At this moment, I am traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada, to attend my very first CHA (formerly HIA) trade show, the biggest annual event in the art and craft supply business.

You may think it unnecessary to mention that Las Vegas is in Nevada, but having witnessed many a tourist drive off from Santa Fe toward Las Vegas, New Mexico, with visions of jackpots in their heads, I now differentiate.
Can’t hurt.

These signs warned of long delays on Highway 93 because of road construction at Hoover Dam - and gave a long list of vehicles that would be prohibited from passing at all. Since my vehicle was not among them, I decided to take the route anyway - it’s a lot shorter.

There were no delays and Hoover Dam looked the same as it did twenty years ago, but a major bypass is being built around it, and huge construction cranes overhang the highway at every curve.

Interestingly, there was a Security Checkpoint that stopped all traffic, although most vehicles were just waved on through. We didn’t look suspicious, I guess. A good thing. I wouldn’t want to look suspicious. I don’t even want to be suspicious, actually.

Driving across this venerable old piece of American engineering brought up some historical curiousity for me, so I Googled the dam to refresh my memory about what and why it was.

Here’s a very nice government website
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/gallery/picindex.html
with lots of photos and some great old postcards like the one at the left.

The story of the dam is also there along with pictures of the construction.

This postcard makes it look like you shouldn’t go driving over this thing if you have vertigo or fear of drop-offs, but it really doesn’t feel that way when you’re there.

One of my favorites books (Pigs In Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver), http://www.kingsolver.com/bookshelf/pigs_heaven.asp#excerpt begins at Hoover Dam - when a little girl is the only one to see a man fall off the dam, and has to convince everyone else that she actually saw what she saw. The book is a sequel to Kingsolver’s Bean Trees and you should really start with that one.

The first thing I did upon arriving in Las Vegas was not stuff a quarter in a slot machine. First, I got lost.

I have not been here for almost twenty years and there is a lot more to it than there was then! But, finally, suffering from neon overload already, I found my hotel and located the Convention Center.

The show festivities were over for that day, but in a hotel restaurant, I ran into folks with name badges and sore feet, and got to discuss the show a little bit. In one of those serendipitous moments, I discovered the lady at the next table was a Sheer Heaven wholesale customer - Betty from the Stamp Attic in Anchorage, Alaska. It’s always fun when you meet someone in person that you already know by phone and internet.

Starting tomorrow, I will be sharing my experiences at CHA, hopefully in a fashion that will make you feel like you are there with me. My mission will be to discover what is new and exciting for multi-media artists . . . until tomorrow . . .