April 18 - 26, 2011: What Happens In Vega, Stays In . . . . . The Blog

The Las Vegas Interlude 

Don writes:  There comes a time in our trailer trips when we need to settle down for a bit.  The Desert Eagle Family Campground on Nellis Air Force Base just twenty-five minutes outside of Las Vegas was beautiful, convenient and economical.  With the “sounds of freedom” in the background (Air Force fighters and the Thunderbirds doing touch and go landings), we realized that this was our settling down point.

The new landscaping at Desert Eagle Campground was so appreciated.

Our arrival on Monday, April 18, was easy and we quickly got settled into our campsite.  Took the recommendation of one of the campground hosts and went to Memphis Barbeque for dinner.  Good choice since the meal was terrific!  The next day was devoted to some blogging (didn’t get too far), laundry and talking with some of our fellow campers from Vermont.

Roses in the desert. Welcomed sight.

Wednesday, April 20, we ventured into the Vegas Strip for some sightseeing.  On the drive in, we saw the pawn shop featured in Pawn Stars on television.  The long line out front confirmed that it was, indeed, the same place.

There were wedding chapels everywhere along the strip.

We parked the truck at the Bellagio and went in to see the sights.  We were bowled over by the Easter flowers in the conservatory, the art gallery featuring works by Richard MacDonald, and the chocolate fountain.  Someone put a lot of money into this place!  We decided to eat at the buffet here after someone told us it was the best on the Strip.  They were right.

A touch of Chihuly's blown glass on the ceiling of the Bellagio's lobby.

The conservatory was decorated with Easter flowers.

Who needs flowers when there is a chocolate flowing fountain.

After Bellagio, we went to the Cosmopolitan, one of the newer casinos on the Strip.  We had been told that their slots were set to pay off more frequently than others so they could build traffic.  Couldn’t prove it by us as we dropped half our gambling stake in fairly quick order.  We did score a couple of free drinks, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Evening walk along the strip to catch the sights.

Fountain light show outside the Bellagio.

We followed the Cosmopolitan with visits to the Palazzo and the Venetian.  On the way back to the truck at the Bellagio, we watched the volcano erupt at the Mirage.  What a way to end the day!  Interesting to note that we didn’t see a lot of folks at the gaming tables or slots in any of the casinos we visited.  Guess the recession hasn’t let up out here in Sin City.

Mirage's volcano in action.

Thursday, April 21, was another admin day.  A little more blogging (still not far enough) and visits to the exchange and commissary.  Although it was windy in the late afternoon, we enjoyed cocktails outside while we watched the jets doing their takeoff and landing practice.

Friday, we did some more blogging in the morning.  While we were pounding the keys, the camp office brought over the wheel and tire assembly that had been UPS’d to us here by the manufacturer.  Whoopee!  Hopefully, this will be the end of our tire problem.  I went right out and got it balanced so I’ll be ready to mount it tomorrow.

The left tire is being replaced! Hooray!!!

We headed into the Strip around 2 PM.  Had dinner at I Love Burgers in the Palazzo before trying our luck on their slots.  Once again, we lost more of our remaining  stake.  We didn’t even get the free drinks here.  Oh well. . . .  At any rate, it was time to go to our first Las Vegas show, Jersey Boys, which was conveniently staged at the Palazzo.  What a phenomenal show!  To begin with, our mezzanine seats got changed to some great orchestra seats.  The story of Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons took the audience from their beginning in urban New Jersey all the way to their breakup.  We hadn’t realized just how many great hits they had during their time together.  The acting, and especially the singing, just made me want the show to go on forever.  But all good things must come to an end and this was no exception.  Still, we left feeling good and fortunate to have seen the show.

We loved walking through the lobbies of the hotels and casinos. Such outrageous opulence.

Saturday, April 23, I put the new wheel and tire assembly on the trailer and delivered the old wheel and tire to the campground office so UPS could pick it up on Monday.  So nice to have that done.  Now, if the new assembly will just hold air and wear evenly like it should, I will be one happy camper.  Now, to the fun part of the day.

We had tickets to see LOVE, the Beatles show performed by Cirque du Soleil, at the Mirage, so off to the Strip we went again.  This time we got in a little later, but in plenty of time to have an early dinner at the buffet at the Mirage.  It was very nice though not as impressive as the one at the Bellagio.  We particularly liked that it was not jam-packed with people.  When we finished, it was off to the slots again to try our luck one more time before the show.  Our luck was a little better this time as we scored some free drinks, but the money portion of the experience stayed the same with one difference.  This time we lost all of our remaining money (it wasn’t much by now). To tell the truth, we only bet $100 total, so with parts of three days gaming, we gained high entertainment value.

We got to the show in plenty of time thanks to our poor run on the casino floor.  This was my first Cirque du Soleil show and I was hard-pressed to take in all that was going on.  The show was performed in a theater-in-the-round so everyone could see everything that was happening – provided you had 3 sets of eyes that you could focus and process independently.  With Beatle’s songs and music in the background, the group did acrobatics that almost defy description.  Suspended high above the stage, they worked with ropes, wheels, revolving cages and other devices to keep the audience on the edges of their seats.  There were in-line skaters doing amazing tricks on back-to-back half-pipes, crossing each others’ paths in mid-air.  Portions of the stage would rise or fall at different times during the performance with the actors never missing a step as the landscape changed.  By the time the show ended, I was exhilarated and exhausted.  WOW doesn’t even begin to describe what we saw! 

Sunday was Easter so we went to the base chapel for the eight o’clock service.  It was our good fortune to have inadvertently chosen the gospel service to attend.  It was certainly a joyous occasion!  Their choir really rocked out with a number of celebratory Easter anthems that demanded clapping in time with the music.  Just what we needed to start this special Sunday.

Following church, we headed for the Hoover Dam to see one of the 7 wonders of the modern world.  It is certainly an impressive feat of engineering.  The pipes that feed water to the generators and the generators themselves were immense.  Going through the exhibits in the visitor center, we learned how the dam was constructed with concrete being poured into forms layered from the bottom up.  They cooled the concrete during the drying process using stainless steel cooling pipes that circulated cold water pumped from a cooling plant built on the construction site.  Contrary to popular opinion, no one got buried in the concrete while the dam was being built.

Model of Hoover Dam and the new bridge.

Mike O'Callaghen-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge - highest and longest concrete bridge in the Western Hemisphere. Opened in October 2010.

Next, we went to see Lake Mead, the lake that was formed when Hoover Dam was built.  As we approached the lake, we couldn’t believe how blue the water was.  It almost looks unreal.  We were also struck by the white ring around the lake that emphasizes the 10-year drought that has caused the lake water to drop 54 feet!  All the lakeside buildings and businesses are no longer at the lakeside.  They are about a quarter of a mile from the water.  The exception to this is the marinas that use floating docks.  They just keep moving down the shore following the water level.  Our daughter, Shana, advised us to take popcorn with us to feed the carp in the lake.  As we started walking out on the floating pier, we started seeing these big fish eyeing us expectantly along the sides.  When we started tossing cinnamon-sugar popcorn (it’s all we had) to them, things started getting a bit frenzied.  I mean some of these carp were almost the size of Ella, our two-year old granddaughter.  The sight of all those fish faces with their big sucky mouths vacuuming up the popcorn was somewhere between terrifying and comical.  All right, it was more comical, but I’m sure that more that one little kid has had sucky mouth dreams following a Lake Mead fish feeding trip.  Speaking of little kids, a youngster next to us lured most of our fish away with their preferred food, puffed wheat cereal.  I thought it was kind of rude for him to swipe our fish, but what can you do?  We decided to head back to the campground via the Memphis Barbeque restaurant for a return visit and Easter dinner.  Once again, we had a tasty meal and left full.

Monday and Tuesday, April 25 & 26, were spent taking it easy at the campground.  We did some blogging (still didn’t catch up), some shopping at the commissary and exchange, and just hanging around.  We were also hoping that the winds would die down a bit before we took off for Zion National Park in Utah.  It was nice taking it easy for a couple of extra days. Desert Eagle Campground, here at Nellis Air Force Base, to date, has been our favorite military campground.

April 17 - Grand Canyon (Part 2)

Sunday, April 17, 2011 - Ranger Talk, Bright Angel Trail & Canyon Sunset

We awoke in our spacious new campsite and we were ready to spend the day soaking up as much of the splendor the the Grand Canyon as possible. Pictures cannot capture the magnitude and grandeur of the canyon, nor can memories hold onto those magical moments of actually experiencing the canyon, so the best you can do is enjoy the moment(s) of being there up close and personal taking it all in.

We started the day with another Ranger chat - GeoTalk. This talk was held outside in an amphitheater overlooking the canyon. The perfect setting for a lecture. The audience consisted of families with many young children, so the level of the talk spanned all ages. The gist of the presentation was how the canyon was created. For simplification, the ranger said all you have to remember is the word "DUDE" to explain the Grand Canyon's formation. This acronym stands for Deposition, Uplift, Downcutting and Erosion. Layers and layers of deposits formed the various rock strata of the canyon. Then the earth's internal pressure cause the whole plateau to be lifted up and slightly tilted. The force of the Colorado River over millions of centuries caused the downcutting to create the canyon (and still continues). Erosion due to the forces of the weather - wind, rain, ice, snow - ever so slowly makes the canyon walls wider. Pretty cool geology lesson!

After feeding our brains, we strolled for a mile along the rim of the canyon where there was a timeline of various rock specimens and displays to reinforce the concept of the formation of the canyon. By now the day is beginning to get rather warm, so a hot dog and ice cream luncheon seemed to be the perfect repast.

Next we wandered over near Bright Angel Trail and did a quick tour of the Kolb Studio, built in 1904 by the two Kolb brothers, who made their living photographing the mule riders descending the trail down into the canyon. The Studio overhangs the canyon's rim and has incredible views, besides being a current day art museum. It amazed us that these brothers worked so hard running up and down into the canyon for water and to hurriedly take pictures and process them for these mule riding tourists. Not an easy job back-in-the-day.

A ranger suggested we walk down a little of Bright Angel Trail to see some petroglyphs, which we never found. The trail down wasn't too bad, but it was somewhat narrow with a steep drop-off. I loved the sense of going down into the canyon with all the rewarding views. I easily walked down about a half-hour's worth, which is a very minor section of the trail, but the walk back up to the rim left me breathless. I cannot imagine the hike back up from the canyon floor! Poor mules and poor Kolb brothers.

We hopped on the shuttle to ride out to Pima Point to see and "hear" the Colorado River. The River is at least a mile down, so the rapids must be deafening at the canyon floor. This bus tour gave us another overview of the size of the canyon and various canyon perspectives.

The river snakes through the canyon floor.

We can hear the river a mile above the canyon, so these rapids must be wild

Back at the campground, poor Don had a chore awaiting. We were still having problems with the passenger side rear tire on the camper. A new wheel and tire awaited us from the manufacturer in Las Vegas, but we were not sure we would make it there without a flat along the way. Better safe than sorry. Don switched out the spare, once again, which had a little more tread than the current tire.

Our final plan for the day was to watch the sunset over the canyon at Hopi Point. We had planned this for last night, but the campsite move negated that idea. The weather was slowly deteriorating and the wind picked up. The previous night would have been preferable, but you go with what you can. We took wine in drink mugs, our Crazy Creek chairs and jumped on the shuttle. Finding a good locale near the rim to watch the sun go down, we bundled up and had a "sit." The clouds were blocking the sun and we were laughing at the wild winds which wanted to blow us out of our chairs. During the final minutes of the sun receding below the horizon, the clouds parted! We had a spectacular show of rock and sky colors, thus paying us back for our efforts to savor our final tourist view of the GRAND Canyon! Tomorrow we are Las Vegas bound.

Wine, Canyon and Sunset --- PERFECT!!!

Did I mention the strong winds?

Sun going down...

Sky is on fire!

Sun is down and coloring the sky.