Vegas

In a last minute move, Mike and I decided to head out of Winslow for the weekend. Las Vegas is a short 4.5 hour drive through the desert and easily doable for a long weekend. The drive runs west through Flagstaff and eventually North into Nevada. Our path took us towards the Hoover Dam, which in theory was an interesting stop-off point. In practice, however, we spent 3 hours in stop and go traffic just getting to the Dam. The views of the Colorado River from the dam were breathtaking.

We ended up staying in the California Hotel & Casino which is in the Downtown / Fremont Street district of Vegas. The area is less crowded and you tend to get more value for your money there. Indeed, our room at the California was quite nice for <$100 a night. There are quite a few other Casinos in the district as well as a cool outdoor walking 'experience'.

Friday night, we elected to head down to the Strip to walk through the casinos and people watch. So much has changed since my last visit in 1999. As always, the people watching was spectacular. From what I can remember, we walked through Treasure Island, the Venetian, Bally's, Ceasar's Palace, and the Bellagio. Several drinks and 6 hours later, we decided to call it a night and headed back downtown. I enjoy the strip, but the sensory overload is insane. There are millions of sights, sounds and smells hitting you in the face as you walk by.

Saturday was more low key. We hung out on Fremont Street, had an excellent buffet dinner and watched the fireworks. Many of the casinos in town had their own fireworks displays. We ended up going to the top of the California parking deck to watch. Literally dozens of displays were going on throughout the city. Since Vegas is relatively flat and open, you could see fireworks going off from miles away. I've never seen so many firework displays going at once!

We also decided to try our luck at gambling. I played some slots and video poker which didn't really hold my attention. I'm not sure how people can play those games for more than a few minutes at a time. I did manage a pretty good run of luck in BlackJack and raked in a whopping $45 in winnings. Not too bad considering we played on low minimum bid tables. I look at gambling as more of an entertainment sport than anything else. If I win, that's just a bonus.

All in all, it turned out to be an incredibly fun weekend and got us out of Winslow for a few days. The only negative was that my truck started having problems in the 3 hour delay at Hoover Dam. Looks like the transmission has really started to give up the ghost. In fact, we couldn't put it in Reverse to leave the hotel. Mike had to get out and push so that we could leave! We'll see what the damage is after I take it to the mechanic this week.