Las Vegas, Nevada

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Last night we ended up driving to Fallon, Nevada to spend the night. When I said motel on the last blog, I really meant sleeping in the campers. It was pretty nice though, things fold out nicely inside to give padded sleeping areas.

I drove the pickup for the first time yesterday. This is not just any old pickup to me because it is pulling a trailer. I have never driven any vehicle with a trailer, so it made me a little nervous at first. But I sort of got used to it after a while. We drove through some construction last night with some very narrow lanes, but I pulled through and didn’t hit any of the construction cones. Today I drove the pickup most of the way, including on the crowded Las Vegas interstate. Talk about stressful! I can’t see out my rearview mirror with this trailer hooked up, which forces me to watch my side mirrors to know what is going on around me and when I can change lanes. And I had my first backing experience with the trailer today. I successfully backed up the trailer to where we will be storing it for a few days in Vegas.

So that leads me to the next point, we are spending a few days in Las Vegas before leaving for Phoenix. Jerry got us a motel room, and we are just hanging out and doing whatever we want. Jerry bought us all dinner tonight, which was a very nice gesture! It was a very nice buffet dinner at one of the casinos, and was delicious. We then walked around for a while, and Jerry gave Kyle and me a nice tour of some of the cool casinos. I had been to Las Vegas as a kid, but didn’t remember any of the things we saw tonight. It was simply amazing! There are so many cool casinos, nice decorations, and interesting people. We watched the fountain show at the Bellagio, and that was very cool! I never thought I would like Vegas this much, but it was pretty cool! It was just cool seeing so many different types of buildings and settings.

It makes me sad and sometimes angry to think about what really drives this town and industry. I think the largest items include gambling, alcohol, and women. And there’s so many illegal things going down everywhere you look, and from what I see there is very little law enforcement doing anything about it! One thing that makes me want to kick people in the face is workers encouraging prostitution. They hand out what look like baseball cards with pictures of their women “for sale”, and I am guessing you call a phone number to arrange these “encounters”. You see both men and women handing these out. The flick them with their fingers to make noise, and they hold them out right in front of you as you walk by. Most of the time I just walk by and don’t even look at them. The interesting part is we were walking down the sidewalk at about the same pace as the police on horses next to us on the street. They ride by these people handing out this prostitution paraphernalia and don’t even do anything about it. The guys handing out cards just keep on with their business as they normally do. I don’t want to sound racist, but as a simple observation all of these cards are handed out by Hispanics. It is crazy how much women and sex sell in this city.

Kyle and I tried staying up until 2pm to see all the crazy people walking around on the streets, but we only made it until midnight. It was good enough to see samples of the different kinds of people that lurk around this city. It seems as though the city never dies. Even at midnight there were lots of people out and about. Tomorrow we plan on seeing many of the same things we saw tonight, but I would like to take my camera with me to get some pictures. We might go swimming, or maybe head downtown if we have time. I think we should have plenty to do. Off to bed now, I’ll write more later.

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