Desert Adventures I - The sights of Las Vegas

Being a geologist is pretty awesome. There are rocks everywhere in the world. You find a reason to study them and you can find yourself off in some rather exotic places. Now I'm a (newly converted) granite person and it just so happens that there's some pretty awesome granites in California. In September I had chance to see some of them in the Sierra Nevada towards the north of the state. My Master's project is looking at some similar ones to the south in the Mojave Desert. So off to I went to the desert in the relatively cool month of December.

My advisor was at a conference in San Francisco the week before I went out so I flew into Las Vegas, we met there and then drove down towards my field site. This allowed for plenty of time for sightseeing and to take in Vegas. And boy is there a lot to take in. The biggest thing that got me was the scale of the place, or rather the lack of a sense of scale.  Vegas is surrounded by mountains on all sides, but you can't really tell how big they are. They could be 200m or 2000m. The only skyscrapers in the city are the casinos. The rest of the city is 1-2 storey buildings. So when you're walking along The Strip and you can see the casino you want to head for, you may think it's only a block away. But 1 block is more like 6 blocks. It takes a long time to walk around. And then the casinos themselves are enormous when you go inside. It's rather easy to get lost, especially if you're just walking aimlessly around like I was.

Excalibur Hotel & Casino. I think Grand Theft Auto did a fab job recreating this.

The Luxor with it's Pyramid, Sphinx and  Obelisk. Naturally I had Dad's flag with me. The irritating thing about getting a photo of this hotel is the ugly monorail that runs right in front of the Sphinx.

Street corner in front of the Excalibur, New York New York to the left MGM Grand off to the right. The scale of these places made getting a decent photo very difficult. This is a stitch of 6 photos.

Taken from Caesar's Palace towards the Eiffel Tower Restaurant and Bally's.

I got to my hotel and dropped my stuff off and then headed straight for The Strip. I had a couple of hours before John flew in so I wanted to keep my sightseeing simple. We were staying at a place 15 minutes walk down Flamingo, which runs perpendicular to The Strip. I rocked up and was greeted by the wonderfully coloured Flamingo casino and the ever so grand Caesar's Palace casino. Walking past all the posh shops I appeared on the street outside the Bellagio, just in time for the famous fountain display. It's the same thing that's in the scene at the end of Ocean's Eleven, and as this is one of my favourite films I was very excited. It didn't matter that I saw it in the middle of the day. It was set to "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Xmas" and despite Vegas looking exactly the same as it does the rest of the year, it didn't take anything away from the wonderfulness of the display.

Bellagio fountains. There was a plaque explaining how they use the water sustainably, despite being in a desert where water resources are poor.

I walked from here southwards down The Strip, taking in the weird and wonderful sights of Sin City. There were lots of characters dressed up on the streets inviting you for photos, such as Mario & Luigi, Iron Man, and a Britney Spears impersonator who was a little outdated. I walked around 2 miles through town and made it to Mandalay Bay, the fabulous  golden hotel near the start of The Strip. My plan was then to walk a little further to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. I knew it was down the road a bit more but as I continued to walk the hotels, casinos and gift shops stopped, and a few particularly creepy motels remained. At that point I chickened out and turned round, citing that I had to get back to the hotel.

Diverted into the MGM Grand due to walkway repairs I naturally got lost in its vastness. The Pacquiao Marquez fight was on that night so the place was buzzing. I came across the MGM lion in a boxing ring wearing a stetson. Of course.

Mandalay Bay in all its glory.

Another natural phenomenon in Vegas, a Harley Davidson restaurant with a bike coming out of it. There was also a Planet Hollywood and TWO Hard Rock Cafes.

I met up with John and his son and we drove round LV during the evening. We headed to Downtown where all the original casinos were. Just missed a photo down Glitter Gulch but this'll do nicely.

Not happy with the disappointment of not finding the sign we drove there for a snap. I would've got one standing in front of it but there were several wedding parties out and I didn't want to interrupt. I'm thinking I should've now...

Now I'm going to skip forward a couple days to describe the return trip to Las Vegas. On the way back we decided to drop in on Lake Mead to see the Hoover Dam. What a disappointment. Driving through the snaky roads to the actual dam road you couldn't see anything of, well very much. The sides of the road were high so you couldn't see any water either side. You could walk around the sight for a small fortune, or get a lift on one of the many helicopters that were doing tours. If you didn't want to get to the dam itself, you had to go through a Homeland Security check. As we had all of our luggage this would've have been a particular hassle. Fed up with the paranoia and stupidity of the situation we found the one car park where you can see anything worthwhile for free. I jumped out with the flag and got some photos in gale force winds and we drove onwards and upwards. At least I briefly popped into Arizona!

Lake Mead on the Colorado River. The white "bath tub line" on the rocks shows how much the water level has dropped some 140ft since it's maximum in 1983.

We headed back to our hotel and then to do some non-casino related LV sightseeing. (The only gambling I did was a wee flutter on some quarter machines where I won some non-redeemable "smile tokens".) We went to the Atomic Testing Museum, where we learnt the history of the Nevada Test Site. It was super interesting and really informative. I would highly recommend for anyone to go. DO NOT bother with the Area 51 exhibition however. What a waste of time that was. Stupid conspiracy theories lit by neon green lights. Urgh.

Next was The Mob Museum. We had tried to go on the first night, however we were informed that the FBI were having their Xmas party in the courtroom, which is the best bit of the exhibition. So eagerly we returned and it was worth the wait. A fantastic 3 storeys full of Mob memorabilia, both from Las Vegas and throughout the US. Could easily spend 3-4 hours there it's so interesting. And they've got a replica Tommy gun you can shoot! The Courtroom exhibition showed videos from the Kefauver Trials in the actual courtroom they used to put away all the mobster's in the 50's. Another must see attraction in Vegas.

The finishing touch to the trip was dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. I had never been to one before so I was mega excited. And quite rightly. Great food, great cocktails, great music. Overall, a bloody great trip.

Happily drinking my Southern Rock cocktail, washing down a brilliant Pulled Pork sandwich. And I got to keep/buy the glass!