The Aussie Nomads Motorhome Adventures: LAS VEGAS

Four fantastic, fun filled, footsore days in La La Land.

Las Vegas set out in the Nevada Desert, famous for casinos, amazing hotels, bright lights, wedding chapels, fantastic free shows and gambling debts, lived up to everything we had heard and read about. It is August and the temperature ranged between 41c to 44c and we spent our days and evenings wandering up and down the strip taking in the sights.

Las Vegas by day and by night it is amazing.

The hotels are huge and the casino is always located on the ground floor. To get to your room or the registration desk means a walk through the gaming area.

The casino areas are huge and night and day meld into one.

We spent our days walking from one hotel to the other enjoying the amazing décor and the WOW!! factor and the reality of the gambling losses that pay for all of this.

New York – New York

Our 1st Hotel. For the first two days we stayed at the Southern end of Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip) on the 37^th floor in the Empire State Building of the New York New York Casino Hotel.

The façade at New York-New York is based on Manhattan's skyline with twelve skyscrapers about one-third of their actual size. There is a half size replica of the Statue of Liberty out front and you can wander through the village and imagine you are in the Big Apple.

Excalibur Hotel

The magic of medieval times and the mythical days of King Arthur.

MGM Grand
The MGM Lion stands proud at the entrance.

The grand pool complex consists of 6.6 acres of swimming pools, whirlpools and a lazy river. Where does all that water come from? The evaporation rate loss must be enormous.

The Luxor
Why visit Egypt? It is all here.

Paris Las Vegas.
The 50 story replica of the Eiffel Tower and below, Paris the City of Love and Light. Here there are replicas of the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, Paris Opera House and street scenes.

The gaming hall. Is it night or day outside. Its hard to tell because the ceiling changes

every few hours.

Wandering through the streets of Paris

AWAY FROM THE STRIP

If walking gets too hot or tiring a bus ticket for 24 hours costs around $7. We took the bus off the strip to see the other side of Vegas. The housing extends for kilometres and there are a lot more casinos.

Plenty of Wedding Chapels. Though it beats me as to why it has such appeal.

Out here is the original Las Vegas . The night lights make it look better.

Our 2nd Hotel
We have moved to the Northern end of the Strip to Treasure Island so we can look around without walking the entire length of the Strip. OH !! my aching feet. Another day of walking. The temperature is 44c but the inside of the buildings is cool.

The Pool area is fabulous but it means a walk through the hotel lobby to reach it so my yellow polka dot bikini didn’t get wet.

THE NIGHT SHOWS

There are fantastic shows in every hotel featuring famous performers at a cost to suit. We spent our time going to the free shows.

About every hour from around 6pm to midnight many of the hotels have shows out front. We spent each evenings wandering along to see them.

Treasure Island
The entertainment every night is a Pirate Show. This is the crowd gathering for the early show taken from our room.

Circus Circus

This hotel is geared to the family with a five-acre theme park where you can hop on the Canyon Blaster, a double-loop, double-corkscrew roller coaster and many more.

There is also a merry go round full of gaming machines for the young at heart

Cirque du soleil also puts on mini performances for the family in the midway.

The Bellagio

is the Las Vegas version of Lake Como in Italy. Fountains are choreographed to music on a huge lake and huge crowds gathered here each night.

The Venetian
The city of Venice has been recreated with the façade of the Doge’s palace, winding canals, the famous bridges and gondolas and beautiful frescoes.

FREMONT STREET EXPERIENCE

I think the best evening we had was taking the bus to Downtown Las Vegas and enjoying the Fremont Street Experience.

Fremont Street is the location of the original casino’s, the Golden Nugget, The Four Queens, Binion's and Fremont. The street is covered by a special screen ceiling. At night the street is closed to traffic and the Fremont Street Experience featuring Viva Vision, an overhead sound and light show takes place each hour.

While we wait for the Viva Vision show to start we wander around taking in the sights.
The break dancers

The grafitti artist

20 metres up above people fly past on the Zip Lines

The crowd wanders in and out of the casino bars drink in hand so we joined in while we wait for the show to begin.

Then the show begins.

OUR TRIP TO THE GRAND CANYON

The coach trip took us through the Nevada desert visiting the Hoover Dam on the way.

We cross from Nevada into Arizona halfway across the dam.

During the couple of hours passing through the desert we were amazed with the amount of people living out here in caravans and sheds and wondered what they did for living.

We stopped in a small town close to the Grand Canyon for drinks.

Around here the rare Joshua Trees grow everywhere. You wouldn’t want to wander around in the dark and get caught up in the spiky needles.

We arrived in the Grand Canyon National Park and took the bus out to the rim where we had a BBQ lunch overlooking the canyon. The rocks in the canyon appear to change different colours depending on how close you are, very similar to Uluru.

Then it was time to head back to the helipad to wait for our ride down to the bottom of the canyon. We had been told that the helicopters stop going down if it gets too hot. The day before they stopped by 2.00pm and it was nearly that time now so we had our fingers crossed.

Then it was our turn and off we went. It is quite scary running out keeping heads down and hopping in while the blades are whizzing just above.

Soon we are over the canyon and heading down to where we will have a boat ride on the Colorado River. You can just see the river way down at the bottom, a small squiggly line near the cross.

We follow the river for a while then start our descent.

The circle shows where we are going to land and the boats in the water.

We wait for the other helicopter to take off and we land on this small rocky patch ready for another run under the blades. What a noise!!

Next is a climb over the rocks down to the start of the next climb down to the boats.

It is pretty busy down here as a group are just arriving after shooting the rapids. They looked all wet and bedraggled and I was glad we didn’t try that.

The boat ride was very enjoyable and we got another perspective of the canyon from the bottom.

We turn around and head back as our helicopter flies back in.

Another climb back to the helicopter and out to the bus.

We fly out in the opposite direction to coming in and see some more great scenery.

On the way back to Las Vegas we made our rest stop at a very strange road house. It seemed to be surrounded by army trucks. We soon found out what they were advertising !!!!