Tag: Las Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas – Day 71

Leaving Las Vegas

Day 71 – June 10, 2003 – Tuesday

Leaving Las Vegas.

We drove to Los Angeles today — went via Death Valley. When we stopped for gas in Shoshone (Death Valley), California (population 100), Anna at the gas station asked if we knew where we had gotten lost. When we told her we PLANNED to visit Death Valley, she was VERY surprised.

We didn’t meet many people in Vegas. Beads weren’t special there as a number of casinos give them away.

We went to Red Rock Canyon as we left the Las Vegas area. We saw a sign that said: “Danger. Wild burros on highway. Do not feed or harass burros. $25 fine and THEY BITE.”

We passed by a sign for “Summerland, America’s premier master plan community.” Of course, it was way out in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere so somebody wasn’t thinking too well when they planned. Then again, maybe this is a relative of Bugsy Siegel, so who am I to question things in the middle of nowhere?

We came across a poor man’s Cadillac Ranch. This guy could only afford one car. I couldn’t tell what model. One car buried nose down in the Nevada desert. No sign. No explanation. Just there.

We accidentally found our way to Crystal, Nevada today. Crystal is a tiny spot on a road in the only county in Nevada where prostitution is legal. It just happened to be on the route that I chose through Death Valley and on to LA.

We went down a road following signs that said “Cherry Patch Ranch” and “Mable’s” as well as “Madame Butterfly Bath, Massage, and Saloon.” These places are official houses of prostitution. There was a “Brothel Tourist Information Center” that appeared to be open, but I guess I was afraid to go in.

We passed near Area 51 and the Extraterrestrial Highway. We photographed some signs and other spooky stuff. Our son’s company does Area 51 tours. The tour takes Las Vegas visitors to seven famous locations used by UFO enthusiasts in their search of the truth about this controversial subject. The tour goes to Little A’le’Inn. This has been the host of numerous documentaries and movies including “Independence Day.” The next stop is the infamous Black Mailbox and then to the perimeter of Area 51 through the strange and deformed Joshua Tree Forest. The tour notes the guards (Men In Black), detection devices, listening devices, and cameras mounted among the cactus. Signs read: “The Use of Deadly Force Authorized” and we’re sure they mean it. As much as the United States Air Force has denied the existence of this base, we know it is there, but no one knows what it is they do there. Go to www.lostwagestours.com if you’d like to take the tour.

We didn’t see any UFOs today — a sign or two and a cafe, but mainly desert. It reached only 105 today in Death Valley, while it got to 108 on June 8 in Las Vegas.

We burned Pass #14 on a slow-moving motorcycle in Death Valley.

We met Anna at the Chevron station in Shoshone. Anna asked if we knew where we had gotten lost. When we told her we PLANNED to visit Death Valley, she was VERY surprised.

Anna knew everyone around these parts. She previously worked as a shift madam at one of the brothels in Crystal, Nevada. She was a very sweet lady. She volunteered that she worked there because her daughter had a serious illness, and they didn’t have the money for medical expenses unless she got a better-paying job. She said the brothels in Crystal City are very safe; doctors come in once a week; double-jacketed condoms are used, etc. She said they charge $150 for a half hour.

Getting a chance to talk to a madam was an unexpected pleasure in Death Valley.

The population is 100 in Shoshone, yet they have a place called the UFO that looks like a cafe and a place called the Saysee Bone Cafe which is an Internet Cafe featuring espresso. There were a lot of yard ornaments in Shoshone.

We drove on to the Dumont Dunes in Death Valley. It seemed like perhaps the lowest spot we reached. It is an area where people go off-roading.

We’ve reached the town of Baker just before 5 pm. The population is only 390, yet they have 5-digit address numbers. Maybe that guy selling the used car near Douglas, Arizona is the city planner here.

As we approached the town of Yermo, California, I spotted something that looked strange and interesting on the horizon. We never found out what it was. We did, however, learn that “The Incredible Hulk” was filmed here, so this might have been something left over from the filming. We stopped at what we learned was the original Del Taco restaurant.

The smog was absolutely horrible as we neared the Los Angeles area. What a shame that this beautiful part of the country is uglified by smog.

Mayte checked us in at the Embassy Suites in Monrovia, California. She recommended Rudy’s for dinner, so off we went. We both enjoyed Rudy’s California-style Mexican food. We had fried ice cream for dessert. It was nothing to write home about. Barbara didn’t like it all. We did enjoy meeting Rudy.

Random Comments:

Today marks the start of Week 11. It is hard to believe the trip is now well over half over. I continue to thoroughly enjoy the experience, though I am disappointed that 18-hour days leave little time to write. We are, however, taking an average of 150 photos a day, and the tapes are filling fast as we record the events and observations from each day.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
Red Rock Canyon — Crystal Nevada — Area 51 — Death Valley — Yermo California
 

O – Day 69

O

Day 69 – June 8, 2003 – Sunday

Bozzie Jane is back! I picked her up at the Las Vegas airport this morning. We drove around Las Vegas a while, walked around a while, had lunch at the Harley Davidson Cafe, then went to the Bellaggio to see “O” as a birthday gift to Boz from son Ryan. Thanks Ryan!!!

Boz was to arrive around noon, so I slept later than normal, worked on the website, and then headed to the airport. I was really pleased to see Bozzie Jane’s smiling face!

The temperature on the car was 108. This was definitely the hottest it has been, and we were feeling the heat! We drove around a bit, and then we stopped for lunch.

Lunch was very good at the Harley Davidson Cafe — excellent barbeque brisket sandwich. The decor was great — lots of Harleys and one huge wall that is filled with an equally huge American flag. Bikers tend to be extremely patriotic. Boz and I both were so taken with our waitress, Amanda, that we were hounding son Ryan Windsor to go to Vegas to stop in for lunch to meet her. Amanda has an interesting story; she was a missionary, and she wants to be a teacher. There’s a big need for teachers in ever-expanding Las Vegas, so she finds herself in the most unlikely place for her — working as a waitress in a bar and restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip while she goes to school to finish her degree. Her friends are shocked because she hates motorcycles, and she is very religious, and to even be in Las Vegas was unbelievable to those who know her. But, she’s excited about teaching. She’s 25 but looks like she’s 18, so teaching high school students is a bit of a problem; the boys are always after her. I asked her what is unique about her (something I ask a lot of people), and she said she didn’t have a story, but I think her story has already been told.

My barbeque sandwich was good. Boz’s soup was good, but she immediately became sick. So, we went back to the hotel for Boz to rest.

Ryan arranged great seats for us at “O.” There isn’t a word to describe “O.” It was simply an UNBELIEVABLE show. Our mouths were hanging open, as were the mouths of everyone we saw. One minute, people were running across the stage, and the next minute, someone was diving from 100 feet above into a pool of water that almost magically appears at that same spot on the stage. The stage floor moves up and down over a very deep swimming pool that holds 1.8 million gallons of 85-degree water. You just can’t figure out how in the world they did the things that they did.

After the show, we walked around the Strip for a while and took a lot of photos. We did our patented $100 on red at a roulette wheel at the Bellaggio, and we lost. So, we are down $202 in our gambling thus far. Bozzie chose a different table than the first one we went to; you just have to follow your instincts. We slapped our $100 on red, and it came up black. We then managed to do something that may have never been done before — we put $5 into a slot machine a nickel at a time, and we never won once. That’s 100 coins dropped into a slot machine one at a time, and we never got a single solitary nickel in return. Down $207 and counting….

Boz and I felt the Bellaggio was the best hotel in Vegas (from what we could see just walking around), with New York New York ranked second. The inside of the Bellagio was just incredible. There were beautiful pools of water surrounded by real flowers; the glass ceiling was incredible; and the woodwork and just everything in the place appeared to be absolutely the best of everything. It was really fun to see the Bellagio.

New York, New York had a wonderful 9/11 memorial that was very impressive, and a lot of people were looking at it.

We were shocked that there were so many people handing out cards for “strippers” on the street. It is hard to imagine that many strippers even exist, but we saw hundreds and hundreds of these people. There must be thousands and thousands of “strippers.”

M&M’s World was fun — incredibly vibrant colors everywhere, and tons of M&M’s and M&M’s stuff.

Our overall impression of Las Vegas was that it was very clean except for the cards people throw on the ground that they don’t want from the people who hand them to them about “strippers.” There was a significant upgrade in the quality of the hotels and overall appearance of Vegas since we were both last here together in 1980.

I received a lovely string of purple dice beads from two brothers who own Nose Rings & Toe Things on the Strip. They saw the beads, heard the Floating Neutrinos story, and the rest is history. If you need beads, a toe thing, a nose ring, or even a toe ring or a nose thing while in Vegas, be sure to stop and tell them we sent you.

The temperature hit 108 today, so Vegas is a pretty good bet to win our Hottest Award.

Bozzie Jane started feeling bad again in the middle of the night, so we will head to the doctor in the morning.

We learned today that the craziest of ideas can become a huge success. Surely many people thought Bugsy Siegel’s idea was the craziest. Bugsy Siegel was a gangster. He envisioned building a large casino and hotel in the desert that would attract gamblers from around the country. His vision was fueled by the fact that gambling had been legalized in Nevada in 1931 to entertain the influx of construction workers building the Hoover Dam. This had launched a population boom, giving the Valley’s economy a significant boost during the Great Depression. Some gambling existed in Las Vegas in the 30’s, but it was concentrated in several downtown casinos along Fremont Street that catered to these workers. The famous Las Vegas Strip area was nothing but desert before it became a glimmer in Bugsy’s eyes.

Bugsy came to Las Vegas in 1941, backed by an organized crime syndicate, to establish a gambling service. He convinced his mobster associates to back his venture. He decided to call the new hotel and casino “The Flamingo,” his pet name for his girlfriend. He opened The Flamingo Hotel on what would become the Las Vegas Strip on December 26, 1946.

Las Vegas is now the center of gambling in the United States and the world. Las Vegas is commonly known as The Entertainment Capital of the World — famous for its massive and lavish casino resorts, availability of alcoholic beverages at any time (as is true throughout Nevada), and various degrees of adult entertainment (including “strippers). The city’s glamorous image has made it a popular setting for movies and TV programs. What a crazy idea, and what a success.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
Las Vegas Nevada — Harley Davidson Cafe — Bellaggio — O — M&M’s World — The Las Vegas Strip