Nevada - Day 15 - errands and the Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas

Friday, 15 April 2022

today's route

closer view of the Strip

I plotted a driving route that would take me to a park (for the dogs), several chores, and down all of Las Vegas Blvd.  I was able to take no photos of my own but have found a few online to give a feel for what I saw.

I noticed that some of the metro buses were double-deckers.  Not painted bright red as in London, but instead muted browns and greens.  And I couldn't help but think of Joan Mitchell's song Twisted.

I passed a place called Jake's Bar with a sign: "The Time Travel Seminar Will Be Held 2 Weeks Ago."

Our first stop was the Jaycee Park, which was very large and very nice, with lots of grass and trees, a separate dog park (being used, so I kept my dogs away from it), playground equipment, picnic tables and shelters, and dozens of homeless folks.  Really, dozens.  I'm not sure I've ever seen such a large concentration of them and wondered if the city was allowing them to camp here - though I didn't see encampments, just people hanging out.

What was maybe a result of that was a lot of chicken bones lying around on the grass, which both my dogs grabbed several of, which upset me a lot because those bones splinter something awful and all I need is an emergency vet bill and a very sick puppy dog.  So instead of having a nice walk through a nice park, I felt like one more thing had gone wrong (added to nearly dangerous static electricity, and extremely slow internet connectivity that makes it hard to get anything done).  We left the park much earlier than I'd planned because we couldn't seem to walk anywhere that didn't have discarded food lying around.

We stopped at a post office and then went on to a shopping center where there was both a laundromat and a grocery store.

The laundromat was a little weird and I was really glad of the very helpful staff member who showed me the system there.  The machines used cards, which I had to purchase for a specific amount of money (trying to figure out in advance how many minutes I'd need in the dryers).  Once I'd inserted money in the card-buying machine, I discovered there was a $1 fee to buy it (what a rip-off).  But the nice woman told me to make a fake account using any name I chose plus a local address that she made up for me - and presto, I got credit for the $1 it had taken off my card.  Absolutely nothing on the machine tells any of this - the $1 fee or how to waive it (serious rip-off).  

Then at the washers, I discovered that though they said they charged $4, that was only if I used cold water.  When I said I wanted warm water, it said it would charge an extra 25¢.  I'd bought the card assuming a $4 washer, so I backed off the warm water.  Again, no sign on the machines or anywhere else that warned me of this (more attempt at rip-off).  

A pair of women doing their laundry not far from me talked nonstop while I was there.  Or, one of the women did.  Giving excruciating details about how her son was/wasn't adjusting to some sort of supervised living arrangement he was in and what she told the supervisors to do about his maladjustment and what she told her son about it and how he'd misunderstood her good intentions and how she'd gotten his father to say the same things but in a different way so the son understood.  I put my clothes in a dryer and left.  

When I came back to fold them, the woman had moved on to how she had insecurities that resulted in not trusting her husband to not have affairs and how he'd cried when she told him this and said he'd never cheat but how she was sure some of the "street ladies" he worked around were after him so she didn't trust him anyway.  She sounded to me like she was about to get herself a self-fulfilling prophecy if she wasn't careful.  

Oddly, she was in a wheelchair and the 2nd woman had volunteered to bring her to do her laundry and got stuck with listening to this monologue, and I think if I were stuck in a wheelchair and dependent on my husband's good nature and commitment, I'd treat him a little better than she appeared to (and maybe get some counseling to deal with those self-admitted insecurities) - and almost interrupted to say so - but managed to make it out of there with my clean clothes and my mouth shut.

After this I went next door to the Albertson's (that did have liners for slow cookers - so there, Reno), and then moved to the back of the parking lot to walk the dogs and have lunch.

We headed down Fremont St. and I unwittingly came across a tourist attraction, sort of.  

Fremont East District arch

Online I learned that this section of town is a more down-scale version of the entertainment offered on the Las Vegas Strip - an area where blue jeans are appropriate dress.  I'm guessing it's more popular with locals than with tourists, though.  The tourists come for glitz.

Several blocks from this arch I came to Las Vegas Blvd., where I encountered major road construction work.  The city says it's doing sewer and water improvements, and it's torn up almost the entire length of this street.  I drove past 6 or 7 miles of it.  This left me to try to gawk at sights along the way while dodging orange cones and marked-off areas and pedestrians.  I still managed to get some gawking done.

For the length of the street, I could see what was labeled Strat Tower.

Strat Tower

This turned out to be the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino, and as you can see from this online photo, it dominates the skyline.  The Top of the World restaurant is in that large circular area near the top, more than 800' up.

I passed familiar hotel/casino names: Sahara, Circus Circus, Treasure Island, Venetian, Mirage, Harrah's.  All along the way were rows and rows of shops of all kinds, ranging from Walgreens and Ross Dress for Less to Louis Vuitton.

Caesar's Palace seemed to take up blocks and blocks of buildings, with many pseudo-Roman statues.  There was an incredibly elaborate fountain, which I had a hard time finding a daytime photo of online.  These don't really do justice to what I saw.

This fountain is what I saw, but this photo doesn't begin
to show the elaborate nature of those figures -
it focuses more on the building than the fountain.

I don't think I saw this batch of statues, and it's a nighttime
photo, but I'm including it because it shows more clearly
how elaborate this place was.

By the time I'd gotten as far as Caesar's, my jaw was hanging open due to the extraordinary amount of excess I was seeing.  The Las Vegas Strip is one long illustration of elaborate hype and total lack of restraint and total presence of excess and over-the-top display of glitz.  

Next to Caesar's Palace is the Bellagio, where I had to miss the fountain display.  On weekdays, which this was, they operate on the half-hour from 3:00 to 8:00, and then on the quarter-hour until midnight.  I was there too early in the day to enjoy them.  

And what I also learned is that I would likely not have had a chance to enjoy them anyway: there was no street parking at all and I didn't have any illusions about my ability to park somewhere on the grounds of any of these hotel/casinos.  

Plus, I was absolutely astounded by the hordes of people walking from one place to another.  The Strip is several miles long, and each of these places occupies a fair amount of street frontage, so people were having to walk long distances (many with kids) to get from one place to another.  This may be the only place in the US where ordinarily nonathletic people get so much exercise.

Farther along I passed Bally's, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, the Flamingo, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, New York New York, Tropicana, a Travelodge and the Luxor.

I saw these things.  They're really there.

The Luxor has an enormous sign saying it hosts America's Got Talent.

At the far end of town, I came to a shopping center with a Total Wine (that had actual champagne, as well as a reasonable wine selection), among many other shops.  This shopping center was incredibly crowded and I had a rough time finding a parking space I could fit in.  In fact, the one I finally grabbed was too short for me, but I was tired of looking for something that didn't exist (a big-enough space) and I just did my shopping as fast as I could.

By then the dogs were seriously ready to get out, and I accidentally found a back parking lot that didn't have much for the dogs to sniff on but at least it was subject to less traffic, though still plenty of it.

On the way back north, we passed what used to be called McCarran Field but is now the Harry Reid International Airport.  (I'd forgotten he was/is from Nevada.)  I saw many private jets - some of them quite large - as I passed.

Then the famous sign:

The city has bowed to reality and added a small parking area in the median on the southbound side of the road.  Both times when I went by, the area around this sign was packed with people taking photos.  (You can't read this sign going southbound, only going north, which is why I drove back north along this road.)  I saw an Elvis impersonator there.  And I saw an entire Little League team taking their turn to stand under the sign while their picture was taken.

I passed Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel.  And I saw a bumper sticker on the pickup in front of me that said, "We Were Married in the Little White Wedding Chapel, Las Vegas NV."  In February of this year, Clark County issued its 5,000,000th marriage license and claims to be the world's #1 destination wedding spot.

I turned off Las Vegas Blvd. on Tropicana Ave, and then drove north alongside the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  Established in 1957, it bills itself primarily as a research school, and I did pass the Desert Research Institute near the campus.  The National Atomic Testing Museum is also nearby.  When I turned there, I found one of the city's recycling drop-off stations, and it accepted every bit of my recycling.  Amazing how fast that stuff builds up.

My overall impression of Las Vegas is a big, glitzy desert town.  But I had a smile on my face from being astounded at the incredible display of excess - and fun.