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From the Grand Canyon we went to Nevada and drove over Hoover Dam, which is a huge tourist attraction. It took us longer to get across the dam road than it took to drive the 30 miles into Vegas.
We stayed in a nasty hotel (the
Klondike) our first night in Las Vegas, and went out to the big casinos.
They are truly spectacular but the whole area is engulfed in far too much
seething activity for this country girl. Dan hit a couple of decent wins on the slot machines and we were, at one point, nearly $200 up for the night. Of course, we were flat even by the time we went back to the hotel.
It's beastly hot in the desert, 90's or low 100's every day, and we're both quite tired of it. It's a long drive to get to anywhere temperate, and we thank the stars every day for the foresight we had in purchasing a vehicle with air conditioning.
We stayed in Vegas another night, which was a good thing since we got to see the Fremont Street Experience. For those of you who are not familiar with Las Vegas, Fremont Street is in the old downtown section of the city and is home to such classic casinos as the Horseshoe, Lady Luck and Golden Nugget. It is also where those famous neon signs from the movies are located -- the giant cowboy waving his arm and the giant cowgirl swinging her leg.
When the larger theme-park type casinos started being built in the southern end of the city (The Strip), the downtown section suffered the loss of a lot of business. In an effort to attract customers back to their casinos, the businesses pooled their resources and built the "Experience."
Fremont Street is closed to traffic for three city blocks and above this mall they have built a large domed canopy. The canopy is lined with hundreds of thousands of little lights and once each hour after sunset, they display a different experience show. Too amazing to adequately describe, it was like watching a giant movie playing above your head, with mega-surround sound. It was well worth staying another night in a fleabag hotel to see it.
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