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Published: October 17th 2009
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October 15, 2009
We all agreed to leave early today so that we could arrive in Vegas early and sit by the pool. We had spent not a little bit of time yesterday, looking for potential places to stay. Hotels.com was quoting rooms for $20.00 a night…I’m not kidding and they were at big resorts…OK not Bellagio but others. We had settled on the Las Vegas Hilton and that’s where we were headed. But first we drove through Death Valley and that turned out to be one of the absolute surprise highlights of the trip…it was… magnificent…right up there with the Rockies and the northern Pacific. It’s difficult to describe it in any meaningful way and I know the pictures won’t do it justice…it’s stark, moonlike, mountainous, flat, gray, colorful, hot, still, dry, and I think above all…completely and utterly …silent. After basking in all of that, we put the Eagles on the CD player…turned it way up…”and I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight with a million stars all around”…and sailed on through…what an experience!!! Half way through our song we saw what we thought were birds but turned out to be Navy jets, Bill says F17s
orF16s. They literally come out of nowhere, as if they’d been launched by a slingshot. Soaring through the air, turning upside down, right side up, they made huge loops and arks and then…as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. I like to think that they were saluting us…well, for making it this far, for seeing and understanding that this place was sacred…but someone else said they were checking us out…come on, really? Well maybe…OK…I guess. Blast that Whitey Bulger!!!
From that glorious place, we quickly entered the glitter and glitz capital of the world…Las Vegas. Oh Boy…as it turns out, not my cup of tea, certainly not Bill’s, and John was of the “I’m glad I saw it and we’re only staying one night” thinking. Maybe it was the contrast between where we’d been and where we were…I don’t know. It was noisy, over stimulating, expensive, gaudy (sorry all you Vegas fans). The Hilton was nice enough, but everything was extra…and to use their Wife was $14.00…you have got to be joking. The little Indian lady at the Budget Inn didn’t charge us a dime...those are the things that make you just dislike the place. Everyone has his hand
out, people walk around looking like they know Wayne Newton which I don’t really think they do… and some of the sights at the pool made us want to gouge our eyes out… But that brings us to Donna…who absolutely LOVED it. That may not be a surprise to some of you. She adored everything about it and would love to have stayed for several days but alas (thank God) we must move on. We ate at the buffet for dinner…that was the cheapest option, and then Donna and I started out to make our fortune at the slot machines…we lost…and sadly we went to bed… sleeping is free in Las Vegas. In retrospect, maybe we didn’t give it a real chance, maybe we didn’t embrace the experience…I don’t know. I think you have to be a “Vegas” person…and the only one of us who is…Donna.
Today’s Road Lesson: The slot machines at the Hilton are rigged!
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