From The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, February 2008

I wonder how many lost souls have checked in at Buffalo Bill’s Hotel – the last resort before Nevada’s liberal gambling laws are buried by Californian sand.

The faded doors to each block open without keys, revealing grim, strip-lit corridors, silent save for the buzz of the ice machines. An empty monorail ploughs the air above it all, linking highway with motel and then casino, a woodland-themed folly of twisted black trees and clusters of fairy lights.

This was Primm, a deceptively-named outpost on Interstate 15 from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and gambling is the town’s very reason to exist. My friend James and I had driven here after a couple of days in Sin City, watching brides high-five their way along pavements busy with jocks and hookers, OAPs and sidewalk hustlers.

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We’d drunk Pina Coladas from plastic Eiffel Towers outside Vegas’s own Paris, and snapped each other in front of The Venetian’s chlorine-blue canals. Finally, exhausted, we’d spent an evening in disbelief at an £80 sushi bill while the graceful acrobats of the Cirque du Soleil performed Love – The Beatles Story in front of us in a cloud.

The next morning, over another Starbucks breakfast next to yet another casino floor, we owned up to Vegas fatigue. With a defiant two fingers to its capitalist stance, we decided to bid the tourist trail farewell, just next to Buffalo Bill’s on the state line.

Most visitors link two-centre holidays in Vegas and Los Angeles with a six-hour slice of six-lane highway, but by doing that, they’re losing yet another day to corporate America (not to mention traffic jams and stressful hard slog). We’d planned to do the same – until a quick glance at the map revealed what was lurking just off the tarmac: long-abandoned mining towns, spiky patches of Mojave forest and the homes of a whole cast of matinee idols.

We had three days to spare before we needed to be in Los Angeles, and elected

to devote them to a roadtrip along the empty lanes spun like a spider’s web out into the desert. We’d picked up the obligatory convertible back on the Strip, and downloaded a soundtrack of Springsteen, Chris Rea and John Denver. But first, I wanted just one last flutter…

Buffalo Bill’s casino is busy – more so than some of the most famous gambling dens in Vegas – and populated by egg-shaped middle Americans in pastel leisurewear. I could people-watch for hours, but I’ve left James in the car. I’m on my way out when I get lost on a cleverly-crafted casino floor – designed to keep you gambling as long as possible. I wind up in a corner, next to Zoltar, the fortune-telling mannequin who grants Tom Hanks’ wish to turn adult in Big. He’s equally menacing here, laughing an evil ‘mwa ha ha’ behind his raven beard and waving clockwork arms over a glowing crystal ball.

‘I can see you,’ he booms, prompting a collective crackle of polyester as everyone turns to look at me. ‘Come closer.’

I run.

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