June ’23

In June my company, which is entirely remote, had a get together so everyone could meet and get to know each other in Vegas. They had a bunch of fun activities arranged, I picked a couple of the tamer ones – escape room, and the Pinball Museum. I was so excited to see the three pinball machines I used to own, even though none of them were actually on to play that day.

Oh, X Files, I missed you!!

The work field trip was fun, and it was great to meet my coworkers. The last day of the work party we all went to see the Cirque du Soleil water show ‘O’ at the Belagio, which was AMAZING! After the party was over Dave and I stayed a few extra days to get in a little more touristy stuff.

I took him to the Pinball Museum so he could enjoy it too. Here he is playing Wacky Gator

We had stayed at Planet Hollywood for the work event, but switched and moved over to The Plaza on Fremont Street for the last couple days. I really enjoyed Freemont Street when we had been there about ten twenty years before. It really still had a Rat Pack vibe going on that I loved. Quiet card table games, where Dave had been able to find an empty table and a dealer who took the time to show him the ropes of how to play Blackjack at a table. But wow, Fremont Street was not like that now. Every casino had the same personality, nothing unique about any of them. You could walk from one to the next and not even know you had changed casinos.

Dave found the shortest couch ever in our hotel room.

We went and wandered through the casinos and played some slots, and watched some shows out on Fremont Street. It was just a flurry of crazy aactivity. I did like how the buskers had designated areas they had to stay in, so they weren’t getting in people’s face as you walked by.

We went and had dinner in the Stratosphere Resteraunt one night. Dave does not like heights.

The food was kind of foofy for me, and huge portions, which we had to throw away because we wouldn’t use leftovers on a trip like this. It was worth it for the view. I love rotating resteraunts!

The next morning we got up early for a bus trip to the Grand Canyon. I wanted to get in an outdoorsy adventure while we were down here. I had looked into photographing Antelope Canyon (a famous place for photographers) but after reading the stories about people basically lining up to all get the exact same shot, I passed on the idea, and boy am I glad I did – it turned out to be a crazy lightning and rain storm!

So we were outside a casino waiting for our bus, and we were already annoyed because they had said they would pick up at the Plaza, but they changed to a casino on the strip so we had to Uber over there at 5 in the morning. While waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the bus, we got to talking with some folks who were also waiting, one of who was a lady from Italy who had done the trip we were signed up for the day before and said it was not great. Primarily because this went to a view of the Canyon where there is a big glass bridge, and it costs to go on the bridge, and you can’t take your own pictures, you have to leave your stuff behind and pay for them to take a picture of you on the bridge. Plus it’s an ALL DAY trip, longer even then we were expecting. And it was raining a monsoon. These were all signs. We got another Uber back to The Plaza and went back to bed until a decent time.

We spent the day be-boping around the casinos, haveing fun losing money on slots, and playing this cool old horse racing game with mechanical ponies.

We finished off our evening by taking an Uber over to the Neon Museum. I’m sure there’s lots of pictures online, but here’s a few, because it sure was neat, and of course everything was bigger than you expect!

The guide doing the tour was funny, and sprinkled lots of history tidbits in his stories. It was great! It will be so cool someday if they get the signs all restored and lit up!

And that was the big finale for us, so we were homeward bound the next day. It was great to meet my coworkers, and Dave and I had fun on our own, but I am definitly an outdoors girl, noisy crowds and buskers and slots and confusion and activity everywhere is definitly not my gig. I was happy to get home!