Vegetating in Vegas - NOT!!!

Last night, we had dinner at an awesome casino named Silverton. It's a huge casino off The Strip. It does not look particularly auspicious from the outside, but inside, what a treat awaited us!! As we entered the casino, what greeted us was not the unending "one-armed bandits" as in most casinos but instead there are breathtakingly beautiful indoor waterfalls, and a HUGE circular aquarium with a kaleidoscope of fish - and that was just a part of what took our breath away! Silverton has an outdoorsy, hunting lodge feel to it - so it is no surprise that a part of the casino compriss of Bass Pro Shops with its fabulous decor of outdoor settings from floor to ceiling - deer standing on cliffs, a family of moose looking incredibly real (see photo). Ralph and I ooh'ed and aah'ed as we walked through the store with the extensive wild life displays. Of course, there is an actual casino which we had to walk through to get to the buffet - which is one of the better buffets I've been to at Vegas, by the way. After dinner, we returned to our RV at the Oasis. I stayed up to get this blog started, and Ralph decided to turn in as he truly was exhausted from the long drive. Ralph and I slept like babies and we both woke up totally refreshed. We needed to do some grocery shopping to stock up for the next week or so as we will be at Bryce Canyon five days with very little in the way of towns. I prepared a lunch of roasted chicken strips on a bed of mixed greens, tomatoes, diced celery, feta cheese and olives, with a raspberry viniagrette dressing. Delicious! We read, answered e-mail, and generally rested in the early afternoon. Then we showered, and went out for dinner at The Orleans Casino. I was misled as I thought the French Market Buffet would be actually French food - boy , was I wrong!!! There was everything BUT French food - Mexican, Mongolian, Bar-b-que, Chinese, and Italian! And none of it came close to the quality of food we had had the night before at the Silverton. The good thing is Ralph played with the one-arm bandits and won enough to pay for our dinners! We had considered going to a late show but decided to call it a night as we will be on the road again tomorrow. We did watch the Big Bang Theory (funny TV sit com if you've never seen it). I am going to try to upload pix of Vegas on the blog - hope it works! My next entry will be from Bryce Canyon in Utah if we have a good wi-fi connection!

A Long Day on the Road - Benson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV

We have wi-fi here in Vegas so I can FINALLY get our travel blog started! Will upload pix tomorrow as I am getting a late start tonight. We drove 550 miles today - a crazy way to begin an RV trip. Actually, on the first day - yesterday - we drove to Benson, AZ (226 miles) so we've already driven nearly 800 miles! Poor Ralph - he's exhausted and already in bed! He does ALL the driving - my job is to keep him awake and entertained! : )

Let me back up a bit...we left El Paso on Tuesday (was it just yesterday?) at 9 a.m. and drove through western NM to AZ. We arrived in Benson, AZ around 3 p.m. at the Butterfield Trail RV Park. Not a place we plan to return to as it is situated next to a railway crossing, and trains blasted their train whistles throughout the night so a restful night, it wasn't! Friends of ours had just stayed there (Kathy and Jim) a month or so before us and had mentioned it as a good place to stay on their travel blog. I must have missed the entry that mentioned the train whistles!

We woke early this morning to get an early start for what we knew would be a marathon day of driving - the longest on this entire trip. We left at about 6:30 a.m. and as we approached Tucson, I mentioned how neat it would be to find our favorite breakfast place, Cracker Barrel, and a few minutes later, my wish came true - oh, happy day! After eating a hearty country-style breakfast (we did skip the grits and biscuits and gravy, but the scrambled eggs w/cheese, hashbrowns and fried apples are the BEST!). We left Tucson and drove up to Casa Grande, and then caught I-40 (I think) to Blythe, CA where we then headed north on Highway 95 (Route 66) to Vegas via Needles, CA. This added mileage but we were able to avoid Phoenix and the roads were fairly easy to drive. Keep in mind that we are pulling a 30 foot "monstrosity" behind us so the type of roads, the amount of traffic, and avoiding large cities if at all possible, weigh in significantly as we plan our itinerary. On the other hand, Ralph drove up the Alaskan Highway - both going and coming - in the summer of 2007 so he's not an un-seasoned driver - and, yes, he was also pulling our Fifth Wheel behind him! Yikes!

We were more than happy to climb that last hill (we did have a few more ascending roads and dips than we expected as we got closer to Nevada) and see Las Vegas on the other side at about 4:30 p.m. today! When Ralph worked for the US Dept of Energy, he had meetings in Vegas fairly often so knows the city quite well. He found Oasis RV Resort fairly easily and this is where we are now settled in for the next two nights. The Resort is definitely upscale - an entrance lined with palm trees lit up with lights, a beautiful clubhouse with its own restaurant and casino, immaculately maintained park, play areas which include an adult pool w/a hot tub, and a separate "family pool". Tonight, we had dinner at the Silverton Casino and Lodge - which is Ralph's favorite -and it happened to be just a few blocks from our RV resort. I will spend more time tomorrow describing this "feast for eyes" (w/pics, of course!) -it is truly like no other casino I have ever been to!

For now, I need to bid everyone a "good night"....it's been a very long day!! We actually traveled through THREE states today - Arizona, California, and Nevada....no wonder we're exhausted!