Welcome to America’s Party 2009 (Part 1)

December 31, 2008 – 7:58pm

Yes, this is Part One of my two part America’s Party 2009. The party before the party. I walked the Las Vegas strip today wanting to see how crazy it was already!! I got some pictures of how busy it was and what’s going on. I do have to tell you first off all that you (all my blog visitors), you are all in big trouble!!! Because during my venture out today on the Las Vegas strip, all the stores were giving great sales on products in their stores….soo…..I, kinda…..bought……are you ready??  A NEW CAMERA!!!!! YES, a new camera that can take pictures at night and is soooo neat. So, you are all in trouble, because two things will happen. One, I’m taking double the amount of pictures because I can take pictures at night and of the neon lights without getting a blur on the picture and Two, twice as many Jake pictures!!! Why twice as many Jake pictures because I have a new camera??? Because it’s my camera and he’s super cute!!! Hey….no, I haven’t been drinking. Anyways, here’s some pictures of my day today………

This is part of the Las Vegas strip…..

Oh, I am a Jimmy Buffett Fan. Hi honey, I’m home……

Come to Vegas and this is where you will find me…….

Okay, we are at the Flamingo Hilton Hotel and Casino

The street party is starting already……

Want a shot, this bartender is up on the bar passing out shots right from the bottle for $5 dollars a shot……

This is a picture of Treasure Island Hotel and Casino (website here)

We are at the Venetian Hotel and Casino (website here)

When I find out if one of my Keno tickets is the winning ticket and I pick up my $10,000 dollars next week, can I shop here……. What do you mean I don’t have enough money????

I’m expecting to see alot of this tonight…….

They have ceased construction in Las Vegas due to the economy…. (it’s true)

The Steve Wynn Hotel and Casino……

One of the many souvenir shops here………

Here they all are…..eating lunch………

My new camera that I bought today can take pictures at night. I’m so excited!!!!!
The Riviera Hotel and Casino (website here)

Circus Circus Hotel and Casino (website here)

Well, I thought I’ld show you around town like I promised you and now that I have a brand new camera (Yippee), I can take a ton of great pictures and show you around! I’m about to leave to go out for the night to party with the rest of America on the Las Vegas strip and you better believe I’ll have my camera handy. So I will post “Welcome to America’s Party 2009 (Part 2)” tomorrow. Can’t wait to talk to you then and until then Happy New Year!!!!!!

The New Year Party Crowd Is Moving In….

December 30, 2008 – 11:07pm

Hello! Where did all of these RVs come from?? 55 RVs showed up today and another 65 is suppose to show up tomorrow. It looks like an RV dealership here with campers all over the place. And the people!!! There’s people everywhere!!! I mean…..what’s the occasion?? 🙂 Anyways, today I took front row seat to the RVs that pulled in today. And what a show it was…..I sat outside with Jake and watched everyone drive in; from the big motorhomes with the Lincoln attached to the back all the way down to the little pop up camper behind the Ford Taurus. This is the time of year that you see all kinds of people leave their familiar surroundings of a place called “home” and live out of a box on wheels for the week. There are alot of rental campers here. Let’s see here, we had a Minnie-Winnie Class C come in to the park today (yes, it was a rental unit) and parked on the wrong side of the power box unit that he could barely open his door and then he stayed there and ran his electric power cord under the camper. Five minutes later an RV park employee drove by on a golf cart, recognized the problem and try to find the owners of the RV unit. But when the power cord was plugged into the power box, all four RV tenants disappeared for the rest of the day and, of course, they were no where to be found. Right after that I was watching a motorcycle traveling down the campground road that I was sitting on and the driver didn’t exactly look too steady on it. Well, when he took the corner 40 feet from where I was sitting, he turns the corner but gave it no gas to get going again. The bike ended up laying on the ground and he fell off it ending up on the ground next to the bike. He gets up off the ground, brushes himself off, and looks at me and says, “Wow, that was strange” like the bike was possessed or something. After he picked the motorcycle up and surveyed the damage on both the bike and himself, he was on his way again. I watched him drive the motorcycle out of the park merging onto a high traffic road. I never saw him again for the rest of the afternoon so I hope he made it to where he wanted to go. Immediately after that happened, I pushed my lawn chair back about 10 feet so I was closer to our RV purely for safety reasons. Around 5pm we left to go to Boulder Station Casino and then Sunset Station Casino (two members of the Station Casino family, website here). We had a good time there, I won a little bit of money, but nothing really to brag about, but it was nice and relaxing and not too crowded at all. When we were at the second casino, the Sunset Station Casino, somehow the casino had gotten bigger since we were there. No, you don’t understand…..the actual casino got bigger since we first walked in 2 hours earlier. The casino looked small when we first walked in, but we couldn’t find the entrance that we came in thru when we wanted to leave. It took us 20 minutes to walk that casino to find our way out. That is a huge casino. And we had to ask a slot machine hostess where the front door was. She was laughing. Yeah, real funny. So we managed to find our way out of that casino. So that will be lesson number 3 for you. If you are following my blog and I know you are, right? Right?? Good, I thought so. Lesson Number 1: Never walk anywhere in Las Vegas. It’s not just “right over there” even IF you CAN see it from where you are. Lesson Number 2: Casinos that are on the outskirts of the Las Vegas strip has a higher payout rate (in my opinion and results from my win/loss experience) than the casinos on the Las Vegas strip. Lesson Number 3: That’s tonight’s lesson. If you walk into a casino, try to remember what door you came thru and a landmark inside the casino so you can find your way out again. Hey, that’s not funny. I could of gotten lost in there for hours!!! Anyways, I’m glad you are keeping up with my blog and I only write what I see and what I experience, and of course, I have an opinion about everything! So thanks for coming along for the ride. I can tell you right now exactly what I’m going to do tomorrow. I will be sitting outside this RV in my lawn chair with Jake, with my camera in hand to take pictures of all the action that goes on with the 60+ RVs moving in tomorrow and I’ve putting up 6 to 1 odds that there will be an accident inside this park before the day is out. Take care and be safe tomorrow and please promise me that you will not drink and drive. Do your part in making the roads safe for not only RVs but for everyone around you. Good night! 🙂

Fed Ex Showed Up

December 30, 2008 – 10:13am

Hello! I know I didn’t write a blog post yesterday, but I got up super extra early today to get one out to you and to tell you all the news! Fed Ex showed up yesterday!! Remember why?? You don’t?? Our microwave went Ka-Put back when we were in San Antonio, Texas. Ahhhh, now you remember!! Well, we have been saved!! See……

Here’s the old one….

Here’s the new one….

It’s so easy to change out a microwave in an RV……

Look at that! Brand new again…..

So, that was all the excitement for yesterday? Nooooo, that’s only half of it! We hit three casinos last night. I wish I had a camera that would take nice pictures 1) at night, and 2) inside casinos (those neon lights in the background always blur the picture). Okay, are you ready for lesson number two when it comes to Las Vegas (I forgot Lesson number 1, but that’s okay. Lesson number 2 is much more important). Casinos on the outskirt of the Las Vegas strip has a higher percentage of payouts. I know this is true because I’m still counting all the money I won last night!!! Can you believe it was a profitable night for me at the slot machines!!!! I’m so happy. Okay, you won’t believe this. Wait, let’s start from the beginning now. The first stop we made was at the Palms Hotel and Casino (website here) and I lost money, about $40 bucks. I had a bad feeling that the damage from my losses was going to be messy, because I was determined to make it back. So we left there and stopped at the Orleans Hotel and Casino (website here). I lost $20 bucks there (by now, I was kinda highly disturbed over the set back). So we left there and went to the Texas Station Casino (remember the Station Casino family – website here) and I’m in love with the Texas Station Casino. Not only did I win $119.00 in one shot on a penny slot machine, but the food there is great! We ate at the Texas Cafe and it was sooooo good. The late dinner we had was good, the chocolate cake desert was to die for! So, doing the math here: $40 loss plus $20 loss with a $119.00 win equals a profitable night of $59 bucks!!!! Well, it’s not that exciting to you, but in the direction I was heading, it was a huge relief. So, yes, I’m in love with Texas Station Casino. Now, all three of these casinos are on the outskirt of the Las Vegas strip. You probably could take a bus there, but I don’t think a bus goes to the Texas Station Casino. But, all of these casinos are within 5 miles of each other. So that’s what we did yesterday and I think today we are going to hit more of the Station Casinos on the outskirt of the Las Vegas strip, like, Sunset Station Casino and Boulder Station Casino. These casinos are big and they have better payouts with better priced food. Well, it’s still before 11am, so I’m going to take Jake out for his daily walk. And I don’t forget to check back on me to see what else we are up to! Have a nice day! Bye! 🙂

What’s the chances….A bus accident….

December 28, 2008 – 1:56pm

Hello! The Question of the Day! I want to know the probability between being on a bus that gets into a car accident OR winning $10,000 on a ten cent Keno game (which I have to pick up my money this week when I check which of my 50 tickets is the winning one). Well, yes, the former of the two happened last night. Wait, wait, I have to tell you what happened leading up to the bus accident which I know is totally irrelevant, but you have to hear what we did last night, so sit still and stop fidgeting! 🙂 Okay, we decided to go check out the new mall (it’s new to me) called the “Miracle Mile Shops” at the new Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino (new to me) that is located on the Las Vegas strip. This mall is so nice. The Miracle Mile Shops has 170 stores and 15 restaurants. Very nice mall. Oh, and it has a casino in the middle…..But, Of Course! So, we walked around the mall and went to the casino, a typical casino, I lost money there. So, we left the mall and walked next door to M&M World. The M&M World store is huge with four floors of shopping for, well, M&M stuff! I like that store! There’s a Coca-Cola World right next to it, but Coca-Cola World closed at 11pm. Yeah, we were out late! So, we bought a souvenir at M&M World (we didn’t buy much, remember we lost money at the Planet Hollywood Casino), I got a picture of what we bought, before we cracked it open……(I made the picture a tad bigger this time). To avoid any confusion, we bought the plastic champagne bottle filled with M&Ms, the yellow bag was free :)…….

 

So, we left M&M World and visited Tropicana Hotel and Casino. Hang on, let me get some websites for you…..the Miracle Mile Shops website is here, M&M World’s website is here, and Tropicana Hotel and Casino is here, okay, so we went to the Tropicana Casino for a little while and looked around, lost around $10 bucks there and walked out. We hopped the bus from the Tropicana Hotel and Casino northbound to go back to the RV Park. Remember what these buses looked like? I posted a picture of one a couple blog posts back – hang on, let me dig it out again for you…..

So we were riding on the top level right up front. The bus is pretty empty at 1am, there was about 50 people on this bus. I felt the bus picking up speed and then, all of a sudden, the bus driver hit the brakes very hard, then immediately swerved hard to the left and then swerved to the right again, and yep, you guess it, the tail of the bus didn’t clear the car that was doing a last minute right turn directly in front of us. So the bus pulled over and the officer showed up (it didn’t take long for a cop to show up, they are everywhere), and from the upper deck I heard the cop say to the bus driver, “I’m going to have to write you up for that”. So the bus driver told everyone to get off the bus and wait at the next bus stop for another bus to pick us up. Well, we all evacuated the bus and walked a little ways to the next bus stop and the next bus driver pulled over and let everyone on for no charge. So we all hopped on the bus and continued on our way! We successfully made it back to our RV. I love stories with a happy ending, don’t you?? I think tonight we are going to spend the evening at Fremont Street. The weather is getting better. Last night was cold, but tonight is suppose to be nice outside. I like Fremont Street, you can walk around outside and it’s relaxing. Not as crazy and busy as the Las Vegas strip. I posted a picture of Fremont Street in my previous blog, I’ll dig it up for you again…….

Have a good day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow! 🙂 Oh, and what about my question…What is the probability of me winning $10,000 at Keno?? Going to check my tickets next week and I’ll let you know how it feels to be $10k richer! 🙂 Bye!

A mouse at Sam’s Town??

December 27, 2008 – 5:05pm

WHOA! The number of visitors to my blog site today spiked sky high. I’m a tad self-conscious and worried about what I might of wrote in that blog post that set a new blog visitor record? I’ll have to look back and see exactly which part of yesterday’s blog was actually worth reading. 🙂 Anyways, Thanks everyone! It’s you all that make these blog updates so much fun for me to do! And I just want to say thanks for coming along for the ride with me. I couldn’t ask for better travel companions than you all!! What did we do today?? Today we went to Sam’s Town. I love Sam’s Town. A casino on the outskirts of town…..7 miles from Las Vegas Boulevard. Sam’s Town is another casino where I always walk out with more money than I walk in with. Let’s look at some pictures……

There’s Sam’s Town…..

This is inside the casino. Actually, all the following pictures of the casino are taken right inside Sam’s Town Casino even though it looks like it’s in an outdoor atmosphere……

These are the hotel rooms inside Sam’s Town Casino. Take an elevator up and the hallways are on the other side of the rooms…..Neat Huh??

They have a pretty nice water show inside the casino…..Here’s a few pictures of the water show……

Oh, and look what I found…..He’s so cute. Hang on, I’ll get a little closer to him……

Isn’t he so cute. I want to take him home with me. 🙂

I told you there was a mouse inside the Sam’s Town Casino……

Sam’s Town Casino has an RV Park right across the street. A very big and popular RV Park…..

Another RV Park down the street from the casino…..

I took this picture for a reason.

If you have never been to Las Vegas. I just want to show you something real quick here. It makes me laugh when I see people who are walking around this city saying, “Oh, let’s go there, look, it’s not far.” or they say, “Look right over there, let’s just walk over there and check that out.” Now, if you’ve never listened to me before, listen to me now. NOTHING in Las Vegas is “just right over there”. I took this picture to show you that the Las Vegas Stratosphere on the Las Vegas Strip is 5 1/2 miles away from where I’m sitting. I know that because our little trusty GPS device said at this point, “Turn left  in 5.4 miles” which is on the Las Vegas Boulevard. Don’t walk anywhere here, because nothing is “just over there”, and you will never make it. My first trip to Las Vegas was 12 years ago and my friends and I thought Fremont Street was “just over there”. Someone said to us that Fremont Street wasn’t far at all. Well, we decided that we would just walk to it. HA! But,we did it! We walked from Las Vegas Boulevard to Fremont Street. Never again! Today, I don’t even walk from one casino to the next, I hop the bus because the casino themselves around here is a 1/2 mile long each. I love my bus pass. If you are going to visit Las Vegas for the first time, get a bus pass. Don’t walk unless it’s from one slot machine to the next! 🙂

Palace Station Casino and Keno…..

December 26, 2008 – 10:23pm

Today we started the afternoon by picking up our dry cleaning items at the dry cleaners right down the street from us and then we made a quick weekly food stock up at Wal-Mart, it’s a Super Wal-Mart that has a complete grocery store attached to it. No, Walmart isn’t my second home, but that could be up for debate. So, after doing all our errands, we stopped by the Palace Station Casino. A casino you can see right from our living room window. I like the Station Casinos. The Station Casino family includes Texas Station Casino, Sunset Station Casino, Palace Station Casino, Boulder Station Casino, Santa Fe Station Casino, and many, many more! Here’s their website, click here. There is something different about these casinos that is not like the ones on the Las Vegas strip. They are a smaller casino with a bigger percentage of payouts. Oh, and I’m so hooked on Keno right now and the Palace Station Casino made my whole week when it was advertising 10 cent Keno! I was in heaven. TEN CENTS!!!! I love it. I signed up for that. The way 10 cent Keno works is that you buy a Keno ticket with any amount of numbers that you want to pick from 3 to 10 numbers on a lottery ticket that has 80 numbers. Like the lottery. And after that you have to (must) play 50 consecutive games with a minimum total bet of $5 dollars. Follow me? I hope so. So, since we can’t stick around for 50 drawing (I’m not that much of a Keno fanatic), we have to go back next week to see if I won. I picked 8 numbers on my ticket (ticket or card, it’s all the same word there), anyways, if they draw MY 8 numbers, then I will win $10,000. Did you get that?? I will win TEN thousand dollars!!!!!  So I can not wait to go back next week and claim my money. I’ve got 50 chances for my measly 8 numbers to come up. How easy is that! I’m sure to be a winner!!!! And if I don’t win, you won’t hear me talk about Keno anymore. And if I don’t say anything about winning Keno, then don’t ask, it probably wasn’t a pretty moment for me losing $5 bucks on a 10 cent Keno game. But, we had a very nice visit at the Palace Station Casino today. It seems like every time I visit a Station Casino I always walk out with more money than I go in with. OH, and if you get one of their free Player’s Card……yep, you know it, a huge discount on their buffet. Their dinner buffet is $9.99, but with one of those magic cards, the buffet is only $6.99. I love it. Can I sign up for three of those cards??? Anyways, that’s all we did today. We must of stayed at the Palace Station Casino for at least three hours. It was great! Lots of fun. Other than that, the temperature here took a nose dive into the high 30’s. Brrrrrrr. The TV weatherman said that by next Tuesday we should be up to the low 60’s again. I’m staying inside until then…..YEAH RIGHT! 🙂 Talk to you again tomorrow! 🙂 Oh, one more thing before I forget…..I’ve included a poll on my blog page. It’s on the right hand side of my blog website a little ways down the page. You’ll find it if you look on the right hand side under my About Us section. Take a peek and take part in my poll. I’m hoping to do a monthly poll. But, we’ll see how many of my blog visitors participate, so answer my poll question so it will actually be worth my effort in posting a poll at all! 🙂

Rainy Weather for Christmas Day In Las Vegas

December 25 2008 – 11:15pm

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day! Today we spent most of the afternoon indoors. Then we headed out to Fremont Street for the evening. The website for Fremont Street is here. Fremont Street is always a fun place to be and it is about 5 miles north of the Las Vegas strip where we are staying. But Wait, I’m jumping ahead here. Let me show you what I stumbled upon when I left the RV this afternoon to go to Fremont Street. I found this in our RV Park……..

See it?? Look closer…..

WOW – where did that come from?? Niceeeeeee…….

Now THAT’S an RV……

When I can afford something like that, I will have serious money issues. But, until then, I’ll scope out the $7 dollar buffets 🙂 Today we took the bus to Fremont Street. Remember, we bought a 30 day unlimited bus pass. Well, this is what the buses look like here. You can sit on the 2nd level and see everything! The bus is called The Deuce.

This is Fremont Street. My camera is terrible at night, but after 10 shots, I finally got one worth showing you. See the white canopy above the street. That has a huge light show at night every hour on the hour for about 5 minutes. It’s a really neat light show correlated with music. I love it. Remember that website I gave you for Fremont Street, well, incase you missed it, click here.

The Binion Casino is on this street (it’s not a street for vehicle, just pedestrians), and we ate dinner at the Binion Casino. They have a special deal….it’s $7.95 for a prime rib dinner with a salad. Nice! We’ve been there twice so far. Oh, and you can play Keno while you have dinner. I love it! I played 7 games ($7) and won $3 bucks! Oh well, maybe next time I’ll win more! Well, that’s what we did today, so I’m going to watch TV for a little while and relax. Have a nice day tomorrow and I’ll talk to you then! OH, and thanks for checking on me! 🙂

Merry Christmas….

December 24, 2008 – 11:15pm

It’s late on Christmas Eve, and it’s past midnight on the East Coast (where I’m from), so I’m going to hop right into wishing you a Very, Very Merry Christmas! I hope you find yourself right where you want to be on Christmas Day……with the ones that you love. I’m going enjoy Christmas day with Jake and my parents. I want to wish my sister and her husband a Merry Christmas….time to open your Christmas gifts that we left with you before we left on this trip!! So, what did we do today? Well, let’s see here. We are having a slight problem with our flat screen TV that came with our Montana RV, and this TV seems to have this permanent line that goes across the TV screen about 6 inches up the screen. Here, I’ll show you a picture…..

See that line going across the TV making the bottom of the TV darker. Well, it’s there….like, permanently. It just doesn’t go away. Never! So we called an electronics specialist that came over to take the “report” to turn into Sylvania (TV manufacturer) so we can get a brand new TV. I mean, it IS under warranty, right?? So, no problem, the electronic guy stopped by and did his job and took a picture of the “defect” on the TV screen and left. His visit lasted less than ten minutes. THEN…….OH, yeah, there’s more…….it’s the “THEN” part that should worry you. My mom had read in the TV booklet (she reads all the directions), she read in the booklet that the TV shouldn’t be sitting on anything that heats up or gets hot. Yeah, well, you know what is under our TV right?? Remember the fireplace. I doubt, if the fireplace and TV defectiveness is really connected, but…..my dad….yeah, he’s got to find out for himself…….SOOOOOO……….

Out came the fireplace…..for a personal inspection…….

 

Well, when the fireplace inspection came back with his Approval and no connection could be found from the fireplace towards the defective TV, the fireplace was put back together successfully. I really don’t know if the fireplace inspection was really a concern that “needed” to be dealt with or something to do as a result of boredom. My dad is like that…..he likes to take things apart to see how they really work. Isn’t most guys like that?? But, the end result was a positive one and that’s what counts. So moving on…..as the fireplace was getting put back together again, I looked out the living room window at the RV Park and all the vacant RV sites….take a peek…

As you can clearly see that we have alot of open spaces that haven’t been taken up by campers. Due to fuel costs and the economy…..that would be my guess, I would say that about 50 percent of the park is occupied.
Oh, and yes, this is the only RV Park that is located on the Las Vegas strip and it is a parking lot with full hookup with grassy areas. And a casino on both sides, of course.

Well, let’s see here, what else did we do today?? So, we left the RV and we spent some time at Silverton Casino.

This is my kind of Santa….

Silverton Casino is about 7 miles south of the Las Vegas strip. Here’s their website….click here. They have a huge Bass Pro Shop inside this casino. Here’s some pictures of the Bass Pro Shop………..

Yep, Santa was in the store….

I found Santa taking Christmas present orders…….

And it looks like my mom showed Santa what she wanted in the store for Christmas…..

This is the display on the ceiling of the fishing section…..

Here’s a picture of the huge aquarium inside the Pro Bass Shop……

Some more pictures of the Bass Pro Shop store inside the Silverton Casino….

And they had a NASCAR Tailgating Zone promoting my favorite NASCAR driver!!!!

After we left the Bass Pro Shop, we headed back to the casino section. It’s under the same roof so it’s just a matter of coming out of the store and walking into the casino. The Silverton Casino has a deal going on right now for the month of December that if you sign up for their free Player’s Card, you can get the dinner buffet for 1/2 price! Wow, now that’s a deal! The 1/2 price for me was $7.54 including tax. Now, that’s the lowest price I’ve ever paid for a dinner buffet at a casino. So, of course, we took advantage of that. At the Silverton Casino, they have scuba divers that normally give a fish feeding show inside their 117,000 gallon aquarium that holds over 4,000 tropical fish! But, just like 90 percent of the free shows in the casinos at Las Vegas, all of these performers are on vacation until after Christmas. So, it’s a little on the quiet side here. Acutally, since I’ve been here…hmmmmm….it’s been 6 days so far, I have not seen one Elvis impersonator performing Elvis impressions on the Las Vegas strip sidewalks. Not one. Can you believe that. Elvis is on vacation. Hopefully everything around here will liven up after the holiday. Other than that……Enjoy your Christmas day and I will talk to you tomorrow. It’s starting to rain now, so it will be a rainy day for us tomorrow. Nite Nite! 🙂 WOW, look at that! My Blog Counter hit 1,000 visitors today! Thank you to all that has visited my blog. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy blogging about my trip and you all have made it so worth the effort! Thank you!

The Beauty Around Las Vegas….

December 23, 2008 – 8:49pm

Hello! Today was a great day, the temperature was great, the places we went to today was great, and the pictures came out GREAT! Let’s take a ride……Are you ready??
Today, we start our scenic ride at Lake Mead. This is a beautiful lake….

I’m not sure what that thing is in front of me – I think it’s called an Earth Roamer, I’ve seen them before once or twice – click here for more information on the Earth Roamer….

This is Lake Mead…..We are about 20 miles outside Las Vegas now….

There is a RV Park right at Lake Mead….very pretty RV park….A week stay is $190 and a month is right around $600. And with the most beautiful lake right in front of you, how can you go wrong…..

I’m taking this picture right from a campsite that you can park you RV on with full hook up. I’m sure these, right up front to the water, could be a tad more expensive…..

Oh, there are mobile homes that you can buy here too! You buy the home, you rent the land for about $400 a month. You pay for the land year round ($400×12=$4800), but you can only occupy the home for no more than 6 months out of the year. The reason is due to a connection to the park being on National Park land. A National Park law? Maybe…..

Now, this guy is roughing it (not really). No electric connections to his RV, he’s solar powering it…..more on RVing on solar power, visit my bookstore here (clicking on this link will open a new window so you will not lose my blog)

This sign is on the beach of Lake Mead….

On our way to Hoover Dam….looks like traffic held us up a bit…..

Yep, security check…..They are very strict. We got pulled over at the security check point just for the police to peek under our tonneau cover on our pick up….

This is the new highway that they are building…… Not open just yet…..

Yep, that highway is going over the Dam!!!!! WOW!!!!!

WOW, huh? That’s going to be some highway – right over Hoover Dam!!!!

We are sitting on the time zone line at Hoover Dam…..
This is the Nevada side….

There’s the time zone line right there!!!!!
One foot in Nevada and one foot in Arizona……So Neat!!!!

It just doen’t get better than this picture……Now that’s a sight!!!!

There! Now we are in the Arizona time zone……

This is the bottom of the Hoover Dam……

Here, I am in Arizona, looking at Nevada…… Hello Nevada!!!!!

On the Nevada side once again – time to head home…..

Tried to start my blog earlier today and look what I’ve got to deal with……
Jake, move over…….

So that’s what we did today! It was a great day. After we left Hoover Dam and on the way back to Las Vegas, we stopped at the Hacienda casino and enjoyed their Prime Rib buffet for $8.95. That was a very nice place to stop by. Good food. The buffet is located inside the Kokopelli Cafe at this casino.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Last night when we went to the opening of Steve Wynn’s new casino “Encore”, the place was packed solid of people. A very nice casino with an Asian theme. Red chandeliers, red carpet, dragon pictures and statues. We’ll have to stop by again when it’s not so busy and get some clear pictures.
I heard the temperature this morning in New England was 6 below. Brrrrr, stay warm. I’m thinking about ya!!!! Check back with me tomorrow and see where I venture off to next. I did put a link to my Solar Power Bookstore in this blog up above…if you missed it…here it is again for anyone interested in Solar Power RVing – basically called boondocking. Click here to browse my bookstore. BYE! 🙂

Go Steve Wynn…..

December 22, 2008- 4:29pm

Well, it’s look like Steve Wynn has done it again. Taking storm in Las Vegas creating one mega casino resort after another and tonight he will shine again. Tonight at 8pm, the doors will be thrown open to his newest casino resort on the Las Vegas strip. The opening celebration to a 2.3 billion dollar resort called “Encore”. This resort is completely different bringing a new dimension to the inside lighting of the casino…..all the walls of the casino and restaurants are glass bringing that natural light inside the property. Just to give you some employment facts for this resort……100,000 people applied for a job at the Encore resort and 5,300 were hired. Las Vegas always welcome new resorts because of the tough job market, especially when the economy, even here, is in a slump. We will be there for the celebration of this new casino, a celebration that I have seen many times for other new resorts in Las Vegas. I was right there when they opened the doors to the Bellagio in Oct 1998 and it was spectacular. I can only imagine what Steve has in store for us tonight!
Well, what did we do today? Hardly anything. We slept until 10:30 and then went to Walmart, the dry cleaners and then settled into the RV and watched the movie “Entrapment”, pretty good movie. Next is some dinner and out on the town. I talked to some friends back home and they are telling me that with the wind chill the temperature is sitting at 0 degrees. That’s ZERO degrees. Wow! I haven’t forgotten about you all up in the Northeast holding your own. It’s rainy here this afternoon and it will rain right thru Friday according to the weather channel. I’m watching a Minnie-Winnie RV back in next to us….alot more RVs are showing up everyday! Well, that’s what we did today and this is all that’s happening in town right now! 🙂 Check on me tomorrow for details of the new casino! And as for Steve Wynn, well, everyone in Las Vegas is saying one word…….Encore!