Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Road Trip 2009: Day 1 from Home to Las Vegas

We got an early start today and headed south on I-5 towards Las Vegas.  We stopped for lunch in Mojave.  The restaurant was decorated with a collection of children’s cars, so The Husband was happy.Days 1, 2, 3 002

The last time we went to Las Vegas was in 1994 on Day 1 of our first big road trip to the Midwest.  We arrived on a Saturday at about 5pm and found that there were no rooms available in the entire city.   Apparently the Grateful Dead were performing in Vegas, there was a major prize-fight scheduled and the economy was booming – so everything was booked well in advance.  Also, there were a lot fewer hotels fifteen years ago. 

So we kept going, stopping at every motel along I-15, to no avail.  We ended up in St. George UT where we rented the next to last room in that town.  That caused us to visit the Grand Canyon on the North Rim instead of the more popular South Rim.  No problem there because the Grand Canyon is magic from wherever you see it.

This time we didn’t think we would have a problem – we arrived on a Monday, the GD are no more and the economy is also not so good.  In fact, we got a very good price at the Best Western Mardi Gras.

Monorail

The Monorail was over the street next to our motel, although the station was a few blocks away.  That’s the new moon in the center of the photo.

The weather was fairly cool for Las Vegas – upper nineties instead of over 100 degrees.  I had wanted to see the Strip with all the big glamorous hotels, but it didn’t happen.  By the time we got settled in and had dinner, we were too tired.  The Husband didn’t even do any gambling.  The next morning we were going to drive down the Strip but we took a wrong turn and were past it before we could figure out what to do.  We never backtrack, so that’s it for Vegas.

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