Tne first thing I did when I got the car was to drive up the freeway a few miles to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. I found a service station about fifteen miles north of the city on I15 out by the wagon lots and retail parks. I picked up a map and headed back into town to the Golden Palm Casino.

The 'Worst hotel in Vegas' was actually a clean and comfortable place. Even the tattoed bar tender was friendly enough. I could never fathom out though why someone had aerosoled 'Golden Palm Casino Hotel' and an arrow showing the direction on the wall of a nearby underpass. It's an easy enough place to find.. right opposite the vast rotating 'in and out burger' sign next to the interstate.

I had a jetlagged American high protein steak, eggs and cheese breakfast at 4am served up by an overly skinny street wise but very chatty waitress with dark rings round her eyes. She kept telling me that she had seen it all and done it all. she couldn't have been more than 20. I wonder what Alan Whicker had done at 20, probably not quite the same things.

I left The Golden Palm in the dark at 5am and headed North into the desert on what was to be a 2000 mile round trip through Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
arriving back in Vegas 7 days later, a bit more tanned, dusty, dirtier but more wise for the experience. This was the 2005 trip.

9 Months later I went again, but to the Mid West and this time I was not alone. I had convinced my girlfriend to go with me. I had to kind of up the stakes a bit on the accomodation front but that was no problem. Motel rooms in the Dakotas are still only about $40. We trundled up from Minneapolis through Fargo and across North Dakota, dropping south to the Badlands in South Dakota and then back through Nebraska to Winterset in Iowa. (birthplace of John Wayne) and the location for the film The Bridges of Madison County. This was the 2006 trip.

My girlfriend took me to New York for my 40th and She became my fiance shortly after that.

the 2007 trip was split between a week of me driving alone around the Nevada Wilderness and a week of sightseeing with my Fiance in Utah. I'd have done another night in the Golden Palm had it not closed down the week before I got there . I applied the same search technique for a suitable alternative and got some place just down the road. This really was bad. A sort of 'sleep in your clothes and don't touch anything' type of bad.

We got married and honeymooned in California last August and kind of moved away from Motels and into a tent.

What next....?
Not sure.... maybe Texas for some 'Last Picture Show' imagery.