Tuesday
Since the weather took a turn for the worse - rain and winds forecast, we decided to curtail our visit to Laughlin and headed up to Las Vegas on Tuesday morning. We already had reservations at Bally's - just moved them up one day.
Short ride north. It's always a beautiful view when you cross Railroad Pass and come into the valley (Las Vegas name comes from Spanish for the Meadows). The city just spreads out in front of you - it was a little cloudy, but still good visibility.
Did some shopping and then headed for Bally's. One of the things which made the decision to come early was apparent when we checked into our room. It was about three times the size of the one we had in Laughlin - 23rd floor, so we are able to enjoy the view. I went out later and was surprised to find that it was raining pretty hard. You get so isolated in the casino with no windows and no clock, you lose track of what's happening outside.
We had dinner at the BLT Steak House bar (we prefer sitting at the bar to watch the action, see some TV, and interact with the bartenders). The Tampa Bay-Columbus game was on and we watched one of the greatest upsets in NHL as the CBJ swept the Lightning, who had the best record this year and were the champions last year. Fame is so fleeting :-).
Wednesday
This morning we went to breakfast at the Cracked Egg, another of our favorite spots in Las Vegas. After breakfast, we headed west on Charleston Blvd out to Red Rock National Park. We and a few thousand of our closest friends had the same idea. It was an awesome day and also Spring break here in Las Vegas, so Red Rock was a popular destination. It's kind of neat when you leave Summerlin and, all of a sudden, you are out in the desert. Stopped at the Visitor Center, again with a lot of our closest friends. You have to experience Red Rock to fully appreciate it - the colors and different strata are unbelievable.
There's a scenic loop road through Red Rock which allows you to leisurely see all the facets of the park. A lot of parking lots filled with hikers (we decided to let them have the trails to themselves). It reminded us of when Tom III and his buddies went out to Red Rock several years ago and they cycled around the park. Nowadays, there are electric bikes which would seem to make more sense (at least to others).
After leaving the park, we continued on a circular route through south Las Vegas to go to another park on the eastern side of Las Vegas. Apparent along Route 160 was the explosion of new housing in Las Vegas/Henderson. One development after another.
The park we went to was a fairly new area called the Clark County Wetlands Park, also known as The Wash. It's at the east end of Tropicana and tells the story of the (believe it or not) wetlands around Las Vegas. Although short-lived, the water flowing through the washes can wreak havoc on the landscape. I thought one of the more interesting items was the below plaque which shows what happens to the defunct casinos which are imploded.
It's hard to read, but the end result is that the debris from the casinos is used to fill in the desert and make good use of the old material. We had originally started out looking for the wildflower blooms, but had no success at that. Didn't see any wild flowers or any wild burros or horses, just blue skies and sunshine. Temperature was in the high 80's. The only real "wildlife" we saw were a pair of kingfisher birds at The Wash. The trivia note of the day is that the kingfisher is the only bird where the female has the most color - the male is the nondescript one. Bet you didn't know that - I sure didn't.
After a late lunch at Panera, we returned to Bally's.
No comments:
Post a Comment