Springs Preserve

I took the day off from poker today. Instead, I went with a friend to a place I've been wanting to visit since it opened: The Springs Preserve. Despite present appearances, this part of the desert has had natural springs. Over long periods of time they appear and disappear, but their intermittent existence is why this area has been settled by at various times by various peoples. The one that set off what has since become Las Vegas is now surrounded by this park/museum. It's basically a combined indoor and outdoor natural history museum of Vegas. It's really very nice--even more so than I had anticipated. We happened to choose a day of perfect weather for walking around: pleasantly warm, in the few weeks we have before it becomes intolerably hot here.

I took a zillion pictures (OK, more like 115). I was going to make a Flickr album from them, but that site warned me that I was about to exceed the limit for my free account. Picasa, on the other hand, said, "Sure, I'll post all of those for you for free!" So that's where they went. You can see them here, including a slideshow option.

The one above doesn't look like anything special, but it was to attain an interesting significance later in the day. After dinner, my friend and I watched the next installment in the Paul Newman Film Festival: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." You may recall that in an early scene the gang is robbing a train. The man in charge of safeguarding the money on board is a little too stubborn about opening the door. He politely apologizes for refusing the gang's request, but keeps repeating that he was personally entrusted with the money by his employer, Mr. E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad. I just assumed that this was a made-up name in the screenplay, but my more astute friend recalled that we had seen that same name earlier in the day, in the portion of the museum about the effect of the railroad on the development of Las Vegas. Sure enough. It's very strange to come across a relatively obscure historical name like that twice in one day, in two different contexts.

Anyway, the Springs Preserve is, I think, a worthy addition to your itinerary if you're coming to Vegas and want to get away from the casinos and find some non-Vegasy things to do. Be prepared to do a lot of walking, though--it covers a lot of territory. My legs are already aching, and I'm sure will be worse tomorrow. By then, though, I'll be back to my usual "activity" of sitting at a poker table, so maybe it won't be so bad.