Vegas, baby! Yeah!

The weekend after Big Sur I took a trip to Vegas to meet up with all my New Mexico friends. Our good friend Scott Gunn is leaving on May 30 for Guyana, where he will spend 2 years working for the Peace Corps. As a result, we wanted to have one last big blast together in the City of Sin.

This was my first time in Vegas as an "adult". I have been plenty of times before, but was never old enough to gamble or drink. So, like most twenty-somethings in Vegas for their "first time", I lost hundreds of dollars in the casinos and boozed it up for three days straight. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But, the penny slots did do their best at cleaning me out, and I did have my share of free drinks while playing video poker at the bar. They hand drinks out like candy there (NOTE: except for the Venetian where they charged me EIGHT DOLLARS for a Corona!), and do their best to make you forget that the real world exists outside the casino doors. You can go into a casino one minute all chipper and fresh faced with a wallet full of $$, and then realize the next minute that it's 5am, you've blown through your cash, you haven't eaten in hours, and you've inhaled enough second hand smoke to cause emphysema in an eight year old.

But enough about that, let's get to the pictures


We stayed at the Plaza on the old strip. I have to say, I think I liked the old strip better than the new strip. It's a lot more laid back, and they don't charge you and arm and a leg for drinks.


It was very old school, however, and some of their amenities could use some work. For example, take their pool. It was a little more ghetto than fabulous.


The view from my chair...

There were cigarette butts and beers cans floating in the pool, and to top it all off I was swimming and a latex glove - leftover from god knows what activities - wrapped itself around my leg. Blech!

So, here are a few pictures of everyone running around Vegas. This picture is at like 3am, when the guys decided they would try to see how many grown men they could piggyback on one person. Gunn was the guinea pig.


After hours of wasted money on slot machines and craps, we were trying to decide what to do next. We walked by the Glitter Gulch, and decided to take a random detour and see what wonders it had to offer.

It was my first time in a strip club. It was entertaining, but the novelty wears off pretty fast. We didn't stay long.

Here is a pic of most of the group in front of a fountain in the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace.

I am the one in a head lock. Left to right: Kep, Gunn, Kristin, Adam, Me, Brian.

Here's an up-close-and-personal shot of me and Kristin. I didn't realize I had the camera zoomed all the way in when I took the picture. Needless to say this was after a couple of drinks. :)


When we weren't outside causing trouble, we were inside winning the big bucks at the Star Wars penny slots. This game paid out the best of all the slot machines we played all weekend, so we hit it up often.


For some final pictures - here are some of the prettier shots I took over the weekend. My new digital camera is AWESOME.

Bellagio water show



Inside Caesar's Palace


Paris, Paris and the moon



So that highlights the Vegas weekend. It was a great weekend, but I can see why they say more than a weekend in Vegas is too much. I was more than ready to head home after three days.

Stay tuned for pics from my next adventure, a trip to Reno and Tahoe!