Las Vegas Trip
Ever since I was young, my Dad mentioned taking me to Las Vegas when I got older. I've bugged him about it periodically since then and a couple months ago he finally said "let's pick a date." The dates were chosen and the rest is history.
The goal of this trip was to just have fun and enjoy the Vegas area. I'd say we did just that. While we didn't spend any money gambling, we did walk around a lot of the shops and through many casinos.
Edit: the heat was miserable at times, getting up to 116°F (46°C) at times. We happily left the heat in Las Vegas and didn't bring it home.
Thursday
Flying with Delta, our flight departed from Cincinnati (CVG) on a brand new Airbus A321neo to Las Vegas (LAS) around 7:30am Thursday morning.
Arriving around 8:30, the day got started with our rental car - a Tesla Model 3. My father hadn't ever driven a Tesla before, so it was an obvious choice for me to pick. Our hotel check-in at The Strat wasn't until 2pm so we parked at The Bellagio and explored the strip. Before long, we found a building with a 3-story chandelier (featuring a bar on every floor of course), rode a roller coaster, and walked through a handful of shops including the M&M's store. There was so much to do and so many things I didn't even know existed - like a Hershey's store!
Next was check-in time at The Strat. Pictured below is a view from our hotel room facing away from the strip, and a picture from our next stop - Freemont Street.
I found Freemont Street particularly interesting because it seems to be stuck in time - and preserved very well. It's all just so timeless, like nothing there will ever go out of fashion. There were a lot of street performers and great music too!
Friday
Time to venture out! We got breakfast at McDonald's before heading to the Hoover Dam for a tour inside the dam, which was just so incredibly fascinating. I really enjoy learning about the engineering marvels of the world like this one! Estimated to last between 1800-3000 years, Hoover Dam was completed during the Great Depression in 1935 after just 3 years of construction, made of enough concrete to make a 4 foot-wide sidewalk around the equator (700 feet thick at the base!). What's more - the dam is owned and operated by the United States Department of Reclamation who is able to fully operate, maintain, and give tours of the dam without using ANY tax dollars. The dam is also one of only two US government projects of it's scale to ever be completed on time and under budget. There's something to be said for that.
After the tour we were back to the strip where we explored more hotels, casinos and restaurants. We ate dinner on the 107th floor (1,149 feet up!) at Top of The World inside the tower at The Strat with amazing views of the strip.
Saturday
The morning started off with a trip to the pool on the 8th floor, where we were trying to kill some time before our afternoon helicopter tour. I took a picture to show the beautiful background behind the pool area, seen below.
Helicopter tour time! As the day warmed up we were relived to know that the Eurocopter EC130B4 had air conditioning. We got up headed toward the Grand Canyon, where there was a group heading with us for a wedding! What a great scene for it.
The total trip was about 4 hours or so, including transportation to and from our hotel. The pictures shown below just don't do it justice, there really are no words for it to be completely honest.
Sunday
The most relaxed day of the trip I think - we shopped for some souvenirs, rode a tram between hotels, charged up the car, and got to experience the beautiful fountain show at the Bellagio. Later, we ate a delicious dinner at a place called Buffet@Asia before heading to a gay bar called FreeZone. As I suspected, the bar was slow on a Sunday evening so we left after a while without any pictures.
There was also a robotic barista!
Monday
Last day in Vegas! We were planning on doing a scenic drive through the desert and repell off of The Strat tower later, but we ended up finding an unguided fourwheeler company with over 1,600 acres in the middle of nowhere. Their website claimed to be a "just come back in 2 hours" kind of deal, which is really what we wanted versus a guided tour. The property was as far as you could see - and then some.
The fourwheelers were an absolute blast and I may or may not have had too much fun (imagine that!), rolling over my bike, getting some scrapes and a 2nd degree burn in the process.
Winding down in the afternoon (and also very exhausted), we charged up the car one last time, got dinner at a place called The Front Yard, and headed for the airport where we were kindly informed our flight was delayed about an hour. We ended up taking off around 12:30am on Tuesday morning, landing at CVG around at 6:58am following a very turbulent flight due to the incoming low pressure system over the greater Cincinnati area.
