The beginning of the end - april 20

Having pushed my body past its comfort zone, my soul felt invigorated and my mind awake to the possibilities of this trip. Aiming Bessie north towards Hoover Dam out of twinge of patriotism I planned on camping around Lake Mead until a billboard touting $20 rooms in Laughlin, NV caught my eye. The chance for a cheap bed - and the opportunity to add Nevada to the growing state sticker collection adorning Bessie's rear driver side window - drew me to the small town tucked in the farthest southeast corner of Nevada, just a short jaunt across the river from Arizona.

Laughlin turned out to be much like the whole of Nevada, nothing but casinos and dirt - it seems that mining for silver and gambling away your daily find is the Nevada way - and I decided to push on with my original plan. Turns out expectations can warp your perception of reality pretty easily.

Missing a non-existent campground just outside of the infestation of casinos - my Rand McNally atlas' strength lying in arterials and not side roads - I pushed north for a campground called Temple Bar which, with its proximity to Lake Mead, brought forth images of white sandy beaches and peaceful rests.

Driving all day can be torturous; I have seen more desolate, open expanses of desert housing sad little towns than I care to ever lay eyes upon again. The saddest part of this existence is that these are not structured towns, just dirt roads with the possibility of indoor plumbing sprouting from the open desert. Though some of these towns were large enough to have their own fast food joint (note the singularity, grocery stores were a seemingly frivolous want) I wondered what type of person would call this existence home.

The debate waged over this existence is one of love versus drinking. The argument reasons that if you have someone you love it would surely make this lifestyle worthwhile - at least until the heat and the lack of anything to do but each other wore you out. If you didn't, your day would consist of work, picking up at least a half rack of beer, and drinking; only to wake up the next day to do it all over again.

My mind attempting to rationalize such a seemingly difficult life, I pulled off the highway for the 30 mile drive to Temple Bar. It turns out names can be incredibly misleading, a tidbit I have often heard but was drilled home when I found that the actual campground was a half mile from the beach and provided no view of the water. There was no Bar in sight - neither the watering hole necessary to cleanse my palate and wash the disgust from my mind, nor the soft, sandy beach necessary for lounging during times of contemplating how names are chosen.

Thankfully, a road once driven is often faster than one unknown, and I tore my way back to the highway for a short jaunt down some windy hills to another campground called Willow Beach. It turns out looks can be just as deceiving as names.

Pulling in as the sun was setting I found the perfect spot adjacent to the river. Clear and calm, the river looked as though it was posing for a postcard and the stars were just starting to twinkle, making the sky big and beautiful. I could feel the tension ebbing from me as I felt that the agony of that long ass drive was finally worth it.

Mind abuzz with the expected joys of a night spent star gazing, I set about preparing a dinner of rice and sausage. I hooked the lantern onto my canopy to fend off the oncoming dark, and within minutes the inside of my camper was teeming with hundreds of flies and moths hellbent on their own demise as they buzzed my light and fell in my dinner. Deciding that having the lantern outside would lessen the amount of unwanted protein dive-bombing my meal, I moved to relocate it to the curb and tripped over a pair of my shoes that I had senselessly placed in front of my sliding door and tore the skin off of three of the toes on my left foot.

During cleanup, and after the decapitation of a large beetle that fell from my pot of rice, I decided to move out of the streetlight's glare to a spot in a darker corner of the lot that some HS kids had recently vacated. Enveloped in the dark I again began to relax until my peripheral caught sight of the sand moving.

The beach was alive with roaming cockroaches just starting their ever present quest for scraps. Seeing the garbage cans to my left I flashed on the image of Will Smith in Men In Black and bee-lined it back to my original spot, my rationale being that the farther away I was from the source, the less likely the cockroaches' path would extend. It seems my rationales need some work as the cockroaches were seemingly endless in their hunt.

My mind again ran rampant and I feared cockroaches would infiltrate my van that night in search of food, procreate like mad, and eat everything in sight; leaving larvae everywhere they stepped.

I went to bed cursing God, more angry than I had been in years, visual and auditory hallucinations of scurrying little feet dancing through my mind. What was such an invigorating morning had turned into a challenge of another kind and my mind and soul's energy began to drain. I fell asleep, tired and bloody, my imagination conjuring images of insects as I struggled to understand the reasons for this night.