Friday afternoon, tromping
around Red Rock Canyon before the wildflower blooms fade. Last chance to see the beautiful wildflower
bloom! Today it shot into the 90s & 100s++ and expected to stay hot
until September.
After tromping around Red Rock Canyon, looking at flora and fauna and rock formations until sunset, ended up at a place that [on paper] had looked quaint and atmospheric, and in reality could be the site of a very scary movie.
The place is a a former Nevada State Park with horseback-riding, restaurant moto-lodge with rooms for rent, and a petting zoo--horrific petting zoo, gauging from the frightful discontented animal noises coming from behind the gate, padlocked by the time I got there. It may just have been peacocks, but in the near-dark it was bone-chilling, especially given the restaurant and over by an old sun-cracked stage coach a hand-painted sign: "Beware Zombies." (did it mean that zombies had better beware because they will be taken out? or that humans had better beware of roving zombies.
Built in the early '60s in Olde Western saloon style--walking up to the side door, next to an olive green "stream" with a waterfall and ducks with stained green feet, "Sweet Home Alabama" thumped. Walked in, the bar area was covered with $1 bills. All over the ceiling, walls, and columns? The music was coming from the Dining Room.
Doing a great job of vocally channeling the van Sants, in a tight Nudie-type Western shirt, dancing off-beat, moving from one foot to the other, like a white frat boy, was a strapping black man. It was confusing and discomfiting. I sat down and noticed everyone was very Western, with those dried apple faces -- both men and women, but the men had hats and the women had lipstick. I realized then my ride in the parking lot was the only one that wasn't a pickup truck or motorcycle.
I figured I could dig it. But the next guy, in a white Stetson, in his early 70s, got up on the rostrum, and after a corny karaoke musical intro, he launched into the lyrics f a country song...about....Dixie. Them good old days, etc.
The waitress hadn't come over in the span of 3 songs I was there, so I figured no one would mind terribly if I sidled back out the door, past the slime pond, screaming peacocks, and the pack of feral kids loping around in the gloaming. Past the trucks and bikes. Bowed out just as the remaining light dimmed down to dark, gunning it to get past the zombie children of the desert corn.
After tromping around Red Rock Canyon, looking at flora and fauna and rock formations until sunset, ended up at a place that [on paper] had looked quaint and atmospheric, and in reality could be the site of a very scary movie.
The place is a a former Nevada State Park with horseback-riding, restaurant moto-lodge with rooms for rent, and a petting zoo--horrific petting zoo, gauging from the frightful discontented animal noises coming from behind the gate, padlocked by the time I got there. It may just have been peacocks, but in the near-dark it was bone-chilling, especially given the restaurant and over by an old sun-cracked stage coach a hand-painted sign: "Beware Zombies." (did it mean that zombies had better beware because they will be taken out? or that humans had better beware of roving zombies.
Built in the early '60s in Olde Western saloon style--walking up to the side door, next to an olive green "stream" with a waterfall and ducks with stained green feet, "Sweet Home Alabama" thumped. Walked in, the bar area was covered with $1 bills. All over the ceiling, walls, and columns? The music was coming from the Dining Room.
Doing a great job of vocally channeling the van Sants, in a tight Nudie-type Western shirt, dancing off-beat, moving from one foot to the other, like a white frat boy, was a strapping black man. It was confusing and discomfiting. I sat down and noticed everyone was very Western, with those dried apple faces -- both men and women, but the men had hats and the women had lipstick. I realized then my ride in the parking lot was the only one that wasn't a pickup truck or motorcycle.
I figured I could dig it. But the next guy, in a white Stetson, in his early 70s, got up on the rostrum, and after a corny karaoke musical intro, he launched into the lyrics f a country song...about....Dixie. Them good old days, etc.
The waitress hadn't come over in the span of 3 songs I was there, so I figured no one would mind terribly if I sidled back out the door, past the slime pond, screaming peacocks, and the pack of feral kids loping around in the gloaming. Past the trucks and bikes. Bowed out just as the remaining light dimmed down to dark, gunning it to get past the zombie children of the desert corn.
