vegas!
We awoke early on Tuesday morning, had breakfast, and started driving to Las Vegas, about 200 miles southeast of Goldpoint. We decided to make a short side trip to Hoover Dam, since it was about 30 additional miles southeast of Las Vegas. The drive down US 95 was really scenic, and desolate. The damn was nice, but I expected it to be bigger somehow. Also, it was overrun with tourists (us amongst them, i guess). We walked across the dam (which also carries US 93), into Arizona (and the Mountain Time Zone) briefly, then walked back. I really wanted to go on the "Discovery Tour", but Denise wasn't interested, and since it was \$10/person, that was a bit steep of a price for something that only I wanted to see. I'm sure we'll go back again some day, and do it once David is old enough to appreciate it.
On the way to the hotel (we stayed in The Sahara, mostly because it was the least expensive of non-scummy hotels on the Strip), we drove up The Strip from The MGM Grand. Since we had never been to Las Vegas before, it gave us a pretty good idea of where everything was situated. It was about as loud, garrish & crowded as I had expected.
The Sahara was nice enough, but it was nearly at the northern end of The Strip, which meant that it was somewhat distant from all the other big hotels (The Mirage, New York New York, etc). It had a dorky north African motif in the lobby & casino, but the room we got was normal in appearance. The one sucky problem (which seemed to be the case at every large hotel in Las Vegas), was that the parking garage was very very far from the rooms. This meant that we had to drag all the luggage (including David's heavy playpen) clear across the garage, through the lobby, and to the room (on the 4th floor in our case). Since we were a bit exhausted, we decided to try out the Sahara Buffet that night for dinner. It turned out to be the cheapest of all the buffets we tried, at \$7.99/person. I thought that it was ok, considering what it cost, but Denise didn't like it much at all. The food selection was about average, but much of it was overheated, or dried out. David did eat much better though, so that was a plus. We also learned that you have to get to the buffet early if you want to avoid the crowds. We got there around 5PM, and by 5:30PM, there was a huge line (prolly over 100 people) waiting to get in. That night, Denise had the brilliant idea of putting David's playpen in the bathroom, so that he couldn't see or hear us at night, and it worked! David fell asleep really fast, and didn't wake up until I got up for the bathroom at 6AM.
We got an early start on Wednesday morning, and started walking up The Strip to The Stratosphere. Its claim to fame is this 60 story observation tower that also has a resteraunt, and roller coaster at the top. Nearly every hotel in Las Vegas has a gimmick of some sort to draw people inside. Unfortuantely, many of them charge for that attraction, and The Stratosphere was not any different, and wanted \$9/person to go to the top of the tower. Also, every hotel's "Main Entrance" is really the Casino entrance. As I mentioned before, the Saharah was at the northern end of the Strip, which meant that we had a very long walk to everything else. We ended up doing the walking in stages, where we'd walk a chunk of the way, then walk back up to the car, then drive down to where we left off, walk some more south, then go back to the car, etc. We got lunch at a Mexican resteraunt in The Frontier, where they were having a two-for-\$13.95 fajitas special, and the food was very very good. That price also included lime margaritas for both of us (david drank water).
Las Vegas is an "after dark" town. The streets are largely empty before roughly 11AM, and there isn't much going on, other than gambling until mid afternoon in most places. As a result, we had to stay out late to see anything interesting. David, of course, is a morning person, and doesn't usually handle staying up past his bedtime (of 7PM) very well. We decided that we'd try and get him to take a long nap in the afternoon, in the hope of being able to keep him up somewhat later. Overall, it worked. We went to The Rio for their buffet that night, and it was hands down the best buffet we ate at. It was huge, high quality, and very tasty food. They had everything from sushi, to salads, to mexican to chinese, plus amazing desserts. Unfortunately, the Rio was not on the strip, so we got somewhat lost trying to find it. After dinner, we drove to The Mirage, where we parked, and walked to Treasure Island to see their Siren Cove show. The layout of Treasure Island is quite improessive. There is a huge artificial lake in the front, with two fairly large pirate ships at each end. The backdrop is something similar to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. The show was mostly stupid. The premise were all these show girls (sirens) were on one ship, and lured pirates on the 2nd ship to their death with music & dancing. The songs were stupid, and the dancing was also stupid. There were some brief explosions with fire, but other than that it was dumb. Afterwards we walked down to The Mirage, and watched the fiery volcano erruption. It was kinda spiffy. Lots of orange-lit water being jetisoned into the air, with some fire, and then the water around the volcano's base caught fire, whch was pretty spiffy. At that point it was nearly 9PM, so we headed back to the Sahara and put David to bed.
On Thursday morning, we checked out of the Sahara, and parked at the Mirage, and spent the day exploring further south on the Strip. We ended up eating at the brunch buffet at the Tropicana, which I felt was over priced. Also the Tropicana had a lot of steps, which made transporting david in his stroller somewhat frustrating. That night we checked into a hotel about 2 miles east of the strip, Sam's Town. It was actually quite nice, and very large. It had a 56 lane bowling alley, an 18 screen movie theater, and a huge indoor atrium. It also appealed quite heavily to senior citizens, for a reason that I didn't understand. At any rate, nearly all the guests there were over 55. It was still a nice hotel, and rather inexpensive as well.
On Friday morning we got up early, with the intention of staying the night in Barstow, with a visit at the Calico Ghost Town.