Glitz, Glitter & DoWop! who cares that its hot

Ok, just kidding. That is the catch phrase around here so I thought in the spirit of things; I would pull a fast one on all of you. Actually, I haven’t written anything since I have been here so I took the cheap shot at humor and the easy way out. First, I am certainly willing to share my experiences in Las Vegas or just Vegas to us seasoned Vegans (cheap shot for a little humor). Second, neither of us did anything we would be ashamed to tell you anyway. Right? You do believe that? Right?

We arrived in Vegas and checked into the campground. I had mentioned that when I called that I would like one of the “big” sites (80 feet). They said I had one of the big sites but when I got to it, there was barely enough room for the camper all by itself and none for the trailer and the car. We drove around the campground and showed up back in the office with a list of sites we felt were satisfactory. They gave us one of them and didn’t charge us the difference because we didn’t get what we were supposed to.

We did the basic setup, hooked up the electricity and headed for the casino while the air conditioners made an attempt to cool down the camper. It didn’t seem to be any cooler here than it was in Bullhead City. We wandered about checking out Circus Circus. It is a pretty neat place. Other than the usual gambling and restaurants, they have an indoor amusement park complete with a roller coaster and many other rides. They also have a large midway where the kids (and the adults) can play the usual midway games like fill the clown’s balloon with a water pistol, shoot basketballs, throw loops over bottles, darts and one that I had never run into: catapult a rubber chicken into a pot. These games are not crooked like the usual carnival versions and as a result, we saw people carrying armloads of stuffed animals back to their rooms or campers. They also have a center ring circus area with various circus acts spread out thru the day. It is a family oriented resort/casino.

During our wanderings and explorations, we were set upon by sales representatives from Tahiti Village. You may have seen their ads on the tellie. They offer a free weekend in Vegas if you visit their timeshare project. Well, we were curious, not looking to buy but to look at it and check out what the TV ads said about the place. Oh, yea, they also offered us Cirque Du Soleil Zumanity tickets for $15 if we took the 2 hour tour. We have taken a lot of these tours and not bought (we did buy a couple that made sense). We agreed to take the tour for the Zumanity tix. As they were signing us up, they discovered that we were staying in the campground and not in the hotel/casino. We were then told that we were ineligible as we weren’t in the hotel. Ok, says we and off we headed. STOP! We can work around that! Just don’t tell them you are in the campground. Let them think you are in the hotel. Since we had appointments on Tuesday, we signed up for the 8 am tour on Wednesday.

We had dinner there (we had skipped lunch as we were traveling). They had a special on Prime Rib. We both had it, good price. The meat was the worst piece of prime rib I have ever had. There was no fat marbling in the main piece of meat and as a result it was dry and tough. They had their chance. We ate elsewhere the rest of the week.

We took a ride through the “strip” and saw all of the famous casinos. It is pretty spectacular. We will elaborate as we explore but I think this is not the kind of place I will feel at home. It is just toooo much. It punishes the senses with its excesses. It is also expensive although you can get tickets to some shows for half price. Each day, unsold tickets go on sale for half price. They have some places in Boston you can get these as well. We looked at the list but decided that we needed to do some things around the camper.

Well, that pretty much catches us up. Tomorrow is another day and we will be tied up getting the camper worked on most of the day. See ya.

That last line was somewhat prophetic. Actually more than somewhat. We started out early in the morning breaking camp and heading for Fairway Motors, a Chevrolet dealer that does medium trucks and motorhomes. We got there easily enough and talked to the service manager whom we had called and left a message for detailing our problems. He had never heard of us and we were told (after talking to the service scheduler and making an appointment (we thought)) that they don’t make appointments for motorhomes because they never know how long they will be there. After discussing our problem, he said he could do it but we would have to leave it for 3 days. “Hmmm!” says I. We live in it and can’t give it up for three days unless there is something really wrong with it. He told us that there was nothing wrong with the motor. The problem is with the gauge package. They have seen a lot of problems with the gauges in that model and there is nothing wrong with the truck. He recommended that we just continue our trip and have it fixed when we get home. Just don’t look at the gauges. When there is a problem with the oil pressure, we will no it immediately and when and if it happens there is plenty of time to turn off the engine to protect it from harm,

That made us feel pretty good but I still don’t like to get in the habit of ignoring the gauges. They put them there for a reason but if we can’t get them fixed on the road…so be it. Feeling better, we drove on to Henderson and the Camping World. They had the slide cover that we needed most and a couple of specials on maintenance we didn’t have time to get done before we left. We made an appointment for Friday morning early as it was a travel day and I didn’t want to spend all of our time in Vegas driving around the city trying to piecemeal the work we needed done.

To digress: as we left the campground in the morning, our propane alarm went off. It went off for only about 20 or 30 seconds, too short to even consider what the problem might be. A little foreshadowing for the events to come.

When we got back from our repair circuit, we pulled into our site and hooked up the electricity first so we could get the Air Conditioners started. After hooking up the rest of the facilities, we noticed that the air conditioner was blowing hot air. Not good when the ambient temperature is 118. I checked the breakers (the a/c was running just not blowing cool air). After exhausting my meager skills, I went over to the store and got the name and phone number of someone who will come out and work on campers. Allen arrived and checked a couple of things and then took the cover off the a/c unit on the roof. There was a hole blown out the side of the compressor. The Freon was gone and there was no way to fix the unit. He told us that the company will not sell just the compressor; you have to buy the whole unit.

He made some phone calls and went to pick up a “””New Air Conditioner”””. He installed it and we were back in business. We paid him and off he went. Cheryl and I took our lawn chairs out to the patch of lawn and trees that we have and sat to relax while we let the camper cool down again. While we were sitting there, I noticed that the slide for the living/dining room was up against a steel and cement post. This is never a good thing and when I went to pull in the slide to move the camper up 4 inches to clear the post, it wouldn’t move. I ran around like a maniac for about 5 minutes and finally admitted that I had no idea what to do so I did the next best thing, I called Allen. He came right back. He fussed and fumed over that slide and after 2 ½ hours got it so it would go in and out. This was an expensive day and I haven’t even had any fun yet.

His parting words were: “don’t be afraid to use it, it will work!!!” I don’t know why but I didn’t feel very confident. Things have been going wrong since we left home. The refrigerator, the front air conditioner, the slide covers, the front air conditioner again and now the slide itself. Visions of Tom Hanks and his house in the film “the money pit” came and went and came and went and came and didn’t go. Motor homes are notorious for being money pits. They are like big boats (a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into). Got the idea?

We decided to go somewhere and try to forget the day we had. We went over to the Casino and checked out the ½ price ticket place. It was really too late to get anything good. On several people’s advice, we wandered down to the bus stop. Vegas has the “Deuce”. That is about its only public transportation that is worth anything. They employ double decker busses (new ones not the used up British ones that we found in Hollywood). They charge $2 for a one way trip or $5 for an all day (24 hr) pass. On the way, we found a 99 cent hot dog place. Now get this, $.99 for a half lb hot dog. That is about 16 inches long and very thick with a matching roll. Feeling very poor after our repair laden day, we bought 2 dogs and a large diet soda which we shared. The place charged $.25 for relish and the same for onions (ketchup and mustard were free and they didn’t have either mayo or Flo’s famous relish).

Refreshed we headed to the bus stop. After several attempts to get on the bus and getting shut out, we gave up and went back to camp. That definitely is not the way to get around. We decided from that point on that we would drive to wherever we wanted to go. Every Casino has free parking in their garages. Las Vegas should be the poster child for every city to solve their parking. In Boston, you can pay $30 to park for 2 hours (at the aquarium for instance) but here in Vegas, you can drive from place to place and never pay a cent for parking. Every Casino has free self parking. You may have to walk a ways (the free parking is not close to anything but the Casino) but that is good exercise after all isn’t it? In many cases, the walkways are air conditioned so you at least are in comfort.

Ok, we got here on Monday and Tuesday was a complete wash. Wednesday dawned and we were up early and off to the Casino for our tour of Tahiti Village. As we were being interviewed before being loaded on the bus, we were asked if we were staying in the hotel. We answered we were staying in Circus Circus. What room number?? Followed immediately. Well, we are in site 420. Room 420? No Site 420 in the Circus Circus KOA campground. Well, you would have thought we were criminals. They called for the sales manager who took us into his office and explained why we were ineligible. We explained that we knew that but his sales rep had told us to say all this stuff (which unraveled when we were asked for a room number and could not come up with one). He had me write everything down and gave me my Zumanity tickets as an appeasement. I don’t understand why we were ineligible. We have timeshares as well as a motorhome. I’ll bet we own more timeshares than 90% of the people they took on the tour. Nuff Said!

The temperature was rising; it was already 115 at the camper. We had been promised breakfast on the tour so we headed for the casino and had breakfast at the coffee shop. Then we got the car and headed down the strip. I must say that unlike anywhere else I have ever traveled, you just don’t think about parking here in Vegas. Every casino has a parking garage and they are all free unless you want valet parking. The problem comes on about the fifth parking garage when you go look for your car and you have a list of floor and section numbers in your head and can’t be sure which one applies to this particular parking garage. It is really nice though. In Boston, you have to pick a parking garage based on various criteria because it will cost you $30 every time you change parking lots.

We headed down to the Mirage. They have an attraction called “Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden”. Since they stopped performing, Siegfried and Roy have retired their collection of cats to exhibit status. I am not quite sure how I feel about the zoo aspect of all of this but I can say that it is a thrill to see all of these cats, especially the white ones. They have 2 white lions (male) and 3 white tigers (2 male and a female). They also have a new litter of young tigers. There are 4 females and one male. 2 of the females are white striped tigers and the other two snow white (no stripes). The lone male of the bunch is a yellow tiger. They have them in a big glassed room with a person and a large quantity of stuffed items (including pillows, teddy bears, nemo and friends and a host of other stuffed animals). The man in the bubble just sits there on pillows and interacts with the babies (I think they said 3 months). They climbed all over him, played with him, played with each other in his lap, played with each other and abused the stuffed animals. Oh yea, there almost always was at least one sleeping.

There was always a huge crowd gathered around the glass room. People oohing and ahing, taking pictures and video tape and others just watching and wishing they could be in the room playing with them. They look so cute and cuddly that you can easily forget that Siegfried and Roy stopped performing because one of these grown up cats just turned on them in the middle of a show and came close to killing him. This after years and years of intermingling with these same cats. Mother Nature is fickle and wants you to respect these animals no matter how close you get to them. I guess that can apply to your relationship to anything and anyone. We should keep that in mind as we wander through life.

Cheryl has always had a thing for white tigers and she was quite excited. She shot a lot of pictures and video there and we joined the crowds to watch the babies for a long time.

Oh, there was a small dolphin park as part of the garden. They had 2 exhibition ponds. The first had 3 dolphins including a one year old. This pond had an underwater set of windows to watch them as well as a microphone to listen to them. The other pond had a pair of dolphins and a flat area where they would swim up onto and mingle with the crowd. This was nice but paled in comparison to the part with the white tigers.

We then migrated into the Mirage via the pool area. They had a huge pool with waterfalls in at least one corner (we couldn’t see all of it) what a beautiful place with its spectacular lobbies and shopping malls. We stood in a hall between a Starbucks and an ice cream shop. We debated the merits of each (119 degrees outside) and (of course) ended up in the ice cream shop. They had black cherry ice cream (not up to the standards of Cherry Garcia but great anyway) so we both opted for a double scoop. You have to stay inside to eat it because to step outside with a double scoop would invite disaster. We wandered around for a while and then headed back to camp to get ready for our show.

We had to pick up our tickets at the box office. They gave us a voucher and with the trouble we had with the Tahiti Village Sales people, we decided that we should get there early in case there was trouble. Zumanity was shown in New York New York. We figured we would straighten out the tickets and then get something to either eat or drink.

We parked and headed into the casino. (to call these places “just” casinos is coming up short in the description. These places cover whole city blocks and have pool complexes, multiple show rooms, pool complexes, shopping complexes, restaurant complexes and yes, finally casinos. They are cities by themselves and are lined up down the strip one after another like summer thunderstorms) NY/NY from the outside looks like the NY Skyline. You can pick out some of the buildings (I am sure if you were familiar with NY, you could probably name all of them). Around the outside is a roller coaster. It looked like kind of a fun ride but this was not a coaster trip so we avoided all of them.

We stepped inside and were quite overwhelmed. The entire inside of the complex was the city streets of NY. There were buildings and shops and restaurants and about everything you could imagine. Street side café’s and copies of bars from various places in NY. You could really imagine being in NY in the night unless, of course, you looked up and saw the ceiling with various spot lighting to ensure the mood.

It was a little difficult wending your way through the maze of shops and restaurants and bars but we did manage eventually to find the Zumanity box office and picked up our tickets with no trouble. Armed with tickets we set off to find a bite to eat. We checked out a bunch of places and ended up at a pizza place with a choice of various kinds of regular crust, Sicilian, lasagna and salads. We debated splitting lasagna or each getting a slice and decided on the pizza. Cheryl got a slice of regular pepperoni (huge wedge) and I got a Sicilian pepperoni. The Sicilian was at least 2 inches thick and cut square from a rectangular pan. We were pretty stuffed after only a single slice each but it was great pizza; fresh crust.

Off we headed to the show. We were in the balcony (hey, free tickets) but in the second row. The stage came out from the curtain and was like a big teardrop out into the seating area so that everyone was pretty close to the stage. We were at several points reminded that this was a show that displayed Cirque Du Soleil’s sensual side. We met a couple from Virginia who sat next to us.

Cirque did the usual before the show entertainment. If you have never been to a Cirque show, they always have 1 or more people come out and entertain the audience usually be politely embarrassing members of the audience. This show was no different other than the subject. The acts in the show emphasized the closeness of the participants to each other and relied on their sensuality as an aspect of the performance. It was very good but I missed the heavily athletic acts of the other Cirque Shows that we have seen.

After we retraced our steps through the city streets and found the garage, we watched the coaster go by a couple of times and headed back onto the streets. We pulled off at the Bellagio to see the night time fountain show. There are several public, free shows that need to be seen and the Bellagio light/fountain show is one of them. They run it every 15 minutes with different shows and different music so seeing it isn’t a problem. We got there just in time to see a show though we didn’t have a great place to watch. Afterwards, most people left so we got a primo place to watch the next show. The music was Frank Sinatra’s “Fly me to the Moon”. It was really nice to watch after seeing pictures of them on TV but the whole thing last as long as the song and was done.
It was still 113 when we turned in. We sat around a while trying to figure out our last day in Vegas. What did we want to do with it? We spent our last morning in Vegas making up postcards from pictures and backer sheets. At 11:00 when the half price ticket booth opened, I headed for the lobby. For the first time, I found my way through the building right to the ticket booth (and ultimately back via the Krispee Kreme shop. I stood looking at the day’s offerings and then stepped forward. I asked about Rita Rudner’s show (we had tried 2 days before unsuccessfully). The man in the booth looked at the computer and said she wasn’t in town. There were several other things we were interested in but at that point, I went off the board (this came out of the blue, I have no idea what made me ask about this) and asked about the show featuring the Coasters, the Platters and the Marvelettes. He said they had a few VIP seats left. He said the VIP seats were tables right in front of the stage. SOLD!

Then we hit the road and want to the Luxor. We had seen it at night (it is a black glass looking pyramid) and wanted to see what it looked like from the inside. Some of it was under construction. One quarter of the lobby was barricaded off, the IMAX Theater was closed and the Tutankhamen exhibit was closed. The inside was as spectacular as the outside. It was a pyramid that was open all the way to the top. You could see the individual floors and the doors to the rooms. The IMAX Theater was an inverted pyramid made from the same black glass looking stuff as the outside. There was some kind of a simulator ride but we headed down the hallway towards the Mandalay Bay shopping mall (the Luxor, Mandalay Bay and the Excalibur are all connected by air conditioned walkways). Mandalay Bay was elegant like the Mirage. Each of these hotels had large pool complexes. Mandalay bay had a river float area where you get a tube and just drift along the river. They also had a wave pool. Pretty nice. We wandered through the place. It was elegant. We came upon a bride and groom scurrying down the hallway. When we got to the wedding chapel, they were in front waiting their turn. There was someone managing the door and within a few minutes they were ushered into the chapel. There were a couple of other couples waiting in the seats across the hall. I won’t say it was romantic but it did get the job done.

Eventually we got to the shark exhibit but the line there and the time remaining in the day was crowding it too much so we took the long walk back to the Luxor’s parking garage and headed back “home”. They told us to be at the Sahara to pick up our tickets (another voucher) at least an hour before the show. We were going to walk to the Sahara but the sky was clouding up with what looked like thunderheads and the weather had warned of severe thunderstorms during the evening so discretion being the better part of valor, we took the car and drove to the Sahara. The Sahara may once have been one of the top places in Vegas but it is in need of a refresh.

We found the box office and picked up our tickets. The man at the box office said the doors were open and they were seating people so we headed to the Congo Room. Our tables were perpendicular to the stage. We did not have assigned seating and they had a couple of ushers leading people to their seats. Our usher was the epitome of what you would expect from a Las Vegas show usher. He told us we were at the table and we could sit anywhere even in the padded theater chairs further back if we wanted. I slipped him a tip and told him to choose for us. He took us to the second table from center stage and put us halfway down the table. “These are the best seats” he said. I heard him say that to people behind us too but they were the seats I would have chosen given time to think it over. They were enough off center stage so that you could see everything without having to turn around and enough away from the stage so that the monitors weren’t in the way.

The show was great. The coasters opened up with “Poison Ivy” and sang all of their hits and some other period pieces. When they did Charley Brown, they brought a woman up from the audience to sing the Charley Brown Parts. Of course they changed them to Lucy Brown and claimed that was the way the song was originally written. The Platters were next. They opened with “Twilight Time” and said that some members of the audience were probably there because of “Smoke gets in Your Eyes” played in the backseats of their parent’s car. They made a point to say that one member was the longest member of the Platters at 38 years. A little math (yea, I still remember how to add and subtract) told me that 38 years ago was 1970 so none of them were original. They sounded original and that was all that mattered. The Marvelettes were last (don’t know why). None of them were obviously original. If you added any two of their ages together they wouldn’t qualify. They were good though and put on a much more active show. They opened with “Please, Mr. Postman” and played their hits also. At the end, all of the groups came out and they sang a new patriotic song that the Coasters had written and then sang “Shout”. Everyone was up and bouncing around to that. Great way to finish.

We wandered around the Sahara for a while watching a 60’s band play Beatles songs and then decided to get something to eat. We headed back to NY/NY because we wanted to try the lasagna (it looked great) and get another piece of that Sicilian Pizza. The maze was negotiable and soon we were sitting on the “Streets of NY” eating again, a mere 24 hours later. The lasagna was everything we had hoped for but the Sicilian vegetarian pizza was not up to the pepperoni standard set the night before. Don’t get me wrong, it was still better than 80% of the pizza I have ever had but it lacked something. Oh please don’t tell La Festa we liked someone else’s pizza. They are pretty much the entire 20% that was better.

We headed back down the strip to Treasure Island. We wanted to see the Pirate show in front of TI. We parked but weren’t in time for the show. They had blocked off all of the doors and said we would have to wait for the next show (1 ½ hours). We thought we might wait and went into the gift shop. This was right next to the show. The show was over in about 4 minutes. We looked at each other and decided we didn’t want to hang around for 90 minutes for a 4 minute show so we headed back up the strip to camp. We had a drink and talked about what a good time we had in Vegas (except for the plethora of expensive repairs we made). We had an 8 am appointment at Camper World down in Henderson to get the slide cover on the big slide replaced. Over the many miles of highway driving it had pretty much shredded and needed replacing. We also had some preventative maintenance done on our water heater and generator. We are coming into the part of the trip we might need the generator and I knew the rod in the water heater was pretty much gone as I took it out when I winterized the camper.

We got up, broke camp, hooked up the trailer and loaded the car and headed for Henderson. We turned the camper over to the techs and asked where we might get some breakfast. They pointed us to a casino down the road so we set off in search of…The casino was small but it had a café that advertised a breakfast (2 eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns and toast for $1.49. Coffee was $.99). Hmmm, I wonder what I will have. The breakfast was great but when the waitress dropped off the check it read: 1 $1.49 sausage breakfast $3.99. Ok, how does that work? Is this one of those deals where the name of the breakfast is “the 1.49 breakfast and they just don’t tell you it costs $3.99? When the waitress came back to refresh the coffee, I asked her about it. She said that the cashier would ring it up as $1.49 and that they (the waitresses) weren’t allowed to do it.

Now that that was straightened out, we ordered an order of strawberry blintzes. I have never had them but the strawberries got to me. They were delicious. If you don’t know (I didn’t) blintzes are this crepe like tube filled with some kind of cheese with fresh strawberries over the top and whipped cream. Yum!

We went back to the store and looked over the chairs. Our lawn chairs are breaking. They are more than 12 years old but were made by my mother and father. They took lawn chair frames and macramé the seats and backs. The seats and backs last forever but the thin aluminum frames eventually bend and break. We lost one on the first place we stopped. It had already been bent and it folded right up. Another had the plastic handles bend and the frame parts that attach to them. We have been babying that one but it won’t last long. We looked over the chairs and found a couple that had rugged frames and were really comfortable. They were on a really good sale and seemed to be the most rugged chairs they had. As we were dragging them toward the cashier, we came across a pile of portable picnic table. They were for 2 people and folded up nicely. We have already been at 2 campgrounds that didn’t have picnic tables. These were marked on sale at $19.95 so we grabbed one of those also.

We hauled them out to the car in the parking lot and loaded them in. When we got back, the camper was ready so we hit the road. They told us it would take 2 hours. Based on other things we had done, I predicted 4 hours but we compromised on 3. Back on the road headed back through Vegas (kind of the first 20 miles in the wrong direction) to catch I 15 and head North. We saw the Las Vegas Speedway and Vegas dirt short track where Kurt and Kyle Bush got their racing start (Allen who fixed our camper claimed to have raced against both of them and their father there).