Prison area -- don't pick up hitchikers

said a large black and white sign as I drove out of Las Vegas. They should have an equivalent sign on the other side as you drive in: gambling zone -- hold onto your money...

The Vegas strip in the daytime looks amazing -- I will have to see it all at night one day. Such an elaborate fantasy to cover such sleaze -- preying on people who cannot control their gambling urge. It is so hot in this town !!!

I got into the car and it said it was 109 degrees outside. Next time I am going to make it to Lake Mead. This time it would have taken too many hours away from my driving time to Beaver UT . This little town lies on interstate 15 just before it bifurcates and shoots up to Salt lake, leaving I-70 to go west to Denver. The crossing from Nevada to Utah (with a small slice of Arizona) is some kind of awesome transformation -- from sodom and gomorra to a theocracy, from hot desert to high pasture, forests and mountains, from an under current of latin culture, to straight anglo everything .

The transition is symbolically marked, as one threads ones way through the dark winding canyon of the Virgin river -- the first water I had seen since the Pacific -- out of the desert into the high valleys of Utah. After a leaving a town where anything and everything goes, I sat down to dinner at a restaurant where I couldn't get a beer, and was told off for even asking! America is so interesting, that it can host both Nevada and Utah ?! It is as if the 'freedoms' the founding fathers wanted to preserve were pushed to equal and opposite almost comic extremes in these two locations.

It also seems to the casual observer that the East pushed all some of its problems, and the dark consequences of its policies, out here to the West. As you drive through Nevada and Utah you get to see where the people who were around before the european invasion of the past three centuries, ended up. Boy, that is bad land... you get to see where the nuclear test sites were... you get to see where all the army, marine and airforce training grounds are (California, Nevada and Utah seem to have most of them swallowing up huge tracts of land!). Yes, I saw the Top Gun type fighters zooming around the Nevada skies -- very cool.

I think the latino underlay was one of the things I have been enjoying most about southern california and nevada. All the names are in spanish. Everyone who does anything with their hands is latino. It is so nice to be able to speak spanish and get an immediate and positive response. The radio always had two or three stations with good mariachis and cumbias and great disk jockeys... until I hit Utah. Luckily I happened to tune in to the local public radio station at one of the Mormon universities, and listened to a long interview with David Burnett (who is from Utah) and his photo book on Bob Marley (of which I have an autographed copy).

Burnett gave some wonderful advice to future photographers -- study something interesting -- not photography -- you can learn that as a trade. You will be a more interesting person, who can then use photography as a means of expression -- not an end in itself. He also said -- if you want to be a good photographer -- get up early !!!

Tomorrow is my last good day, surrounded by hills and rivers. I think I have to make it to Denver -- otherwise I will not make it across the wide midwest in time to be home by sunday.