Let's Leave the Spiritual Bullshit Behind

In a car more suited to light grocery shopping or picking the kids up from soccer practice, our friends Conor Creighton and Kendall Waldman are travelling across the bottom half of the USA on a road trip from South Carolina to California. They’ll be trying to swerve the cliches to send us updates on all the cool stuff they come across. The series' name is From Sea to Shining Sea.

There comes a time in every road trip's life when you can no longer depend upon your credit cards, the cash in your underwear or the assurances of your parents that they will bail you out no matter what, son. Sometimes on a road trip you need to place your fortune in the hands of the cosmos. Which was timely, because after two days spent fruiting around in the desert we landed in a small town called Sedona. Sedona, apart from being supremely beautiful in its own right, is also reputedly the most celestial spot in North America. Aliens, fairies, orbs, floating buddhas, archangels and the undead. In Sedona, if you can imagine it, they can believe it. We did what our wallets allowed us and made an appointment with the cheapest psychic in the book. His name was Derrel. Clearly he didn't inherit his gift of foresight from his parents. “Your path is very important,” he said, “You are doing great things. Keep going. You're about to become very lucky.”

But, you know, what the fuck does that mean, really? We badgered him for specifics, so he showed us the photos he'd taken on his phone and tried to convince us that the lens flare ruining them all was the archangel Gabriel. For Derrel, that was enough of a sign to justify leaving his four children and two baby mamas behind in Kentucky and move on down to Sedona. The pictures inspired the same restless sense of purpose in us, and we decided to leave Sedona's spiritual bullshit behind and drive to Las Vegas, where nothing spiritual has ever happened. Vegas is not how it once was, but that's true of any place I guess. It's just as packed with poor, drunk Americans as it's always been, but now it's also packed with Americans who are so poor they can't even afford to get drunk. Vegas is on the rocks. The locals are praying that plans to build a high-speed rail link to Disneyland get approved, presumably so that they can spend their days living in a comparative dream-world run by mice.

We arranged to meet Howard Schwarz, the owner of Las Vegas' gambling book shop and perhaps the man in America who knows most about gambling – which is probably why he never gambles. “I know my limits,” he says, “and I see too many people who don't.” “Vegas will rise again,” he says. “Why wouldn't it? It's got the best cathouses, the cheapest liquor and the easiest access to guns in the country.”

Before we left, he passed on some Vegas wisdom: “Run if you see an empty lift shaft.” Apparently, a common way to settle disputes here is to pry open the lift doors before the lift itself arrives and push your nemesis through.

Leaving Las Vegas and hitting the California state line we saw thousands of people queueing up to buy lottery tickets. Some of them had been waiting for five hours and would probably wait another few. Ilan was one of the men in line. “If I won I'd just spend the rest of my life living out of a suitcase and travelling. Nothing extravagant. I wouldn't even wash the clothes.” So, winning the Californian lottery for the average American would mean living exactly like us. We drove on before the smell coming from our back seat shattered their dreams into pieces tinier than their chances of guessing the numbers right.

Follow Conor on Twitter: @conorcreighton

Previously: From Sea to Shining Sea - Bulls on Parade