Viva Las Vegas!

This was my first time in Vegas if you can believe it. My family is big on gambling but when we were younger we always went to Atlantic City, and by the time Vegas was big, I was already out of the house and couldn't take advantage of the free vacations.

The first night we were there we stayed at Luxor. And lucky us, when we got to our room, we found out they hadn't cleaned it. Unmade bed, trash in the garbage cans. Why lucky us, you ask? Because that means we got a pretty nice discount on the room after I complained about it.

Luxor was pretty nice even though the inclinator (not the elevator) made me feel like I was going to puke.

We just walked around that first night and gambled a bit (blackjack for him, Wheel of Fortune slots for me). We also had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe at MGM. It's one of Billy's favorite places to eat (and not for the foor) so we have to go there whenever there is one in the town we're at. Actually, the food was pretty good at this one. Try the sampler appetizer. Yum!

Did I mention how gross it was there? I mean the weather. It was only in the low 100s but it felt like someone's car exhaust was blowing in your face. Thank God for a/c! At least it's not muggy there, but still, pretty nasty.

The next day we stayed at Excalibur in one of their new remodeled rooms. Pretty nice--but unfortunately it was clean when we arrived.

We gambled (I won, gave my money to Billy, which he in turn would play in blackjack and lose. We followed this formula pretty much our whole time in Vegas).

We had lunch at Fatburger. Can you say, best burger ever?? About 800x better than In-N-Out! And we met a nice worker there, Jazzy, who used to live on Noble in Cleveland. A bit of trivia...Willie Anderson of the Bengals owns a few Fatburger franchises.

Then for dinner...oh my god. The Carnival World Buffet at the Rio. I really wanted to do a buffet so I did a ton of research and read that Rio has one of the best ones. We went there at 9:30, found out they close at 10:30 so we had to stuff our faces as fast as possible. The buffet was incredible! They had all of these countries stations: Japanese, Chinese, Italian, American, Creole (okay, not a country), Mexican and a HUGE dessert selection. It was awesome.

You want to know what was not awesome? That there were only two pieces of French Silk pie, my favorite. And I went to grab one and this AWFUL WOMAN cut in front of me and took BOTH pieces. Here she is:

On the last morning in Vegas, we went looking for $5 blackjack tables which is pretty impossible to find. Where did we finally get one? Bellagio of all places. They have a 24/7 $5 blackjack table. Anyway, Billy played, lost a bunch and was down to his last $5 chip. But he stuck with it and basically made another $165. He also had a kickin' hand where we got 2 8s, split them, got another 8, split again, then doubled down. You probably needed to be there to fully appreciate it.

Then that afternoon, we went to Hoover Dam. When you go, make sure you check out the little placard by the escalator to the visitors center. There's a sad tribute to a work dog who died there.

We stayed in a campground, Circle Pines, in Williams, Arizona. We got in around 10:30 at night, so it was hilarious to watch us put up our tent in the dark of night. Also, did you know that it gets FREEZING in some parts of Arizona at night. We didn't bring any heavy clothes and we only had a blanket to sleep with. Needless to say, we did not get a good night's rest. But a great campground nonetheless.

Oh, and I killed a racooon. It was so sad. First, let me say, drivers in Arizona are crazy. It's 75 mph on these twisty, downhill highways, and everyone is going 85, including truckers who are passing you too! Anyway, I'm driving and it my headlights I see this huge thing on it's back with it's legs flailing in the air. And I can't swerve and all you can hear is a crunch. Very awful.

Stay tuned for Grand Canyon next.

Want to see our pictures from Vegas? Click here.