A Few Of My Opinions and The Las Vegas Blog Conference

January 5, 2009 – 10:24pm

I’ve got loads of news to tell you about today!! First off, I’ve got a couple of emails I wanted to share with you. The first one is from my aunt Prudy in Candia, NH, she’s always looking out for me so she wanted to share with me an article from back home in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire newspaper. Can you believe an article from back home has covered how the economy has disrupted the level of tourism in Las Vegas? For the article, click here. What the article comes down to is “For the first time in decades, the population [in LasVegas] has stopped growing. Casino projects are on hold. Planes full of free-spending tourists are landing with less frequency. Long the embodiment of American confidence, the city is now in limbo.” And from what I’ve personally seen in Las Vegas in the past 3 weeks that I’ve been here is that all the promo desks have vanished from when they were giving away free t-shirts,  mugs, and keychains when you sign up for a Player’s Card and spun the prize wheel (I remember those days). And unless you visit 1/2 price tickets 4 tonight, there is no more discounted tickets to the Las Vegas shows, well, unless you want to tour a timeshare here in the area, those salespeople will give you all kinda of Las Vegas deals. And seriously, I haven’t seen an Elvis impersonator anywhere. Not one. I’m sure Elvis impersonators have moved on to find work in more attractive destinations for today’s budget conscience vacationers. Alot of people are wanting more for their dollar, enjoying discounted cruises, splitting costs on beach resorts with other couples, and taking vacations more local to where they reside. Another email I got today from my pal Don in California, he was telling me about another leap in the use of low cost alternative energy has made taking a vacation more affordable……In steps the first RV Park in the nation to offer solar-powered park models as low-cost weekend cottages. I’ve got pictures and the info….but, the company’s PR department has not released this great news yet, so to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes you’ll have to wait for the information to be properly exposed. I’ll post pictures and more info on this transition towards the end of the week. And I’ll talk more about my pal Don tomorrow, there’s something I want to share with you all about him (don’t worry Don, it’s not that bad – hee hee) Okay, moving on, starting next Sunday, the Deuce buses that transports a majority of the passengers in and around Las Vegas is taking on a fare hike! A one way ride on the Deuce is going up from $2 dollars to $3 dollars, an unlimited day pass will go from $5 dollars to $7 dollars, and a monthly unlimited ride pass (which we paid $40 dollars for) is going up to $55 dollars. An increase of $15 dollars, wow, more people will be investing in good sneakers. Remember my Rule Number 1 about Las Vegas….when you are walking around Las Vegas, buildings are alot farther away than they appear, it’s not “just over there”. Okay, let’s see what else here. This weekend, Jan 10th and 11th, the web based software that I use for this blog is coming to Las Vegas!! WordPress has a blogging conference about their product, new product releases, and classes on how to get the most from a WordPress blog package. I signed up today for the weekend conference that cost just $20 that includes a t-shirt and 2 days of conference classes. A few of the conference classes includes “How to run a blog with a staff of contributors”, “Using your blog for sales and marketing”, and “Remixing your blog to increase traffic and visibility”. This is right up my alley!  This is where I’ll be this weekend mingling with other bloggers. Okay, what did we do today?? We went to Boulder Station Casino and then spent some of the evening out on the Las Vegas strip….here’s some pictures…..

Then here we spend some time walking around the downtown Las Vegas strip…..

And then we returned to the RV to show some loving to Jake…..

Well, that’s just about all that has happened today! Thanks for checking on me!! It’s getting late and I’ll be back tomorrow! Nite Nite!!