Gremlin's Tall Stories

A short day meant a later start, so I dropped the bag down at the van at 9.30am, they were leaving at 10am, but since they were leaving later, so could I, so I had a shower and got ready afterwards, finally leaving the hotel shortly before midday, finding a gas station and heading down Highway 163.

Simply packing the bike had resulted in a sweat, and it was no cooler on the bike when moving, sitting in the high 30s. The roads were straight, almost featureless and hot. Turning right onto 95, there was no change in the terrain, if anything, it got even straighter. Reaching Boulder City, I could have turned left and headed towards Las Vegas, but a visit to the Hoover Dam was on the cards.

Turning right instead, and a short way down 93. A new bridge has been built for the main road, so a quick stop there to take photos of the dam that almost look like they’re from a helicopter. Down onto the dam wall, there is a road across the dam, but the very slow going from crowds and temperatures rising to the low 40s made it rather uncomfortable. I went far enough round to get photos (crossing the state line into Arizona) before returning.

Ken had recommended a stop at the Hacienda Casino near Boulder for a buffet lunch, and reaching the casino, Ken and Murray’s bikes were parked outside. Walking a fair distance I eventually found the buffet lunch area, and for $7.51 had an excellent choice of fruit, salad, mains and desserts. I was hot enough that the ice in the water was used to put inside the cooling vest, down my front, back and on my shoulders, to help me cool down.

It was a short ride from there into Las Vegas, arriving at 3pm at the Embassy Suites, our accommodation for the next 3 nights. Ken had warned us that we couldn’t arrive too early, otherwise we couldn’t check in, so I arrived at my planned time of 3 to hopefully avoid the check-in issues. Unfortunately, most of our rooms were still not ready so we had to hang out in the lobby waiting for them. Murray had arrived earlier, and his room was ready, and since I was meant to bunk in with him I headed up to his room to check it was OK for 3 people. It was, so I unpacked.

I jumped in the pool for a nice swim, including the spa pool with jets massaging my back. For the rest of the afternoon I caught up on my blogs, watching a little TV as well. I played trivia with Anjum and Murray, and here are some interesting facts:
- The top 11 hotels in the USA for room size are all in Las Vegas
- The MGM Grand is the largest, with 5304 rooms
- There are 130,000 hotel rooms in Las Vegas
- Over 1,000,000 weddings are performed each year

From 5.30pm to 7.30pm the hotel put on a Managers Welcome, with free drinks (you had to tip the bartenders of course), so near the end I went down to catch up with everyone. After the late buffet lunch I had no desire for a normal dinner, and some of us headed back to Ken’s room for the view of the strip (our hotel was on a road parallel to the strip).

Ken decided he wanted to visit the Rio and I reckoned visiting some of the hotels in Las Vegas would be cool, so Ken, Murray, Dave, Kevin and I headed off. We visited Floor 51 (apparently the hotel only had about 42 floors), a rooftop bar with fantastic views. Our skills were tested finding the van again, but only a couple of wrong turns were made. The scale of Las Vegas was starting to make itself known.

After having a few drinks at the Rio and photographing the view we moved onto the Cosmopolitan, the newest hotel to join the skyline. This one was much bigger and included a fair amount of walking. After asking a few people, we found the two storey chandelier, where you could actually go inside and have a drink. The guys commented that the drinks were not even close to cheap, but that’s Vegas I guess.

While admiring the Chandelier, I couldn’t help but admire the constant stream of gorgeous girls passing by. The ugly ones had mostly disappeared, but there was a nightclub around the corner which could have explained why every girl was good looking. We were constantly losing Kevin and Dave, so after trying to head out onto the strip, we lost them again and gave up trying to go further, deciding to return to the car. On the way inside we found them again.

We walked past the elevators to the parking garage but found some beautiful pillars surrounded by mirrors, constantly changing their display, creating a very dramatic effect. Pointed in the right direction of the elevators we chose the right floor and found the van. Leaving the Cosmopolitan we did a tour of the city, driving down the strip viewing all the hotels, all trying to out-do each other with bigger buildings, more lights, more crazy attractions unique to themselves.

Ken took us to Fremont Street shortly before midnight, the old style Vegas Strip that had tried to re-invent itself. It was an open mall type layout that they had enclosed with a roof that sported a screen. Music was playing at images were put on the roof in time to the music creating a really nice atmosphere. There was a zip line running from across the street down into the mall, so people were flying overhead now and then.

We headed into one of the many casinos, Dave and Kevin heading off for a feed. The area wasn’t as upmarket as the big money on the Vegas Strip, and I saw more people that looked like they were desperately feeding their last dollars into the machines, than I had on the main strip. We watched a table play blackjack with mixed results. An Asian girl sat down and appeared to be quite good, winning more than 50% of her hands with a growing stack of chips.

Kevin and Dave finished their feed and it was time to return to the van and the hotel, being after 1am. Returning to the hotel at 2am, it was surprising to see the temperature was still 33 degrees, but it explains how warm Las Vegas is. Murray and I went straight to bed.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MrkZstk5hh7f4ZSd6