On the Road with Rolo

The rest of our time in Vegas was fun, with lots of contrasting adventures. Sunday was mostly a day of relaxing and for Aaron to take care of some last-minute business, and then we headed off to see the Hoover Dam. We went via Lake Mead National Recreation Area, where we saw, um, the lake, which was created by the dam and was very blue. It was also very windy out there, so we didn’t explore too much. When we reached the highway to the dam at the end of the park, we saw a huge line-up of cars, trucks, and RVs headed for the dam, and our host had warned me that if that was the case it would take much too long to drive the four miles to the dam and we were better off just trying again later. Seemed like sound advice to us, so we were back at their house about an hour after we left. That night our hosts took us out to dinner at the Elephant Grill (or Elephant Bar?), a place with a strange combination of dishes on their menu, including this wedge of iceberg lettuce covered in a weird dressing that had bacon and chopped-up hard-boiled eggs on it. There was a picture that I can’t imagine would ever entice anyone to order it. So we didn’t, and instead enjoyed a stir fry with tofu (Aaron) and a burger (me) and shared salad and fries, and enjoyed the free refills on soda, which seem to be a totally western (but not Californian) thing, since I’m enjoying lots of them in Denver, too.

That night Aaron and I headed out to the Strip, starting our explorations at Mandalay Bay, where we quickly discovered that these casinos are totally massive and it would take forever just to walk from one to another. The fact that casinos right next to each other had a tram linking them started to make sense. We finally found our way out of Mandalay and wandered past and through the Luxor, stopping to take pictures of the outside of the massive pyramid and the side of the sphinx–I didn’t have the motivation to walk all the way around to the front! The inside of the Luxor is supposed to be pretty impressive, but I didn’t know you had to go up to the second floor to get a good perspective on the interior of the pyramid, so I was pretty disappointed–the casino area felt like it was in a regular building. On the walkway connecting Luxor to Excalibur there was some cool decor, though, including some gold-colored fake hieroglyphs and fancy chandeliers that were supposed to be Egyptian I suppose. Excalibur seemed like the family casino and was pretty cheesy. We went down to the arcade to play a little air hockey, but all but two of the machines were broken and too many people were waiting. Instead did a little skeeball (where I hoped I wouldn’t win one of the tacky stuffed unicorns available as prizes). We then headed across the street to New York New York, and this was my favorite of the evening. It had a really cool vibe on the casino floor, with a neighborhood feel and trees (not sure if they were real or not) and it didn’t seem as contrived as the others somehow. The roller coaster modeled on one at Coney Island was closed due to high winds, unfortunately. We sat down at a few slot machines, ordered a free drink from one of the cocktail waitresses, and Aaron was on a roll, in the end leaving with about $4 in winnings (they were nickel slots). I also tried my hand at the same kind of online poker game I’d played with our hosts on Friday night at their “locals” casino. But when you’re only betting a quarter a hand, you never get very far it seems. We were too tired to carry the adventure any further, and headed back to Henderson, where our hosts were surprised to see us back so early. Oh well.

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