Las Vegas!

We got an early start out of Palm Springs on Thursday for the 300 mile trip up to Las Vegas. The drive was uneventful with light traffic. The weather, however, was drastically different then what we've been used too! As we drove, we had to keep turning up the heat. We pulled out of Palm Springs around 10AM at about 65 degrees(daytime temps avg 72-75). We arrived in Las Vegas around 3pm at 52 degrees (I know, Michiganders are rolling their eyes right now) it was COLD! At night it drops below 32, which can be a tough situation in the coach, freezing pipes and tanks.

Thursday afternoon, after setting up, we headed out to see the town. This was a first time visit to Vegas for both of us. First thing you notice is the construction and traffic everywhere. Turns out Vegas is one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Next, we walked through a few of the casinos, New York, Paris, Monte Carlo. We both noticed once you get past the cool designs and eye candy, there all just smoky, loud casinos. Neither one of us are gamblers, at all, so we were bored pretty quickly. Next we looked into some show possibilities, Cirque deSoliel or Blue Man group. But, everything is sold out for just about the remainder of the year. You need to book stuff well in advance of your visit! Based on our experiences so far, we decided that we can safely put Vegas into the 'OK place to visit, don't want to live there' category.

There was one thing we did plan ahead for, fortunately. The chef at one of our favorite restaurants back in Michigan, Tribute (www.tributerestaurant.com) chef Takshi Yagahashi, started a new restaurant inside the new Wynn casino. We made reservations months ago for Okada Sushi and Teppanyaki restaurant(www.wynnlasvegas.com) We had met Takshi a few times at Tribute and had hoped to congratulate him on his new place. Unfortunately for us, Takashi was vacationing with his family in Japan. This was a 'budget breaking' meal for us, but oh, so worth it! After a sushi appetizer, I had Sea Bass and Laura had scallops, all chef prepared right in front of us. If you visit here, I would highly recommend a dinner here!

On Friday, we decided to head over to see Hoover Dam. Wow, it was big! This pic is from the Nevada side observation deck:


Here is a pic of one of the intake towers on the Lake Mead side. HArd to believe that thing extends down 500' below the surface. (Why do I have this urge to run out there and try to disable the 'tractor beam' for Luke and Hans!!!!):


Here is a pic of the generator rooms down at the bottom of the dam:


You can take an elevator down to the bottom (500')and take a tunnel through the dam and into the generator house. I was impressed at just how quiet the generators were, even though there was 6 of them spinning at 1,800 RPM:


Sunday, we are packing up and heading over to Pahrump, a small town about an hour west of Vegas. This is where we are going to be storing the coach while we are visiting Michigan for the holidays. We'll spend the early part of next week preparing the coach for storage and packing for the trip. We will make some time to head over to Death Valley prior to flying home on Thursday morning.

We look forward to seeing everyone back home next week!

Rich

PS I thought the blog could use a little 'update', so I changed the color template. What do you think?