We had a nice day checking out the Las Vegas strip and a few hotels.
We are in Vegas… and it’s cold.. what? Actually getting colder, and as I looked at the weather this morning, it says it may snow here, and on the strip. Snow in the Vegas strip… now, that’s something I didn’t think I’d see. And the forecast for Flagstaff, our upcoming stop on Sunday is tons of snow, between 6 and 25 inches. Darn… I am now thinking I need new travel plans for that week. The forecast also shows Wednesday in Flagstaff will be a high of 32 and low of 7… that’s too cold, we need to change plans. Later in the day we all discussed it and decided we should change plans and skip Flagstaff this time. I’ll try to extend our time in Boulder City instead, and maybe make a stop along the way to Phoenix from there.
The morning routine was good, the girls got going and Bia was done quite early, so she just left with Carol later. Bella had the usual work, got working on it and was done before lunch as well.
Carol worked on laundry today, and some odds and ends. Bia went with her to a nearby laundromat. As soon as she was done there she sent me a message that I had to go with her to pick up the laundry as there were some “weird scary people” there. hahahahah…. She went to pick up groceries at Walmart first, and realized she had ordered at a different one, so had to go to the other one instead. Then, she came back to the camper and I went with her to the laundromat, and we left the girls in the trailer for that while. There were no weird people when I went there with her, but the guy that was talking to himself showed up as we were leaving.
I worked on writing some posts and a bit of catch up. I also had some bills to pay and make sure other financial stuff was all in order. Then, in one of Bia’s breaks she called me into my side of the bedroom and pointed out a puddle of water. Crap! I looked around and could not tell where it was coming from. No water from the wall, or window, and as I traced it, I could only find water was seeping from the floor. Dang. I dried it all up and went outside to look. It had stopped raining fortunately. I looked for cracks in the seals, or anything that could show water going into that spot, but didn’t find anything obvious. There are some rubber seals that have openings and it looked like they had been calked before and the silicone was dried up and the opening exposed. It did not look like that was it, but I covered it with flex seal tape and left it alone to see if it’d do it again next time it rains. We will see tomorrow. I don’t like this, especially because now we have water in the subfloor and I know the area is wet, and not sure how we’ll dry it up or if it will cause any further problems. I’m hoping with some air blowing there we can dry it up.
As we were all done with our work, we had lunch, I took a shower, and we left to go visit the strip and some hotels.
I mapped our path to hit the Stratosphere area and then drive up the strip from there, turn around at the Welcome to Vegas sign, and on the way back stop at the Venetian. That path worked out nicely. There’s almost no traffic on the strip now, so it was super easy to drive and take our time showing the girls the different hotels and pointing out some things. I actually had never driven down the strip, but had walked it back to back a few times. We stopped by the welcome sign and took some pics. The weather was not great for pictures, with overcast skies, and I always feel the power lines behind the sign kind of take away from the picture.
The girls were excited to see all the hotels and stop by the sign. Bia said again she wants to come back to Vegas every year. Then we went back on the road towards the Venetian. I had read that they have free parking there, and read about where the entrance was, so as we just passed the first fountain there’s an entrance for parking. I went there and a security guy checked the trunk of the truck, and let us in. I drove in to the parking area, and immediately some read lights went on and a siren noise, so we read the signs that were flashing and it said “oversized vehicle, please turn right”… wow… they somehow had a sensor for that, and made sure we turned right. This was even better because the area for oversized vehicles was mainly empty, and was right there by the entrance. Super awesome and easy. I parked and we were on our way to the entrance.
As we walked in to the Venetian, the girls continued to get impressed. They loved the sky there, and the indoor river and gondolas. They wanted to go on the gondola rides, but we checked the cost and it’s $30 per person. Plus, the line was long as they didn’t have a ton of gondolas. I felt bad not taking them for the ride, but it was too expensive and we’d have to wait more than I wanted. Then they saw the ice bar and wanted to go there, so we left that for later (which we skipped as well). But we did get ice cream right at the main “square”. It is quite amazing that these casinos have all those things inside. The girls were amazed.
We then decided to take them to Caesers Palace. It was an easy walk there, less than half a mile, and we walked in from the Forum Shops entrance. Right there is the circular escalators, which are quite unique. We went up and down a few times looking for the right path to get in.. hahaha.. their arrows are a bit confusing, but eventually we figured out we had to just get up to the second floor and actually walk around the circle to get to the entrance. As we made our way in, Carol stopped at some make up store, and Bella and I kept walking. We saw a Fountain right as we walked in the hotel area, Bella loved it.
We kept walking and she wanted water, so we stopped at Carmines. I got a beer and Bella got a water, and we waited there for Carol and Bia. Those two took a bit to get there, so when they did, Carol got a beer, Bia got a soda and I got another beer before we continued. I told the girls about the huge giraffe at FAO Schwarz, so they were anxious to see it, but as we walked in more and more, we saw they no longer had that store there. Bummer. We walked towards the inside tank they have, which is where there’s a gods fire show… the show was not running, so again, bummer. But, we got to enjoy the fish tank and the girls really liked seeing rays and sharks, as well as all the other cool fish.
We walked around Caesers a bit more, showed them a few different areas, betting areas, roulette, etc. We then walked back to the Venetian, and looked for a place to have dinner. Carol picked an Italian one, I can’t remember the name. The food was pretty amazing, but it was quite pricey. Yikes. Carol and I got some different pasta we never had before, and it was amazing. Bia had gnocchi and now she loves it and told Carol to make it more often, but like that one. hahahahah… Bella just had pasta with butter. Oh, and we had their Prosciutto plate as a starter and it was awesome. And from there we walked back to the truck.
Oh, I forgot to mention that most casinos have a temperature check station that is pretty automated. The Venetian had a security guard and a lady with a computer that were watching the screen as people walked in. The guard to make sure people had masks, and the lady checking the temp on the computer screen from a thermal something device. Pretty high tech and cool.
As we drove back, the girls wanted to stop at Menchies for ice cream, but we convinced them to leave for tomorrow as it was late already. We’ll have to stop there after lunch tomorrow before we hit some other hotels. And that was it, we drove back, everyone got ready for bed, and we called it a day. I went to bed right away, but Carol stayed up doing some stuff. She tried to fix the toilet seat hinge with a liquid epoxy glue, but it didn’t work. We’ll work on that later.
We had a nice day checking out the Venetian and Caesers Palace.