Honeymoon Day 8 - Las Vegas

I've never seen as much nothing as we did today driving out to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. Now, of course there are places in the world, in this country even, with much more nothing, but I'm just talking about my personal experience here. But after a few hours of driving through nothing, interupted only by occational Starbucks / Factory Outlet Oasises, we reached Primm Valley, the first set of casinos on the way to vegas and home of Desperado, a very large steel coaster... which is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. DAMMIT! What is it with my luck and closed coasters on this trip. Luckily it's only about 45 minutes from Vegas so we'll go back there when it is open.  After saying a mighty "Pssha!" and giving Buffalo Bill "the hand", we were back on I-15 heading up to Sin City.

For the rest of the week we're staying at Circus Circus, the cheapest hotel on the strip, give or take. We wanted to have cash to spend enjoying shows and rides, since we're not spending much time in the room. I was here in 2001 for CES with "my friend Adam", so it's quite familiar. Some things have changed, mostly restaurants getting renamed. Adam will be disappointed to hear that The Pink Pony is no more, replaced by casinoCAFE. Sorry bud.

After checking in and doing a bit of planning, we headed west from The Strip to track down the only vegan restaurant in the city, Go Raw Cafe. Not as "strictly vegan" as I'd assumed, since they sell honey and bee pollen, but in a city where "Prime Rib Buffet" is king, that can slide. Tracy & I were both very happy with our food, and we splurged to support a good business. We opted for their samplers so we could try out more options. I got the Mexicali Sampler and Tracy got the Italian Sampler. Both were quite good and very filling. We also got some of their "toast", a smoothy for me and a freshly opened young coconut for Tracy. We even picked up some desert to bring back with us, though even now we're not hungry enough to eat them, hours later.

After dropping off our stuff in the room we went off to check out the Midway Arcade at Circus Circus, as well as the performers "under the big top." Once we were out of quarters we wandered outside and walked down to Treasure Island and then back on the opposite side of The Strip. It's quite a walk so I'm glad we did it during the night. It's still warm out even late. Tomorrow night we're going to see Spamalot at the Wynn, and we'll hit a couple of the rides nearby during the day.

Photos of our trip so far can be found here. I also updated my stats at Coaster Counter, I've now been on 84 different coasters. Closing in on the 100 mark!