It's The Little Things

In the days after I posted this first blog, I realized I was leaving out some of the small, but crucial details of our first few minutes in Las Vegas.

Our adventure really began much before we even stepped foot in Nevada.

We got to the airport in Detroit and checked in our bags. We were about to go through the security check point when the man tells us that we can't go through with beverages. I had a Fiji water and Booty had a Mountain Dew. Our choices were to drink them or throw them away. I was not about to throw away a perfectly good, full, unopened bottle of $1.50 water. And she was not about to waste a perfectly good Mountain Dew. So we stepped out of line and took 5-10 minutes to chug our drinks. We got back in line and the first thing the security guy said to us when he saw us again was, jokingly "Bathrooms are closed!" Clearly he had experience with people downing their drinks before going through the check point.

The first half of our flight to Las Vegas included a plane change in Minneapolis. I know this seems kind of dumb to go north when we are trying to get south, but the tickets were cheap. Anyway, we got to sit next to each other on the flight to Minneapolis, but on the way to Vegas, we were seated about 7 or 8 rows apart; 5 numerically speaking, but if you include the bathroom, we were a long way away from each other. We were both pretty upset. This was our first major endeavor together and we didn't even get to experience it together. Luckily, we both ended up sitting next to some very nice people. Which was a good thing for me since the turbulence on landing made me utilize that special little paper bag that they give you.

Anyhoo, we get off the plane in Las Vegas, successfully navigate our way to baggage claim and then on to the shuttle for the car rental place. We stepped off the shuttle at the rental car place and we both just kind of looked at each other, smiled and started laughing. I looked at her and said "We are adults now. We are in Vegas...by ourselves!!"

So we pick up our rental car and head out to Sue's house. We weren't in the rental car for more than 10 minutes when we almost get into an accident! I think we were going about 45 or 50 when suddenly everyone in front of us hits their brakes. Booty hits the brakes...and nothing! The car keeps going! We are careening down the highway towards the back end of this other car and we are just sliding on the pavement. Luckily she swerved at the last minute and we avoided anything major, but it still freaked us out. How much would that have sucked to have been in Las Vegas only a matter of minutes to get into a major accident..with a RENTAL car! P.S. Cobalts are a piece of crap. We referred to it as the go-kart all week.

We had gotten directions from Sue and from the lady at the car rental place because the car rental lady told us that Sue's directions were kind of the long way around and "this" way would be much faster. Well, that was all well and good except for one thing. We were looking for this road called Amigo. We find it according to the car rental ladies directions, but can't find Sue's house. We call Sue; she has no idea where we are. We call Mike-Mike. (It's our personal version of Tom-Tom. A friend of ours has GPS on his cell phone.) So we have Sue on one cell phone talking to Booty. I am on my cell phone conferring with Mike-Mike. We finally figure out how to get to Sue's house. We have spent an hour or more driving around in circles looking for her house. When we get there, we find out what the problem was. We were on the right "Amigo", but there was construction so the street didn't go through, we had to come around and get to Sue's house from the other side. If the street hadn't been full of rubble, we could have easily gotten to Sue's house and saved ourselves a LOT of time!

All in all though, even our first few hours in Vegas were full of excitement. And we still had the rest of the week to go!


BTW..I am so glad this post was still here! I started writing on the 14th of June, but I hit some button which shut the internet down and I thought I had lost everything!

Booty and Kelly's Excellent Las Vegas Adventure

Day 1: April 26



Walked around, took in all the lights and sounds and surveyed the strip.


Visited the Titanic Exhibit at the Tropicana.

Day 2: April 27

Parked at The Wynn and walked through the hotel. Then went to the Fashion Show Mall and went to the Quicksilver/Roxy and Skechers stores. We spent a lot of time there. We joked that only we could go all the way to Vegas and spend 3 hours in a mall!


The plan was to make it to Caesar's Palace, The Bellagio, The Mirage and The Venetian before we headed down to the south end of the strip for the Bodies Exhibit at the Tropicana. (It's also going on at the Detroit Science Center until the end of this month.)

Anyhoo, then after Bodies, we planned to go back to the north end of the strip to go to Paris and see the Fountain at the Bellagio and the Volcano at the Mirage at night.

Well, we made it as far at the Mirage. We walked through the hotel and saw their indoor tropical rainforest, and the aquarium behind the front desk and then headed to Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat.







We made it to the Bodies Exhibit, but after that we were both exhausted, our feet hurt and we were starving. We walked around trying to decide where to eat when we came upon the buffet at the Luxor. It was $20, but it was worth it just to finally sit down and eat. It wasn't a bad buffet either.




Day 3: April 28

We headed off to the Atmoic Testing Museum. That was really interesting and there was a ton of stuff to look at and read, but we had to give up trying to read everything since it was making us sleepy. That 3 hour time difference was killing us.

From there we went to the planetarium at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

Then we headed back to Sue's house for a little nap before we had to be at the Greek Isles Casino for the Haunted Vegas Tour. This was a pretty cool bus tour of Las Vegas where they told you about some of the hauntings and ghosts around Las Vegas, including a story about an HIV positive prostitute that jumped to her death inside the Luxor and splattered all over the buffet. That was a lovely bit of knowledge to acquire since we had just eaten there the night before. Luckily the story has a semi-happy ending: the buffet we had eaten at was not the same said buffet in the story. After the incident, they moved the buffet to the opposite side of the casino. Thank GOD!!

Anyway, moving on, I even managed to capture a few orbs on camera.

At first I didn't think I was catching anything while others on the tour were, so I was exstatic to find some in my pictures. When I got home and starting looking more closely, I found TONS of them, but I am only going to post a couple of pictures with the more obvious ones.

(For anyone who didn't know, you can click on any of the pictures in this posting to view a larger image.)

The orb in this picture is right above the dude in the green shirt's head.


This orb is next to the tree trunk, to the right of the picnic table and just below the bottom branches.


And this one is located near the ground, kind of in the grass right next to the guy who is standing next to the tree.


We also went to the Flamingo where supposedly Bugsy Segal haunts. I didn't get anything there, but a nice shot of this memorial to him.


Oh, and we passed the house that Redd Foxx haunts, the hotel where David Strickland (from Suddenly Susan) - and somebody else famous whose name eludes me right now - killed themselves and the pole on the street corner where Tupac got shot and Shug Night's old house where he supposedly haunts. We also passed the building where all these celebs were cremated. All I got was this blurry picture of the pole out the bus window. Booty and I were going to back another night so I could get a better picture, but we never made it.


We were going to try and go to a club afterward, but my shoes had torn up my feet and Booty was tired, so we decided to pack it in for the night and go to a club the next day.


Well, that's all for today. I will fill you in on the rest of the trip in a day or two.

STILL TO COME: Crazy Horse, Zumanity, Fremont Street and more!