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Southeast (Gulf Coast), Texas, United States

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Exploring Las Vegas - 5

As we left the campground this morning, I took a few pictures.  They are in the following order;  Campground sign, RV office, and our site….

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It’s a nice enough campground, but nothing special.  Close sites with concrete pads, and a little gravel in between.  The WIFI and cable TV is of high quality…….. all you really need for touring the area.

We have toured about all of the casinos and other strip attractions that we wanted, except Patsy wanted to see the inside of the Wynn Hotel and Casino.   So, that is where we went this morning

For our friends that are Tiffin Allegro Motorhome owners, we found a new “Allegro Club” that many may not know about.  It was in the Wynn Casino as we walked into the building……

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Like all of the other casinos, the Self Parking was easy and free.  As we entered the hotel/casino, it was clear that this place was classier than the other places.  Like the others, they were celebrating the “year of the snake”…….

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As seen in some of the pictures above, the floors had a lot of inlaid tiles…..

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We also went to the pool and garden area.  I got some pictures of goldfish in the fountain and some orchids.

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I was going to pick an orchid for Patsy, but she thought it was not appropriate for the RV park, and might look “tacky”!!

All over town, they have sculptures of rams, horses, and donkeys along the freeways, so Patsy took a couple of pictures this morning.

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We spent the afternoon at the Bus, taking showers, washing and drying clothes, and catching up on some computer work.  The PC was tied up over 3 hours while I downloaded the 2013 maps for my Garmin Nuvi GPS.  I will see if it works tonight when we drive to North Las Vegas to visit the old part of the strip where the Fremont Street Experience is located.

Before I close, we want to wish our friend, Sue Didelot, a very happy birthday.  I sent her a photo of a billboard here in Las Vegas that showed what her husband Mark and I looked like before our wives made us stop eating at the “Outback” steakhouse!!!  Maybe they will reverse that decision?!!??

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The report on the “Fremont Street Experience” is forth coming!!

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Exploring Las Vegas–4 (An Alternative)

Last night was our last night to stay at the Oasis RV Resort, and we had plans to move to Arizona Charlie's Casino/Hotel/RV Park complex in Boulder.  We had picked up coupons at the Quartzsite RV show to stay here for $20/night with full hookups including cable and WIF.

We plan to stay at Arizona Charlie’s for three nights, and head back toward Tucson on Saturday morning. We will take our time for the 400 mile trip, and stay the night at the Desert Diamond casino and then check into the Lazy Days Resort for Sunday and Monday nights.  That will give us a good venue for watching the Super Bowl.

On the way to move campgrounds, we stopped at a Sam’s Club to fuel up the Bus.  They listed diesel for $3.74/gal plus we get 5% off (18 cents) with a new PenFed VISA card that we recently received.  All the truck stops around here are at about $4.00/gal.

Since the Oasis was closer and more convenient to the Las Vegas Strip, I wanted to take the Bus down the Strip and back at night with the dash camera on to record a colorful night-time video of the ‘lights of the Strip”.

And speaking of the dash camera, while driving to this new campground this morning, I had the camera on, and the following scenario happened:

I was driving down Flamingo Road which is 5 lanes at the intersections….. two to turn left at the light and three to continue straight.  I was in the left lane of the three going straight when I saw a car in the right-most left turn lane with the right blinker on, trying to get into the three straight-ahead lanes.  The car immediately in front of me let them in, and then I saw that their tail-lights were blinking fast like the police cars do. 

The light was red, so all traffic was stopped.  The car pulled into the center of the ‘going-straight’ lanes, and backed up to the front of the car in that lane.  At this point, two guys jumped out of the car, pulled badges out of their jackets that were hanging around their necks, and tried to open the door of the car that they blocked in.  The person in the car had the doors locked, and the windows were heavily tinted.  The car had Florida plates.

The guys then un-buttoned their jackets and put their hands on their weapons, and one guy went back to the car to get a radio, and came back to the car.  I thought he was going to use the radio to break the window……….. and at that point, the light turned green, and the car in front of me took off, and I had no reason to stay,  But, I did record this much!!!

We proceeded to the new campground, got checked in and hooked up, and then decided that we would forego the casinos and tour the countryside. 

We chose to drive to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, and take the 13 mile scenic drive.  The $7.00 entrance fee was waived with our National Parks Pass for people over 62.  It was a nice drive and a treat to be out of the hustle of the city.  Here are only some of the pictures…….

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Here are some views of the rock formations in the drive……….

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At one point, they had numerous petroglyphs in the park.  I got a good picture of one………. hand prints:

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After driving through Red Canyon, we decided to take the drive to Mount 'Charleston at Elevation 7450’.  It was much colder up there, and a lot of snow was still around…….

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One of the things that we learned at the Visitor Center was that the rock formations in this area have been created by rain and wind erosion.  At one point, we saw a mountain that had a formation that looked like a woman standing on the side……

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That concludes today’s report.  Tomorrow will be planned……….. tomorrow!!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Exploring Las Vegas - 3

On Tuesday morning, our casino of choice was Caesar's Palace.  We arrived at about 9:00am.   The parking garage was easy to find, and we started our tour.  The casino and shopping area was the best of all that we have visited so far…… just in front of the Venetian with the canals!  Like the Venetian, it had street scenes with blue cloudy skies painted on the high ceilings.  Here are some pictures……….

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It is amazing and very interesting to see what they have built here “indoors”!  Being Greek influenced, there were a lot of fountains.  Here are some views of them………..

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Two other interesting things that we saw were spiral escalators and statues acting as columns hold up the building………..

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After the tour through Caesar's Palace, we still had energy left, so we drove to the MGM Grand and walked through it.  It was not very impressive, so no pictures.  We returned to the Bus for some rest.

This is our last night in this “Resort”, and tomorrow we plan to move to a new park.  I want to drive the Bus down The Las Vegas Strip at night and video the lights with my dash cam, so we plan to dump our tanks this afternoon, and take the Bus to town tonight.  We will return, but only plug into cable and electricity for the night, and then relocate in the morning.