My cousin Felicia turned the big 4-0 last month. For her birthday, a bunch of us Lauritsens went out to Fabulous Las Vegas to celebrate her milestone! My mom, Brad and I stayed four days & three nights at the Freemont Casino & Hotel. Other family members stayed at the Golden Nugget & The Main Street Station. All of which are located near each other downtown. We took in many sights and had lots of laughs.
We arrived in Las Vegas on a Tuesday at 8:30 am. We took a shuttle downtown, checked into our hotel and then decided to get something to eat. A passerby suggested eating at the Main Street Station Buffet.
We made the 3-4 block trek down to the buffet only to find out that they were just closing down their breakfast buffet and would re-open in a half an hour. We then bellied up to the bar and all ordered a Bloody Mary...even my mom got one! We kept telling her, "It's Vegas" or "It's 5 o'clock somewhere." She's such a good sport. We gambled a little bit until the buffet re-opened. This was actually a pretty good buffet and the price wasn't too bad either (under $10).
After breakfast, we headed back to our hotel area. Just as we were arriving back at the Freemont, we got a call from my cousin Ben telling us that his mom & dad had arrived and they were all at the Main Street Station (the place where we just came from eating breakfast). So, back we went...and spent a majority of the day gambling here until Felicia and her friend arrived.
We all toured downtown together and then gambled a bunch. My mom and I enjoyed playing the "Wheel of Fortune" slots until I showed her the "Elvis" slot machines. We had a good time getting Elvis to sing. My Mom always enjoys hearing old Elvis songs and likes to get her toes tapping.
On Wednesday, we drove about an hour outside of Vegas to a National Park called "The Valley of Fire." The VOF gets its name from red sandstone formations, formed by great shifting sand dunes during the dinosaur age...150 million years ago. The first stop was the Bee Hive Rocks. When we got out of the car, there was an older lady running towards the road. We all thought she was chasing a tumble weed, but it turned out the tumble weed was her wig!!! What a great laugh!
There were different rock formations. Our first hike was to the Mouse's Tank. The Petroglyphs were pretty cool on the way.
When we returned back to Vegas that evening, we met for dinner and then took a bus down to the Strip to see the Fountain Show at the Bellagio. We were waiting for the show to begin and then Ben found out that the Bellagio cancelled the show due to high winds. We got some sightseeing in with my cousin Ben anyway. We had fun watching a random guy play craps at the Bellagio. This guy had thousands of dollars and just kept winning.
Ben works at the Stratosphere and was able to get us up into the Sky Bar for FREE! It pays to have connections! :) We got a drink up there and took in the most amazing view of the whole city. After that, we decided to take the bus to the pawn shop where "Pawn Stars" is filmed. However, by the time we got to this location, it was 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning and let's just say it wasn't the nicest neighborhood in Vegas. The bus driver told us it was about two blocks from the bus stop. We decided to wait and go in the morning. Ben told us that it gets pretty crowded during the day. When we drove by the next day, there was a line about two blocks long waiting to get inside. We never did get to stop there. Oh well.
Thursday we toured The Strip with Felicia and her friends. Our first stop was the Wax Museum. However, it was closed until 6:30 pm. So we took a walk inside the Venetian. What a beautiful hotel! We then walked down to the Cosmopolitan. I think this is where we got separated from our group. We decided to walk back to the Bellagio to watch the fountains. These are always fun to watch - they put on a good show.
After the fountains we hopped back on the bus to the end of the strip where the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign is located. Only...the bus doesn't go to the sign. Its farthest drop off is Mandalay Bay...where you hear the words come over the loud speaker, "This is the last stop. All passengers must exit the bus." We asked the bus driver where the sign was located, etc. She told us it was located straight ahead and up three stop lights. Well, these three stop lights/blocks are not like the usual blocks that you see in rural Monte or Mpls. These were GINORMOUS blocks and it felt like we were never going to get there. But, we finally made it (blisters, screaming, laughing and everything else). There's not anything else to do here, but take a picture...yep, it's just a dumb sign, but great for memories!
We still had the dreaded walk back to Mandalay Bay. I figured that a taxi would come by at some point, but not a single one came near us. We eventually made it back to Mandalay Bay and decided to walk inside to rest, etc. This is where the start of our $1 poker chips began for my brother Scott. He had asked that we bring him back some souvenirs. We ended up walking into a bunch of casinos on the strip and getting a dollar chip from each one...this took us 7 hours. We had walked so much this day that we all had blisters on our feet. I think we came home with 19 chips for him and 6 blisters for us. We still got to see a lot of stuff though. It was fun, but tiresome.
We kept an eye to the clock because we were going to meet our group back at the Wax Museum at 6:30. This museum is pretty good. Most of the wax figures look just like the celebrities...it's kinda creepy. My favorite was Johnny Depp. But the ultimate favorite part of the museum was the horror house. I'm not quite sure what this had to do with the wax museum, but it was well worth the pretty penny that we paid to get into this place. I arranged to have my mom as the first person in line (because I knew she was probably the weakest person in our group). We started out in a single file line (my mom, me, Brad, Felicia & Steve). The doors opened into a very dark room and you never knew what each room was going to bring or where a person was going to jump out of next. As we were winding through these rooms, we passed through these plastic sheets (like a meet locker). The room was pitch black and I was trying to get my mom to keep walking, but she kept shuffling her feet. We were all standing inside this dark room when all of a sudden a flash of white light came on and a man/zombie was standing about an inch from my mom's nose. My mom lost it and started screaming and then fell to the ground. It was so dark in there and I didn't know if she was okay, but all I could do was laugh. She was limp and I thought she had a heart attack, but she was just scared out of her mind. It was the best laugh ever! She laughed about it after we got out of there. We were all doubled over in laughter. We then headed back downtown for the night.
I was down on my luck and put my last $20 into a "Red Hot Triple Double 7s" penny slot at The Fitzgerald on our final evening in Vegas. I started out being a wimp and only placed a minimum bet (9x1). I kept winning at this machine, so I upped my bet to 9x20 = $1.80. After a couple of hours of the max bet, I ended up cashing out $208. None of us came home with the big bucks, but I did come home with money still in my pocket and lots of great, wonderful memories! Let's do it again for my 40th!
The only shot I will ever make against Shaq!
