The whole West, as far north as Sacramento, is sweltering under a pre-summer heat wave. I enter the desert again, that by mid-afternoon rises to Hoover Dam, a monument to what imagination and bravado can carve out of Nature's raw beauty.

Tourist buses park and empty their contents out over Lake Mead, while trucks gear down, snaking around bends, my brakes beginning to burn, as enter Las Vegas' smoggy 104-degree streets, exiting the freeway at Downtown, parking near the Lucky Lady, from where I phone my nephew.