We had another nice day showing some of the Vegas hotels to the girls, and celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary.
I woke up at 4am this morning as I was hearing dripping, and it was like dripping 2-3 drops per second, and felt like it was coming from the wall, where the slide out intersects, like from inside the frame. It was definitely water, so I decided to get up and go outside and see what I could find out. It was pretty dark yet, and it had rained, but I could not see much that would point me to why water was dripping in there, I just could confirm that it was kind of like in the housing of the slide out mechanism, so I would have to investigate further later in the day. I could not fall asleep again from there, so I just looked online for causes of slide out leaks for ideas of where to look for potential leaks. Later in the day, I went outside with the ladder and looked for cracks or leaks in the gutter or seals above, but didn’t find any, and not only that, I could check if the inside behind those gutters was dry, and it was all dry, so water was not running there. After checking a few more places to see where I could find any water, I could only find it right there by the mechanism, so I decided to check if the trailer was properly level…. and…… it was not. It was actually off enough that any water was running towards the trailer, and running on the slide out track, then into the mechanism… then running down, filling up the bottom spot, and with no place to go, it’d seep into the trailer floor, then into the trailer. Crap! Well, at least it’s an easy fix. I then leveled the trailer so the front was just a tad higher, and the trailer was leaning just a tad to the outside of the slide outs. Seems to be all better now, so hoping this was just a problem with leveling and we’ll double the attention to that from now on.
Today is also our 14th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary honey, I love you! :). It’s been 14 great years, and I’m looking forward to many more crazy adventures. We had our paperwork signing at the courthouse in Sheboygan 14 years ago, with only a few people there… Alex, Uncle Eric (Eraclito), Aaron and Tonya, Dede and Donny. We didn’t have our honeymoon until our 10th anniversary, so we went all in and went to Bora Bora, where we had lots of Hinano beers…. So, when I saw Hinano for sale in San Francisco, I got one so we could open today. Cheers to us.
Our morning routine was as usual. Bia was done early again, and Bella took longer. Bella ended up finishing after lunch, and Bia helped her finish her science work, so we could be done and get out. Carol worked on laundry, and today was bedding and towels day, which means the girls switch bunks, and I know we’ll hear complaints from Bia as she hates the top bunk.
I had a consulting call at 6am (here), which was the earliest call I’ve done in a long time. These were folks I talked to twice before, so this was our third call, I guess they liked what I could offer. hahahah. Then I did some posts writing, worked on some reservations, some website work, and called our RV dealer about the toilet seat warranty. I was able to get more caught up on posts, and hope to be all caught up tomorrow. Toilet seat does not have warranty coverage, so we’ll have to buy a new one. I also helped Bella with school, until about lunch time, then we assigned Bia to help her.
Carol had made mandioca and chicken with noodles for lunch, it was great. We all had lunch and started getting ready to leave for the day. The girls finished school, Carol finished laundry, we all got ready and left around 2pm. The girls had asked for Menchies Ice Cream before, so we made that our first stop. They were soooo happy to get Menchies again. They love their ice cream, and the store in Sheboygan closed a while back. Carol said this one had quite a nice sanitation process… aside from having to wears masks, and wash hands as you enter, everyone had to put on disposable gloves provided by them. Cool. Glad to see some businesses taking on the challenge and doing what they can to stay open and safe. From there, we drove to the Luxor as we wanted to show them the hotels around it, and I read they have complimentary parking at least for now. Parking there was nice, high clearance and spots right by the entrance, no problem.
The girls thought it was very cool that there’s a hotel in the shape of a pyramid, and a castle. We walked into the Luxor from the parking area, and pretty much right away there was a sign to the Excalibur, so we took that so that we could do that hotel, then come back and explore the Luxor before heading to the Mandalay Bay and take the girls to the Shark Reef.
It’s always nice to walk inside the casinos, easy walking, covered and lots of things to see. It is still amazing to see them so empty though, with so many stores and restaurants closed. I’ve been here many many times and never seen Vegas this empty. But, that makes it much easier to be here with the girls. Driving around is easy. Getting around is easy. And there are not so many crazy people all over. We walked around the Excalibur, went to the front, walked out so they could see the castle from there, and walked back taking the moving walkway they have, which is pretty long, and kind of goes a bit downhill then back up.
From there, we took the outside path back to the Luxor, and saw the pyramid from the front, and the lobby area as we walked in. I looked for the inclinators, which are their elevators that actually go up in a diagonal rather than straight up vertical, but they were all closed. With the hotel so empty, they only have the first five floors in use, so the inclinations are all closed. Bummer.
Then we took the indoor path to the Mandalay Bay, walking by more shops, more closed places with very few still open. We stopped at a Guinness beer store and Carol and I got a beer each. A Guinness draft properly poured is pretty awesome.
We kept going and eventually got to the Shark Reef. Not many people there, so we paid the $70 fee for all of us to go in. It is usually more, but their Virtual Reality thing is closed so it is cheaper right now. We went in right away, as soon as we were done with our beers.
That place is very cool! Lots of pretty fish, all predators. Piranhas, Sharks and other crazy looking huge fish… they even had another Brazilian fish, the PACU. We see fish from fish tanks, and also walk through fish tanks, and under some. Quite amazing to watch the sharks from below, sting rays as well.
We had a nice time seeing all the fish in there, and it is not a long activity, I think it took maybe 30 minutes or less. After that, the girls convinced me to let them see this virtual reality thing they saw somewhere along the way, so we started looking for it. Problem was that no-one quite remembered where it was, so we were looking for it… and we walked back to the reef and it wasn’t there. We walked to the Luxor and it wasn’t there. We walked to the Excalibur and it wasn’t there. hahahaha… well, as we retraced our steps, we finally found it and it was on the covered path between the Luxor and the Excalibur. It was $30 for about a 6 minute VR adventure and the girls loved it. They were talking about their adventure for a while.
From there, we went back to the Excalibur for dinner at Boca di Bepu. That is a nice Italian family style restaurant, which is also on the budget friendly side, if you chose the special dishes. We got a family special and an appetizer trio, had some beers, lots of food to take home, and spent about $100. Not bad for the amount of food we got.
After dinner, we walked back to the truck. All in all, we walked almost 6 miles (almost 10km) today, so we were all pretty tired. We made one more stop at the Speedway Amazon Locker as one last package arrived. I filled up the truck as well before we got back. Then once we were back, we just all got ready for bed. I went first and was out fast.
It was a nice last day checking out Vegas.