The Amazing Adventures of a Zoobroker and a Sentiographer
I'm sure there are two destinations within a few hundred miles that are more different than Elko, Nevada and Salt Lake City, but I'm hard pressed to think of another so polarized pair.
Elko: Whores, 24-hour access to alcohol and gambling, all-you-can-eat steakhouses.
SLC: Mormans, 24-hour access to group prayer, and all-you-can-marry churches.
We'll give you some more details on Salt Lake City after we hang out a little tonight ...
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Last night when I was out shooting, I spotted a little donut shop. Luckily, I remembered it this morning, groggy and lusting for coffee.
Verdict: Good coffee, and the cinnamon bun is out of this world, and an apple turnover is yet uneaten, but here are some photos (after the break):
And for those Harley-lovin friends of mine, this is the side wall outside of the Silver Dollar Club:
Zoo and I ate a family-style dinner at the Basque restaurant BilToKi. It was amazing. Very farm-style food. Started with a tomato/onion/cabbage soup, some awesome bread, then a trio of sides: Beans, Steamed (soft) veggies and some pasta with red sauce. Then came the meat (sorry for the quality - it's a phone):
A perfect, giant-sized pair of filet mignon, and high-heat seared-to-perfection pork chops. And fries on the side. Needless to say, neither of us cleaned out plates. Holy bloat. So, we headed back to the hotel to ride out the food coma and blog.
Apparently, Elko has the highest concentration of Basque in America. Thank you! Dinner was outstanding.
Wednesday night in Elko is neither dead nor hopping. At the suggestion of the gal behind the counter at our hotel, we headed over to G's for some drinks. What was that noise as we approached? Karaoke. You know it! We had a few brews, sang some songs and enjoyed getting to know the locals better. Friendly people, but kinda stuck... Stuck in circumstances, stuck in beliefs that they will never escape.
Take the glitz and glam on Las Vegas, mix in a rodeo, the Basque, some mexicans and Native Americans (lots of mix blood around here) and you get a really interesting cross-section of cowboy gambling drinking farmer young stuck in the town feeling. Kind of desperate, but resigned. It's charming if you like gritty (and I do), but as I mentioned in my night shots post, it had a slight edge of danger because a few people had a chip on their shoulder for out of towners.
We popped out heads into three brothels, just to see what it was like. Zoo Broker will be going to Amsterdam shortly.
Now we head off to... (to be posted)
When you get out on the road with no specific destination, sometimes you have to make some hard decisions. As we approached Bozeman two nights ago, it became clear that although Salt Lake City has great potential for "griefing" religious zealots (and/or corrupting young Mormans, Orgazmo style), it puts us in a tough spot. We don't really like to backtrack on our path -- seems like a waste of time -- and we don't like to get stuck in the middle of nowhere either. Sleeping in a car with Spammer's snoring would be like trying to apply lipstick on a roller coaster. So we took an easy day, ending in Pocatello, to stage for our run ... and after hearing only positive things about Elko, we pointed the Hyundai and hit the gas, thinking that we'd have a quick driving day with some fun in Nevada.
Now, as technologically dorky as Spammer and I are, we didn't pore over Google Earth prior to setting out ... we sort of pick roads at random ... and what we found along the way was no less than the most amazing road we've ever seen. I've road tripped more than 30000 miles in my life, and what we saw today was pristine, awe-inspiring and just a little bit scary. Check out the pictures, and if you have the chance, get to Jarbidge, NV.
Oh, so there will probably be some drinking and checking-out of the brothels ... possibly gambling. Stay tuned.
After dinner and carousing this evening, I headed out for some night shooting. I must say that this is the first place I felt somewhat uncomfortable showing gear alone at night, but nothing happened, or even threatened to happen. Must have been the hard shoulders on the slackers at the bar or the crazy guy we played pool against who was getting all drunk rowdy. Anyhoo, Elko is awash in neon from the casinos, bars and brothels. Makes nice light for Spammer to capture with pixels.
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