Wednesday, November 08, 2006

4:22 PM Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Today is a lazy day. For me, that’s the very best kind. This is our last day in Quartzsite, Arizona … tomorrow we will continue south to Yuma, only a little over 100 miles, another short, easy day. The thermometer read 85 degrees outside this morning but with the roof air conditioner running and the door open, it was decadently wonderful inside Penny the Pace as I wrote these words earlier. (I would have posted to the blog then but poor Blogger was having a problem.) Wasteful? I always feel a little bit guilty when we do that BUT after seeing the wattage being burned in Las Vegas 24/7, the electricity we use my friends is but a blink of a gnats eye in the overall electric usage in this part of the country.

While we were in Las Vegas, after the worst of our colds had passed, my cousin Buster did his best to show us miles and miles of the newest sights in and around Sin City. The rapid growth and enormous amounts of money being spent for housing are beyond our small town imaginations. Downtown, older casinos are coming down (the Stardust closed while we were there) and new casinos are going up. I heard someone on TV call the abundant construction cranes spread out across the landscape, the “state bird” of Nevada, and had to laugh. Buster took us to the Lake Mead Marina where we saw thousands of wild carp being hand fed popcorn by children at dockside and to Lake Las Vegas where million dollar homes surround the little oasis out in the desert. We learned this is where Celine Dion owns a home and that she flies to work by helicopter at Caesar’s Palace every night.

We went to see the “BODIES” exhibition at the Tropicana Casino. What an experience that was and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Phil was less enthusiastic but managed to find a few exhibits that interested him. The hall was full of children who liked seeing these specimens as much as the adults. I suppose it’s not for everyone but I highly recommend it to anyone even mildly curious about the human body.

To top off our visit, we went to the “Fremont Street Experience” on Sunday night. WOW! Two blocks at the end of Fremont Street have been closed to traffic and renovated into a pedestrian plaza. A huge canopy covers the entire two blocks and after dark they turn off all the lights of the Casinos and for about ten minutes, run a neck-craning spectacular laser show complete with eardrum pounding sound effects and music. A new show plays about every hour and we saw two of them. My cousin told us that downtown Las Vegas was suffering from lack of interest and this is the city father’s attempt to redirect that downward spiral. If the amount of people congregated in that small area is any indication, it’s working.

Here are a few photos I’d like to share with you:

No comments:

Post a Comment