Christmas 2009 Roadtrip Part 3

And so the lovely maidens were on their way, once again arriving after dark to their set destination of Las Vegas. They made the Las Vegas Thousand Trails RV park their home for 3 days, visiting the ornate casinos and viewing free shows. Their favorite show was at a casino just a mile from the RV Park where they had an indoor light and water show, similar to the Bellagio, but the water was only 5 feet from them and there were colored lights that lit the water sprays. It was quite exciting!







The lovely maidens took public transportation in Las Vegas, and the first trip to the Strip took them 2 hours, due to needing to buy a 3 day pass at a major depot, which was out of the way for the most direct route to the Strip. While at the depot, a gentleman started talking to the lovely maidens (it was Christmas Day), and the conversation turned to spiritual things. They found out he was a Christian, was working with a local homeless shelter, and was on his way on the same bus as they were to the Strip to solicit funds for the shelter.







When they boarded the bus, the impatient bus driver snatched the passes from the lovely maidens' hands and inserted them into the card reader, telling them to hurry up, since she didn't have all day. The maidens found seats on the top floor of the double-decker bus, since they wanted to get a good view of the city, and their new friend, James, stayed below. Joanne figured out early on that the bus driver had gotten her driver's license from a Cracker Jack box by the way she jerked the bus around and slammed on the brakes. They had not gone 5 blocks before they heard the horn honk 3 times. Joanne wanted to go down there and take over the job of driving, but since she didn't know her way around the city, she thought better of it.







A few minutes later, James came up to the top, sat down across the aisle from the lovely maidens and announced that the driver was having a conversation with the traffic. He heard her swearing up a storm, and confirmed that it was their driver that was responsible for the horn honks they heard. Whenever her voice came on the intercom, it was to yell at someone for whatever it was she didn't like. The lovely maidens were relieved when they could disembark from that bus!







Once the lovely maidens arrived at the Strip, they enjoyed watching the gondolas at the Venetian, marveled at the Eiffel Tower at the Paris, caught the back side of the volcano show at the Mirage on video, thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas music and water show at the Bellagio, and were awed by the extreme extravagance of the casinos on the Strip. (Not to mention, took hundreds of pictures!)







After 2 days of the Strip, they had had enough of the opulence and degradation that was evident there, so decided to go to Hoover Dam. However, they misunderstood the sign that said buses and trucks couldn't go to the dam. So they turned around and went back. Later, when they left Las Vegas for good, they mistakenly went over the dam and found out that they could go. There is a checkpoint where everyone must stop for security reasons and have their vehicle inspected, apparently for bombs, which is most likely why trucks and buses can't go that way. But since by the time they arrived at the dam, it was dark, and they couldn't really see it anyway. However, they were grateful they were traveling into Arizona, rather than from Arizona into Nevada, because there was 3 or 4 times as much traffic going that direction, and the traffic going the opposite direction had come to a stand-still.







As they were getting ready to leave to visit Hoover Dam, a new motor home arrived to stay next to their campsite. Before they had even finished parking it, the driver jumped out and hurried over to the lovely maidens' campsite to tell them they were going to be their new neighbors! They were the nicest people, full time RVers from the San Bernardino area, and the lovely maidens visited with them for a few minutes before leaving on their adventure for the day. Their names were Mr. Pete (Pete says, "Heavy on the Mister!") and Frances Carranza and their Min-Pin dog, Mechie, which being interpreted from Spanish means "Nosey".







Since the lovely maidens didn't go to Hoover Dam, they parked the motor home at the casino down the street and took the casino's free shuttle bus to the Freemont Experience, a much more reasonable place to eat, the lovely maidens discovered, than at the Strip. This is where one can get a half chicken dinner for $5, as opposed to $35, as on the Strip. The Freemont Experience has a canopy of lights covering the street in a convex fashion for several blocks. They do light shows with music every hour on the hour, but that day they were just videos of people singing, and it was not as impressive as it had been the last time Joanne was there when they had some kind of animation set to music.







The lovely maidens missed the last shuttle back to the casino where the motor home was parked because they stopped to have some pizza. So they used their 3 day passes with the public transportation system to travel there instead. Joanne discovered that she could input the address or name of the place they wanted to go into the map application of her iphone, and it would give the bus route and bus number, as well as track their current location. It was a handy discovery! After the lovely maidens boarded the bus, a lady they had met in one of the casinos also got on the bus. This lady was pretty funny and when they met her, she was racking up all kinds of winnings on a slot machine, so they watched her play for a while.







To be continued...