separated like three layers of a glass plate.

There’s a dust devil rising to my left.

The view down is the kind that’ll have you believing in God.

In the White River Narrows, one hundred and forty miles from Las Vegas, passing a giant farm ranch called Cannon Ranch, Cannon like the kinds they have Yorktown, Virginia. That’s their logo too— a stylized Revolutionary War Cannon — so we’re getting the Revolutionary flavor here in Nevada.

Cresting Apex Summit, at exit 58 for Nellis Air Force Base Las Vegas becomes visible.

It is daylight so it is not lit up.

Though, the Sphere new to me—is lit — I can see the sphere.

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The sun hangs low to the west casting long shadows from semi trucks, a giant American flag waves over a 19 Fuel network sign as I pass a truck from “Atomic Transport”

Viva Las Vegas.

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