Vegas, Baby

We rolled into Vegas late Friday night and booked the room for two nights to give us a chance to see all and do all we wanted to do and see. There is one thing we have observed the past several days since leaving Sacramento is that there had to be some rough and tough folks to make it out here. This is some harsh territory. The air is very hot and dry, which is hard on the skin. The locals look like their skin is made of dark brown leather. John and I are quite the “palefaces” compared to everyone else. Also, it is interesting to note that most license plates we have seen are from California! We found out why later on in our adventure. We got a good night’s sleep and got up early (for us) and drove out to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Damn, what a dam! Everything is larger than life out here and this was no exception. I chickened out when I saw how high and narrow the dam is and John left me off at the visitor’s center where I people watched thank you very much while he drove over the dam and got pictures, then he WALKED back over it to tell me where he would pick me up and then he had to WALK back over it to get the car. Jeese Louise! I imagined that if I set foot on that thing an earthquake would occur and I would tumble to my death and if I rode over it in the car someone would hit us and knock us over. It is a curse to have such an active imagination at times, you know? We stopped in Boulder City on our way back to Vegas and had hot dogs at A&W Rootbeer. They are everywhere out here as are Denny’s. We also learned that Del Taco first opened close by. Junk food country I do say. On our way back to our home away from home, HI Express, Las Vegas West, we stopped at the Red Rock Harley Davidson dealership to get a t-shirt. Hey, you can’t come all the way to Vegas and NOT get a Las Vegas Harley tee, right? So, back we are in the room and since the Alabama/Georgia game started out here at 4:45 p.m. we decided that we would stay in and watch the game and hit the Strip Sunday a.m. when we thought it wouldn’t be so crowded. We were so pumped and excited that Georgia got beat we just could hardly stand it. They have been bragging about their record but hell fire before this weekend they haven’t played anybody in the SEC, just second class schools that they could easily beat. They are such whiners. So we set out Sunday a.m. fully intending on hitting the strip, walking around and doing a little gambling. Yee-haa! So we get there and find out that there are no parking lots! You can only park at a Casino where you are going to gamble!?! What’s up with that? So we just rode down the strip and took pictures at red lights and no, Sunday is not a quiet day here. It is swamped with people and the parking decks at the casinos were slap dab full. As we were leaving Las Vegas (I keep hearing Sheryl Crow singing…”I’m leavin’ Las Vegas”) we missed a turn and it was very serendipitous because we found ourselves in Prim Valley, NV which is on the NV/CA stateline and which is about 25 miles out of our way, but, Mecca! This is a smaller gambling venue and easy parking. We stopped at Whiskey Pete’s since we just couldn’t come all the way out here and not drop a few bucks. I absolutely love blackjack and I was able to find a table with a dealer and no one playing but me. I handed her a $100 bill and asked for some chips and told her I was no gambler and didn’t really know all the rules but I loved to play the game. She was just a perfect sweetheart. She clued me in on what to do when I was about to do something stupid and explained the rules to me that I had never heard of like taking insurance when she turned up an Ace and to stay when she turned up a 4 or 6. Then this weathered battered looking woman joins me and mutters “I just lost $60 and I need to try to win it back before my husband picks me up”. I just sit there but she strikes up a conversation with me and I tell her that I am no good at gambling but I like it and she warmed up to me and took me under her wing so to speak. We were at a $5 table and she was betting the minimum. I wasn’t worrying about it because I had $100 to lose but I got the feeling that she didn’t. She told me that she was originally from Louisiana but now lives in Palm Springs, CA!!! Four hours they drove to gamble and do it every weekend. Her husband was across the street at Buffalo Bills checking them out of the hotel and she was trying to win back some money. Jeese. I am glad that wine is my vice and not gambling. Anyway, she brought me luck and I got a few blackjacks, well more than a few, about 6 or 7. But I would lose a couple hands in between and since I don’t really know how to gamble, I sat there and played until I was down to $10 and I threw in the towel and left the $10 for my dealer, since she made it possible for me to play a lot longer than I would have been able to had she not given me a little help. Fun, fun, fun, but not something I would want to do very often. It is too stressful. John likes the video poker slots and he played as long as I did and was only down $8. So, there you go. In the past when I have played the slots I have always left a winner, but it is not nearly as much fun, to me, as blackjack.
We motored on into Arizona and Mountain Time and settled in Williams, AZ, which is the gateway to the Grand Canyon. We will get up on Monday and make our way up there. We are hoping to find a room up there for Monday night so that we can spend an extra day there and take these God forsaken bicycles off the car. We have come over 4,000 miles with them on the roof!! We have jokenly said that we may just end up carrying them all across the country without getting them off!!! We do plan on staying a couple of days in Santa Fe so if we don’t get them down tomorrow, then maybe later on in the week. Another sidebar…my hair is straight. Yep. Low humidity equals straight hair. It’s silky, smooth and straight like a surfer chick’s. I was so envious of the surfer girls in FL in my youth because they had silky locks of gold while I only had black locks of frizz. So maybe we need to move out here so I can have a good hair day every day….