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We leave the miracle of Grand Canyon in Arizona and drive for endless hours through a bleak and desolate landscape. At the uneventful town of Kingman in Arizona we cross the iconic but likewise uneventful (at least at this spot) Highway 66, the historic road that led from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California.
This is where we swing north in the direction of Las Vegas. We decide to take a much-needed refreshment break. My friends have a hankering for experiencing the kind of dusty and remote small town diner that you see in American movies, so we go for it, leaving the highway and driving into the unknown and beyond. We discover a dinky little ghost town called Chloride, of all things.
We wander into the empty “Dead Ass Saloon”, where the beer (when there still was a bartender) cost 5 cents, the whiskey (misspelled wiskey) cost 25 cents and the hangings were free. Where the piano, painfully out of tune and with the white piano keys curling upwards like stale bread slices, sits silent. All that remains in this saloon are dust motes and the piano’s memories of good-time melodies.
We wander further down the empty main street – the only street – and see the old jail, bank and schoolhouse. As its name implies, the town of Chloride developed because of mining – with silver chloride and gold attracting the most interest. Also mined were lead, zinc, copper and molybdenum. The Santa Fe Railway used to make a stop here at Chloride, which once had a population of 2,000 people.
The mining petered out, the railway station closed and Chloride fell asleep in the heat. Now there are about 250 people, so the town is not completely bereft of life. There is food and drink to be had, and that is what we came for. We sit ourselves down in the grossly over decorated diner and order soft drinks. I drink a root beer float – yum! Just me and many other millions of North Americans like root beer, but not so my Danish friends. They wrinkle their Nordic noses and stick to Coke.
Thus nourished with soft drinks and ice cream we continue on our way through the hot and arid landscape. Suddenly there is water. We have come upon Lake Mead. The lake came about when the Hoover Dam dammed the Colorado River. The Hoover Dam is an impressive piece of engineering and well worth a visit, although the insufferable heat (42° C) makes us cut the visit to a minimum.
We then cross into Nevada, the sixth state we drive through. The landscape is still dry and lonely. In the midst of all this emptiness sits garish Las Vegas. Thankfully, my friends are not keen on taking a closer look and I have already been there (once is more than enough, in my opinion) so we take the highway around and past Sin City and continue northwards.
