| A Trip to the Southwest and the Plains November 2007 The Southwest — Page 3 |
Our First Full Day in Vegas
Once we were up and around, we took off for the nearby casino. Believe it
or not, when we went to the casino last night I discovered that I left my
camera in our motorhome. As it turned out the casino has a large aquarium
and I really wanted to take photographs of the very interesting collection
of fish.
Click on image to view a larger version This was our campsite in Las Vegas — How do you like our split motorhome? |
When we arrived at the casino we entered through the Bass Pro Shop entrance. The first impression was that there sure are a lot of dead animals in the store. The entrance has all sorts of stuffed heads and complete animals. There were the commonly seen mountings like a deer head, a moose head and trophy fish as well as animals like a bobcat and a coyote. This was only the beginning.
 This is a premier toy store for the outdoorsman |
Last night I thought the store was only fishing supplies and accessories. As it turned out, the store is THE BIGGEST sporting goods emporium I've ever seen. There is a section that has a boating showroom filled with very nice watercraft. There are more kinds of fishing tackle than I've ever seen.
| There are sections for hunting, camping, and outdoor clothing for men and women. An archery area, a showroom for fine guns, and another area devoted to NASCAR. Each section or department was bigger than many specialty stores I've seen. There is even a shooting range to try the guns before buying as well as an archery range. My words are inadequate to describe the place, so I've put together a photo album. Even that doesn't do the place justice. Click on the button on the right. |
|
Kay tired quickly looking at sporting stuff, so she took off to play the slot machines while I continued moving from one area to another viewing all the wonderful goodies.
In the gun department were more gun-safes than I've seen before. These are safes for storing long-guns meaning that the safes are tall. Some looked as if they could be used by a small bank. The fanciest gun-safe I saw was one that was a John Wayne safe with a full length portrait of the Duke wearing western garb from one of his movies. The price for this special safe was $7000.
I went back to the fishing department looking at displays of some fine fishing tackle. Earlier I had taken a picture of the department and missed a clever display. All over the area there are life-size fish hanging from the ceiling posed as if they are swimming in schools. It's as if you are on the ocean floor looking up at the swimming fish. Then I noticed that there is the bottom of a boat including the lower unit of an outboard motor. Very clever indeed.
 A school of fish overhead — notice the boat bottom on ceiling |
| The custom motorcycle company Orange County Choppers really has
a presence in the store and casino. The Bass Pro Shop motorcycle is
one of the most unique riding machines I've ever seen. The fenders are shaped
like fish and the fuel tank looks very much like a lunker black-bass going
for the bait with mouth wide open. The spokes in the wheels are shaped like
fish hooks. All and all this is a very distinctive as well as beautiful machine.
|
|
 Check out the lunker fuel tank |
I finally joined Kay in the casino for a short time until we decided that we would drive into town to the hotel-casino strip. But first, I found a gas station to top off our car's fuel tank — a good decision I would find out later.
With great anticipation I drove north on Las Vegas Boulevard on our way to casino row. Our only experience in a casino town was in Reno and Laughlin. There we could drive down the main drag to a casino parking lot, park the car and step out on the avenue of gambling palaces. My plan was simple, just find one of the places we wanted to visit, drive into the parking lot and check out a world famous location.
I was surprised to see how close the airport is to the downtown area. When airliners were coming in for a landing, viewing from where we were, it appeared as if the plane was going to land in among the buildings. It was a very strange sight indeed. The airport has a name that I've seen in other parts of Nevada — McCarren International Airport.
As I drove north it wasn't very long until the famous skyline began taking shape ahead of us. Unfortunately, traffic came to a stop a long way from where we wanted to be. Four lanes of vehicles began creeping along so slow that there was no room between vehicles for me to move over to another lane and I was stuck in one of the inner lanes.
 A sign we've seen many times on TV welcomes all to Las Vegas |
After awhile. in slow-and-go formation, I began to see what was going on. It looked as if most of the city was under construction in many areas. Some side streets were closed and it appeared as if the parking garages were few and far between even if we could have gotten over to get into one. I could see that there was a lot of walking required even if we had been able to get our car parked in a parking lot or garage.
I could see the monorail stations that might have been a good way to travel from one location to another. As I looked around at familiar hotels I noticed we had been sitting still for a long time. When the traffic in our lane began to move, I could see that the lane to our right was about to go away. I figured this was the reason our lane was so slow because cars had to merge into our lane. It turned out to be even worse than that because our lane also was going away up ahead of us. So now there were three lanes that had to fit into one lane leaving only two lanes where four had been earlier. Also, the right lanes were blocked off due to construction.
 New York, New York — Photo shows that we were here even if only trapped in traffic |
| Because traffic was moving so slow I decided to take pictures from the
car. I would find that it was very difficult to get a photo without a large
construction crane messing up the background along with the steel skeletons
of buildings under construction. It took us so long to get over — where
we could finally escape the slow traffic pattern — that we lost interest
in stopping anywhere in town. |
|
NOTE: We would hear
later on the news that the population of Las Vegas is about to explode so
there is a lot of construction to get ahead of the coming influx of people.
I heard a joke that said the state bird was going to be changed to be the
construction crane. |
Once I was able to get free of the heavy traffic I made a dash for the I-15 freeway to get back toward our motorhome. As our route on I-15 took us southbound on the west side of the strip, I clicked off a photo of the Luxor pyramid from our car. I did this so I could get a picture of the black building in its pure color. I found that the strip-side of the pyramid had been defaced by a huge advertisement as if the structure was nothing more than a triangle-shaped billboard.
 Excalibur on the left and Luxor on the right |
We decided to go back to the casino, near the RV park, to have a late lunch at the buffet. It was nice to be in a less hectic environment where we could have a nice meal. We will have to wait for a future trip to take in the famous tourist destinations.
Leaving the buffet, we stopped at the slot machines for a short session of give-and-take until "take" won. Fortunately, we didn't leave very much money behind. I figure we left behind about $20 each while we played with about ten times that much money.
We arrived home shortly after sunset to finish our day watching TV, answering email messages and putting this story together. We decided to extend our stay for a day so we can take a side trip to Hoover Dam and maybe another attempt to go into town.
| [ BEGIN ] | |
[ PREV ] | |
[ NEXT ] | |
[ RV FUN TRIPS ] |