Thursday April 13th 2017

It’s windy today. There are 30mph sustained winds in the area with gusts even higher. I’d thought about going out to the Hoover Dam overlook, but reconsidered because of the wind. I’m not real comfortable with heights without the added possibility of getting blow over the edge of the bridge. Instead I checked out the inside of a few casinos.

Spring mountains to the west of the Las Vegas Valley

I started the day with breakfast from Dunkin Donuts at Sam’s Town Casino. A large coffee and a bagel brought back memories of weekend mornings in my New Hampshire home. The main difference is today I ate my bagel in front of a slot machine instead of in my car driving. After the bagel was consumed I moved on quickly. The trick of this mini casino crawl was not spending a lot on gambling.

The center of the Las Vegas strip

So far I am keeping to my plan of spending less on gambling during the month I’ll be in Nevada than I used to spend on a 5 day trip to Las Vegas. I’ve kept my loses to around 20 dollars a day. Once it’s gone I stop feeding the machines for the day.

The north Las Vegas strip

The second stop of the day was a non gambling stop at the Camping World in Henderson NV. I am still looking for a new tabletop gas grill. This Camping World had a good selection of bigger portable grills, but a very limited selection of tabletop models. I’m not prepared to dedicate more storage space to the grill. I don’t need a large cooking surface. It is only me I’m cooking for.

My third stop on my tour was the Green Valley Ranch Casino. I found nothing new or exciting at this stop. Luckily, I managed to leave with all of my gambling money in tact. The best part of this stop was the view from the top of the parking garage. Most of the valley is visible along with the Spring Mountains to the west. It looks like Mt Charleston still has snow at the top.

The last casino stop for the day was at the Orleans Casino. I’ve stayed at this off strip property many times in the past. Today the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly convention or gathering was getting started. It included a classic car show in the arena parking lot and the half the casino patrons dressed up in forties and fifties era dress. The number of Lucile Ball wigs, Betty Boop outfits, and Rosie the Riveter hair kerchiefs was over the top. The convention part of the gathering was upstairs and the music part started tonight. None of these activities interested me, but the place was packed.

Back at the campsite I now have a neighbor. Up until today, the site next door was empty. These folks are from Canada as are many of the people in the campground. I hope they aren’t staying as long as I am. It would be nice to have the added space again. Tonight they have a visitor that seems to think it was OK to park his car in my site almost in my front door. He is obviously a non camper that thinks this is a parking lot. They had their visitor move before I blew a gasket.