Another early start began our day today, and we were amazed, on exiting through the casino, by the volume of people still playing the tables at 7.30am. These were the serious gamblers, or the desperate, still ploughing their money into the craps, roulette and blackjack, even when the rest of Vegas have finally called it a night. We were pretty exhausted from what has been an intense trip so far, but it was worth the feeling of fatigue as we boarded the minibus with 6 other people, bound for the ghost towns of Nevada and Arizona. Our guide greeted us and was perhaps the most enthusiastic, welcoming yet genuine tour guide, if not person, I have ever met. He welcomed us onto the bus for what was going to amount to a 10 hour, 300 mile journey around the former mining boom towns of the desert in the area. This, we thought, would be a brilliant opportunity to catch up on some sleep. However, mot only was the guide charming and friendly, he was also incredibly knowledgable. From the minute we departed from the casino and headed out, along the strip, into the desert, he was a mine of information. Be it the geology, the fauna, the flora, this anthropology, he conveyed detailed information about what we would be seeing, as well as how the area came to be the way it is.
During the 1800s, gold and silver was found in the area in huge amounts. Spanish settlers asked the native Americans if they had seen any of the gold-coloured rock in the area. As the natives had no use for gold, they freely gave away the locations of where huge deposits could be found and the Nevada and Arizona gold rush began. The area is laced with underground mines and any unpaved or off-road area could house any number of deep mine shafts, and is therefore a dangerous place to go straying off the beaten track. However, it is not just modern travellers who face perils in the area. During the times of the gold rush, murders were incredibly common. Not only shoot outs, which were daily occurrences, but poisonings and beatings plagued the men who came here to seek their fortunes. Greed was the major driver for these murders, but another deadly sin was also responsible - lust. In the area, and particularly in El Dorado, the bloodiest city of the area, there could be up to 1400 men and only 14 women. Add alcohol and searing heat into this toxic mix of greed and lust and you have the perfect conditions for a high frequency if murder. In El Dorado, these murders could number 3 or 4 a day. 
The most prolific killer in these times was a native man called Queho. Born to a Mexican mother and a native tribal father, he was immediately at a disadvantage from birth, since being mixed race at the time was a stigma. Not only was he mixed race, but he was either born with, or developed very early on, a severe limp due to a club foot. Because of these perceived defects, he quickly became an outcast. He was born in El Dorado, but was adept at moving around the mountains of the area, avoiding hazards and utilising the natural resources in the region. With his difficulty living within a community, and with no law enforcement in the area, Queho soon found ways to survive in the unwelcoming climate, and became a prolific murder, the USA's earliest serial killer. To his name, 24 murders have been attributed, the first if which was a witnessed murder of his step brother over a girl. Aside from this one murder, his murders usually had one thing in common. The victim was alone - usually a prospector - and would have been stopped to take a drink in a creek. At this point he would have been shot in the back. However, despite the huge amount of wealth that this person would usually have been carrying, all that would be taken from the body would be provisions and a small trinket - a knife blade, a boot or a badge. 
Even though Queho had committed many murders of people brought to the area by gold, he did not achieve notoriety until he shot a night watchman, stealing his badge ID. This was the closest to law enforcement that the area saw at the time, and so Queho found himself to be a wanted man. However, despite a $2000 dollar price tag in his head, nobody could find the elusive outlaw. The one time that he was seen was when he came down to one of the towns in the area and bought a can of peaches. Even though he was instantly recognisable, everybody was in such shock and awe that they did nothing. Now though, the people of the area had one vital piece of information. Queho liked peaches. So they bought cans of peaches and left them all over the mountains to try and entice him. He never took the bait, but the spate of murders soon began to tail off, and people assumed that he had died or moved on. Many years later, two hikers stumbled upon a cave high in the mountainside. Inside, they found a treasure trove of trinkets and a mummified body, dried out by the extreme heat in the desert. It was when they found the badge ID of the murdered watchman that they knew they had finally found Queho.
Whether Queho committed all of the murders is dubious. It was often easier to chalk up incidents to a wanted outcast and outlaw. One reported story is of two officers who were called to a cabin in the mountains. When they got there, they found a man crying and yelling "Queho, Qurho!" His wife lay shot inside the cabin. However, the young son told the officers that he had seen his father shoot his mother. Despite this eye witness testimony, the officers found it easier to believe that a mixed-race outlaw could have committed the crime, rather than believe the eye-witness account. In fact, only 4 of the murders supposedly committed by Queho were witnessed. That's not to excuse the killings in any way, but gives an insight into the treatment of native people at the time.
Our guide was full of stories such as these, and after an entertaining first section of the journey, passing through the beautifully maintained and picturesque Boulder City - home to one of Johnny Depp's houses and where small houses go for upwards of $1,000,000, we arrived at our first ghost town, Chloride. Several key events aligned to force the boom towns of the gold rush to be deserted as suddenly as they had appeared. During the depression, jobs were incredibly scarce - when the Hoover Dam was constructed, it created 5000 jobs. 45,000 men applied for these jobs - and so men moved away from the boom towns to the bigger cities looking for more steady work. Then, during ww2, mines were closed down as gold became less of a commodity than iron and copper, which was needed to make the weapons. Finally, the gold began to dry up, particularly with the huge numbers of people who rushed there to seek their fortune.
The towns quickly became deserted and became known as Ghost towns - former mining towns with a very small population. Some of the towns were deserted entirely, and very little remains of the civilisation that inhabited there before. However some communities have retained a population and still thrive today, despite their low numbers. Chloride is one of these towns, although its history is a little more complex. In the 1960s, the population had dropped to less than 50 people. A group of hippies, bound for San Francisco stopped by, having broken down. The inhabitants of Chloride allowed them to stay, but they had to be away from the main streets. The hippies went through to the other side of the small town, to the sandstone hills where they settled for a few months. During this time, one of their number painted murals onto the cliffs and this brought art, tourists and eventually more settlers to the town.
Walking around a ghost town is an eerie experience, even though this is now a bustling community of more than 300 people. However, it us a very quiet place - people were not out and about living their daily lives. What also makes this town eerie despite its population is the junk yard art that the people have created in their front gardens. Anything and everything has been used to make art installations, from wheelbarrows to watering cans, cogs to cars, gates to garden benches - anything that can be soldered together has been combined into shales ranging from indecipherable masses of twisted metal to human forms, animals and flowers. We were taken on a tour of this art, where in one particular street, the residents have a "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality and have tried to outdo one another with bigger and bolder, weirder and wackier constructions right outside their front doors, and sometimes even spilling out into the street.
After this spectacle of modern art, we were taken to the hippie paintings up on the hills. In this remote setting, surrounded by rising layers of red and amber rock, these psychedelic designs stand out, immediately drawing your eye from the beauty of the landscape to the bright paintings in front if you. Yet, weirdly they complement the drama of the surrounding mountains perfectly; they are an incongruous, yet integral part of the spectacular scenery surrounding the town. Ranging from peace signs to flower designs, to religious symbols and words and phrases encouraging peace, love and harmony, these designs have played an essential role in the rejuvenation of this town, particularly the artistic inspiration of the people in the area. 
After a brief stop, a time in which I showed a photograph of a snake I had seen in Yosemite and had it confirmed as being a venomous diamondback rattlesnake, we headed into the main part of the town to see what we had really come to see - everything else so far had been a bonus! This was Chloride town centre as it would have looked just after the gold rush had ended and the town earned its ghost town status. Surrounded by desert, the scene was straight out of a Wild West film. Even though this was a recreation (the town burned to the ground on three separate occasions), it was still a fascinating insight into the real Wild West of America. I once again felt like I had stepped into the set of Back to the Future, but this time Hill Vally of the 1800s. The small town recreation had it all - a jail, blacksmiths (where I half expected to find Doc Emmet Brown hammering a horseshoe), the sheriff's office and, most excitingly of all, the town saloon - complete with swinging doors and a long wooden bar. The piece de resistance was a rickety piano, it's paint peeling, providing a shadow of its former self. It still played (although middle C was mute and most of the keys played flat or sharp) and I managed to create a bizarre version of chopsticks while sitting in the wild western saloon. It was a brilliant experience and one which we had been looking forward to throughout the whole trip.
Our next stop was a different experience again. We headed out of the town to get our kicks on Route 66. Although this road no longer exists, its reputation as the ultimate road trip destination is legendary, so where better to continue our epic road trip than right here, where incredible journeys have been made for decades?Sections of the road are still in operation, but it is now nigh-on impossible to travel the entirety of the road that once existed, the sections that do remain are some of the most dramatic driving that we have experience so far. Drop offs on either side of the road were of epic proportions befitting this route's mythical status and the highway zigzagged along following mountain passes up, down and around the incredible landscape. It was quite simply, stunning. Looking down on either side, we were often able to see cars that had cornered too fast and fallen to their eventual rusty end, lying in various states of mangles heaps on the steep hillsides below. 
Fortunately, our wonderful driver managed to get us safely to our next ghost town, Oatman - human inhabitants of 135 and one ghost. The town was named in honour of a Ms. Oatman who was sold into slavery and then rescued and raised as a native by the tribe that lived in the area. The ghost was one of the meanest man who lived in the town - a drunken prospector who had an excellent source of gold. He got into an argument one night and drunk himself to death and ever since then, his ghost haunts the bar that he so loved to drink in. When the town burned to the ground in the last century, the only building left standing was the hotel - proof that his ghost is still walking and protecting his favourite haunt (groan) to this day.
Oatman, Arizona is a really touristy ghost town. Being right in Route 66, it attracts a great deal of passing trade, as well as those, like us, who have come looking for the ultimate Wild West experience. To entertain these tourists, each day at 1.30PM, there is a cowboy shoot out in the Main Street, a fun, if tacky way to pass the time and get the real cowboy feeling. The recreation group are volunteers who do it to raise money for children in the area who need operations - another reason to enjoy the show. What makes their job difficult is another element of cowboy life that makes this ghost town so unique - the wild burros. When the prospectors left the area, they no longer had any use for the donkeys who pulled the carts and supplies around the town and mines. Therefore, they set them free, and the burros wandered into the nearby desert. But their story did not end there. The donkeys procreated and to this day, generations after the original donkeys were released, wild burros come to the town at 10am when the shops open, stay in the town being fed pellets by the tourists and then, once the shops close at 5pm, the donkeys make their way back to the desert again.Throughout the day, they roam the streets, usually docile, but sometimes bucking and fighting one another, particularly when food is around. The town is set out like many other mining towns - one long street with wooden shops and bars fronted by long wooden verandas to provide shade from the heat of the day. The burros often wander onto the walkways, seeking shade and rogue pellets. It is an incredible place to visit and well worth a stop on the fabled Route 66.
Our final stop in the journey was to the centre of the problematic Wild West - El Dorado - infamous for being the most dangerous and deadly stop in this ghost town route. The total inhabitants of this town number 14, and they predominantly come from one family. This family bought the piece of land with the tumbledown, ramshackle buildings on it a few years ago for $250,000. It is a former mining town with a working shaft still visible above the buildings. Because of the gold deposits, and the mining rights that came with the property, its value is now 8 million dollars. The site is used for movie locations, photo shoots and music videos and is an instantly recognisable eclectic junkyard of rusting vehicles and dilapidated sheds, old gas pumps and rust pocked advertising signs. 
A dirt road loops straight through it, which dips down from the higher mountains into the valley. The road almost seems as though it has been carved directly out of the valley, with steep rocky crags rising on each side. Every now and again, the dust was whipped up into a smoky cloud which only added to the desolation of the place. Even though everything in the area seems to be rotting or rusting, it is a strangely charming place. It really does give an impression of the desolation and history of the area. Once we had finished photographing the living junkyard, we went inside the building, where there was a small museum dedicated to life when the town was a booming going concern. There was a special section dedicated to Queho, and exhibits showing the town in its recent incarnation, as a movie and video set, with pictures of the stars who have filmed here. Recognisable faces included Beyoncé, Kevin Costner, Jeff Bridges and Kurt Russell. However, most impressive and bizarre of all was waiting for us when we opened the freezer door. A tray full of decapitated rattlesnakes lay waiting to be cooked. When I gently flicked its tail, the distinctive rattle was clear to hear, so at least now we know what sound to listen out for when we are trekking through the rattler areas later in the week. 
We left the dust soaked, barren landscape behind and headed back towards Las. Vegas. Arriving there was a real contrast to what we had spent the last ten hours exploring. It was garishly loud, and even more busy with the Saturday night tourist traffic already buzzing. Our guide drove us down the strip, so we were able to see all of the hotels and casinos en route back to ours. We passed the distinctive skyline of New York, New York, it's roller coaster speeding people past the Empire State Building and plunging them past the Statue of Liberty. We saw the Treasure Island casino, location of a nightly pirate battle, and the pyramids of the Luxor. We drove past the huge volcano, dormant during the day, of the Mirage hotel. Then we cruised past the Rialto bridge of the Venetian before approaching the Eiffel Tower. It was a whistle stop tour of some of the world's most enduring and romantic symbols, seeing the world without leaving the city.
After a delicious burger dinner in the Bistro of the Paris, it was time to once again hit the madness of the strip. We passed through the Flamingo and several smaller casinos en route toe our ultimate destination - the Venetian. Ornately decorated with neo-classical pillars and facades, the casino is designed to resemble the famous city of canals. Indeed, one of the most famous and popular attractions in the building is the replica of the Grand Canal that snakes through the middle of the hotel, with working gondolas paddled along the waterways by singing gondoliers wearing the traditional stripes. We sat for a while in "St Mark's Square" and them proceeded to the casino floor to play a few more slot machines. 
Sufficiently drained of both money and energy, by 1am, it was time to leave the partying crowds of the strip behind and head back to bed. However, on a whim, we decided to stop off at one more casino en route and seek out our winning slot machine from the night before. As we wandered through the casino, we heard "Stuck With You," by Huey Lewis being played. It sounded like a live version, so the cover artist must have been excellent. And we passed by the tiny area that he was playing in - on the floor in the middle of three gambling tables - we both stopped and looked at the familiar face in front of us. "It actually is Huey Lewis!" We both realised at the same time. I stood and watched in awe as the singer of the soundtrack to my all-time favourite film stood literally metres away from me, blasting out another of my favourite hits. It was a bit of a geeky wow moment, but I was hugely impressed anyway! 
Once Huey had departed the "stage," the comfortable beds at the Paris beckoned us, ready for one more night in luxury before the next day's 7 day camping trip around the canyons, sleeping on the hard ground of the national parks, long drives and early starts began in earnest.