Nevada, Las Vegas: Brightly Lit Metropolis in the Desert

The next stop after visiting the beautiful Zion National Park in southwestern Utah was a much-anticipated destination of ours during our road trip across the southwestern part of the United States. Las Vegas was a favourite city of ours prior to the trip we took to the US this summer, which made up one part of an entire year of travelling around the world, but it was originally not part of our scheduled itinerary. Instead, we had planned on driving through northern Nevada into northern California to check out Yosemite National Park before driving south to Death Valley National Park.

As our road trip progressed, we determined that Vegas was a must-see place for us and we changed our route, thus heading directly to southern California after Las Vegas and skipping out on Yosemite so we could spend several days in Las Vegas. Looking back, we could have fit Yosemite into our schedule as well, albeit we would have been rushed, and we would have probably saved more money than we spent, but we had a great time in Vegas anyway, as you will read below.

We spent many hours in various casinos, taking in the atmosphere - the flashing lights, continuously ringing bells and huge variety of people playing games

With the large Nevada city being situated in the middle of the desert, we decided to try and find some place nice, but cheap, where we could stay for a few days and enjoy the sun by lazing outside at a swimming pool. Lastminute.com had an excellent deal on a room at The Tropicana Resort and Casino that we couldn't pass up. Soon after logging into the website, we had purchased four nights of accommodation there for the low price of $50, or £25, per night. The hotel was located right on Las Vegas' famous "The Strip" and, even though it was a bit outdated (from the 1970s), there was a large pool and spacious rooms on offer. For budget travellers, we knew that we would soon be living the life of luxury, for a few days, at least.

To get to the desert city, we left Zion in the late afternoon, heading southwest along Interstate 15. When we looked at our trusty Rand-McNally USA Road Atlas to plan our route, we noticed something called the Joshua Tree Natural National Landmark not too far out of our way, on a small highway just off the interstate. The landmark was located between the towns of Santa Clara (Utah) and Littlefield (Arizona), and we wanted to see what was special about the place by checking it out. Kyle thought he knew what a joshua tree was and told Dan that it was one of those trees that looked like it was growing upside down. All the while during our drive to the landmark, we kept our eyes peeled for the "special" tree.

Beautiful mountain scenery continued to unfold in front of us as we drove towards Santa Clara and Utah's state line. The town was a bit of an anomaly in the desert, as there was not much around it for many miles. We decided a snack was in order when we made it to the town of St. George, so we stopped at a Utah fast food drive-thru chain called Iceberg. Since it was very hot outside, we opted to order a couple of milkshakes, but we weren't that hungry and ordered tiny sized ones. In keeping with the theme, though, we went ahead and ordered a junior cheeseburger and small portion of onion rings to share, just to get a little food in our systems before driving further and to Joshua Tree Natural National Landmark.

The food total was $15, around £7, and when the waitress handed us everything through the drive-thru window, we were shocked by the "tiny" sized milkshakes and the "junior" cheeseburger, even though we should have realised from the cost of the food. They were both enormous and we immediately checked with the waitress to make sure we had the right sizes. She confirmed that they were indeed the correct portions and stated that the next larger sized milkshake was three inches taller than the ones we had been given! Shocked, we pulled over to the side of Iceberg to try and eat all of the food. The milkshakes ended up being really heavy, more like ice cream with toppings mixed into it; Dan had one with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which was much tastier than the one that Kyle had with Oreo cookies.

The junior burger was bigger than a Quarter Pounder burger at McDonald's, so you can imagine our surprise when the box it was served in had "junior" printed on each side. Also, the small onion rings order had at least twenty large pieces, which must have been genetically modified, since they were bigger than any onion slices either of us had ever seen. Needless to say, we couldn't finish all of the food since we'd just expected a small snack, and we left the place bewildered and upset that we had wasted some food. We should also mention that we had very sore stomachs from trying to eat as much as possible, which you no doubt think we deserve for not paying closer attention to things.

Upon leaving St. George, "Home of the Gigantic Portions", we saw a sign for a dinosaur footprint exhibit that we thought would be quite interesting to see. We had passed a few places during our road trip over the past few weeks that offered some kind of dinosaur exhibit, but we never bothered to stop. Therefore, we thought that St. George would be a good time to do so; we also liked the fact that the name was the same as that of our English flag, like it was meant to be or something. Who knew? We might have even thought that walking off some of the food we just ate would have been a good idea, too.

It wasn't until we drove several miles out of the way trying to find the dinosaur exhibit that we arrived at it and realised that it was a Sunday evening. We found out that it was Sunday when we pulled up at the front of the museum, which had a very empty parking lot in front of it and was completely dark inside. The huge "Closed" sign hanging on the door was the big hint for us to check the date on our watches and we both did so.

Dan remembered that his watch had busted when he washed and dried it a few days earlier during laundry duty, so Kyle had to inform him that the day was Sunday. We have to tell you, keeping track of the date and day of the week has not been easy to do this year! We want to tell you one more thing - we just realised that even though the dinosaur exhibit and Iceberg were located in the same town, we actually visited them in reverse order. Since we want to finish our "US and A" travel journal entries, though, so we can move on to our stories about the South Pacific, we aren't going to change the order of the previous few paragraphs. Sorry!

The desert opened up as we left what we now realise was St. George, and we continued for another few miles towards the last real town we would pass for a while, Santa Clara. We both looked forward to seeing the joshua tree that we anticipated would have us both ogling at it in awe and reverence. The landscape along either side of the road was arid and barren, and the soil became a richer brown colour that was striking against the clear blue sky. Eventually, many desert plants started to appear on both sides of us, but most of them seemed dead or just barely alive.

The plants that stood out in our mind were tall and spiky, many of them over 6 feet in height, and they had all grown to different shapes and sizes. There were also many smaller shrub-like cacti dotted around the ground that were equally interesting. Once we had reached the Arizona state line - we had to drive through Arizona for a few miles in order to get to Nevada - we knew that we had passed the Joshua Tree Natural National Landmark that was supposed to be in Utah, and we looked at each other in confusion. We were in the middle of the desert with nothing around us except dirt, and the unusual plants and cacti that we mentioned above, yet we still managed to miss seeing the national landmark. After pulling over and looking around us, we came to the conclusion that the tree no longer existed and probably died from the hot weather.

As it turned out, a few days later we discovered what a joshua tree looked like and, to our astonishment, we realised that we had passed hundreds and hundreds of them during our drive from Santa Clara to Littlefield; joshua trees were the unusual, tall spiky trees that we saw that day. All along, we had been looking out for a single tree (growing upside down - thanks, Kyle!) that we thought would have been gigantic or impressive in some other way than the joshua trees were. We laughed for quite some time when we found out and we still grin whenever we think back to that part of our trip. Oops!

After driving through the Joshua Tree Natural National Landmark, we made our way back onto Interstate 15 and drove through the northwest corner of Arizona before arriving in southern Nevada, our 13th state during our visit to the US. By the time we had crossed the state line at Mesquite, Nevada, the skies were dark and we couldn't see anything else except headlights from other cars driving along the interstate.

As we approached Las Vegas from the darkness of the desert, it was very exciting when we saw a large area of light pollution ahead of us in the distance. The bright lights of the huge sprawling city appeared right in front of us, it was such a refreshing change after driving for so many days in the desert and across desolate parts of the states we had explored; you could call it, in a sense, beautiful. Driving closer to "The Strip" area, we spotted many different casinos coming into view. At that point, we were very eager to arrive at our hotel, unpack, and head down The Strip in order to understand how much the city had changed over the past few years since our last visit in 2003.

Now that we actually made it to Las Vegas, you probably want to know what we did. During our four days there, we took a couple of strolls down The Strip, admiring all of the amazing casinos and hotels, paying particular attention to the new ones that we hadn't seen before. Along the way during one of the strolls, we reluctantly handed over $4 each for a couple of soft drinks from a bar situated right in the middle of the pedestrian walkway. Had we known the price before ordering, we would have held out on our thirst until we found a cheaper option, but we ordered first and then were served before we knew how much they would cost us.

One of the casinos that we were most interested in seeing in Las Vegas was Wynn. It had been under construction when we last visited and it was satisfying to see the final outcome of that project. It was an amazing casino and hotel, beautiful on both the inside and outside with its incredible grandeur. In its casino, we spent time playing Blackjack and Let it Ride, having a little bit of luck, which failed to find us at other casinos. There were additional construction sites on The Strip and we can only assume that more fabulous places were "on the cards" (excuse the pun) in Las Vegas. It would be worthwhile to return again in a few years or earlier, to see further changes with the new buildings being added.

One of our main pastimes in the city, apart from playing games in the casinos, was laying out in the hot summer sunshine at the huge pool that surrounded one of the hotel's towers. Since we were in the desert, the skies were mostly clear every day we were there and the temperature extremely hot. It was wonderful to cool off in the water after spending time reading and dozing in the sunshine. At one side of The Tropicana's swimming pool, we noticed a swim-up Blackjack table that was due to close for the year on our second day there, due to it only being a summer activity offered by the hotel. We had to give the swim-up Blackjack table a go on the first day we used the pool, and we had tons of fun playing the game in our swimsuits, half submerged in the water.

Over the few days that we were in Las Vegas, we spent many hours in various casinos, taking in the atmosphere - the flashing lights, continuously ringing bells and huge variety of people playing games - and split our time between playing slot machines and sitting at table games. At first, we spent more time within The Tropicana's casino because we had signed up for a loyalty card there to try and get freebies such as food or gifts. We soon found out that other casinos were much nicer so we alternated our time at various places.

One of the freebies we were offered was a set of tickets to a couple of shows at The Tropicana. We decided against the free shows, despite actually getting as close to attending as booking the tickets and looking for the auditorium on the day of the show. The show we had booked was a magic show, but we skipped going at the last minute so we could walk to another casino down The Strip. We really couldn't be bothered to attend the magic show because we thought it would likely be cheesy and dull, since it was being performed at The Tropicana. However, there was supposed to be a white tiger in one of the acts, which would have been interesting for us, had we not seen a couple of the rare creatures when we visited a large wild cat refuge near Eureka Springs, Arkansas, earlier in the summer.

Inside all of the casinos we visited, many of the table card dealers were of different nationalities, including a lot of the countries that we visited in Asia at the start of the year. Because of this, we were able to practice speaking the few words that we had picked up during our time in Southeast Asia and China, and that went over as a hit with the people to whom we spoke. Apart from The Tropicana and Wynn, we also played slots and table games at MGM Grand and The Venetian. Our hotel was at a busy end of The Strip and it was an easy walk to all of the other places we wanted to see.

At Kyle's first attempt to play Blackjack in The Venetian casino, Dan was refused to be allowed to stand at the table behind him after the dealer questioned his age and he failed to hand over a valid photo ID or passport; visitors to the casino needed to be over 21 to play or even stand near players sitting at the table. At the time, Dan only had a copy of his passport, which they wouldn't accept, so, in the end, we moved to a different table and had no problems there. Actually, that one time was the only time in Vegas that we had such a problem.

The entire situation was rather pointless and really irked us that the woman couldn't tell that Dan was over 21. The next table we played Blackjack at was much more fun, with a nicer dealer, and we ended up staying there for a couple of hours, chatting all the while with two older couples who were also playing there, one from southern Arizona and the other from Michigan. It was really late that evening and the couples had been drinking all night, so they were pretty amusing as well as fun to talk with while the dealer took all of our money.

At the end of our trip to the city, we agreed that many of the patrons at The Tropicana, especially compared to those in other casinos, were more than a little on the trashy side, except us, of course; with the hotel being one of the cheaper ones along The Strip, it was no surprise. However, it was in a great location and the room was large and clean, serving us well for a four-day stay in the city of bright lights. Anyway, they say that "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", so no one really needs to know that we made our base there. Wait a minute; you now know that we stayed there, so we guess that little point didn't stay in Vegas, after all.

During our time in Vegas, some wins and losses were experienced. Neither of us were the lucky winners that we wanted to be, but there were a few good wins dispersed with the bad losses. For example, we played a Wheel of Fortune slot machine with an enormous Wheel of Fortune wheel, and we were able to gain a spin on it after a few tries on the machine. The wheel landed on the second highest amount, 600x, thus granting us almost $200, or £100, in winnings! We had only put in a few dollars to play the game and won pretty much straight away.

There was another time when we played Let It Ride, a poker table game that we came to really enjoy. Kyle ended up getting three 6s on his first hand of three cards and won almost $200 on that one hand. We won't talk about the losses experienced because they were too numerous, as we expected them to be in Vegas, but at least we didn't touch our travel budget there. We were wise and only spent from a separate pool of money that we had set aside to gamble.

As mentioned, we had both been to Vegas in 2003 for Kyle's 30th birthday, but Dan had come down with a bad case of strep throat (that's the same as tonsillitis for the British people reading this) then, and didn't have as much fun as he could have had, had he not been ill. This time, we were both feeling well and had plenty of time to relax and take in the city's sights and energy. We decided at the end of our four days there that we would definitely want to return for another visit, but we would change, at least, four things about the next trip.

First, we would stay in a nicer hotel, like The Venetian or one of the other new ones on that part of The Strip. Second, we would travel to the city with a bigger budget that would allow us to gamble without feeling completely miserable if we lost any money. Third, we would plan on eating a lot more at many different restaurants, since our travel budget allowed only the consumption of sandwiches, Vienna sausages and other canned food delights (we actually only ate out twice: once at The Tropicana and once at an Italian fast food restaurant inside The Venetian). Fourth, we would absolutely, definitely, positively, assuredly, undoubtedly, unmistakably and unequivocally see a fantastic show, like one of the Cirque du Soleil performances.