Trip 2005 - Vegas Round 1

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Las Vegas does things to keep the people happy when they are not winning money. Most often, these things need to be free because people like me loose all of their money and have no choice but to stick around and wait for the rest of their party to finish wining so that they can go home. Luckily, Vegas caters to all sorts of people. Almost every casino offers some cool show or attraction that draws the people in. The Mirage and Treasure Island have nightly free shows, both of which we checked out. The Volcano at the Mirage has been "entertaining" guests nightly from 7pm until midnight every day since 1989. Red water shoots through the air and fire burns into the night sky. It was cool enough, but only for a couple seconds. A few minutes was just enough. After 5 minutes of fake eruption, the volcano goes dormant, and they play fake animal sounds through cleverly placed speakers. We then walked over to arguably the greatest casino ever, Treasure Island, because they had a moat and pirate ships out in front of the building. This dude (in the picture on the right) must have been cleaning the moat and removing the bodies of the landlubbers who were forced to walk the plank. 

There's not too much in this world that is better than pirates. Name another race/organization of people that is cooler and I will buy you an Orange Julius. I could've spent the entire evening outside of the Island, just admiring the setup. When I become rich, I will model my summer home after this, complete with a lagoon, scurvy pirates, canons, parrots, dirty pirate hookers and a full fledged working pirate ship. I would be the talk of the town for sure.

My Dad and Kathy picked me up from the airport and we immediately drove to the strip. We had the entire day to spend in Vegas before we headed out to spend the night in Zion National Park in Utah. This was my chance to get most of my gambling out of the way before the kids came out. As you may or may not know, the kids (Jenny, Tim and Sarah) are all under 21, and cannot legally gamble in Vegas. I figured that I could lose enough money before they came out so that I wouldn't feel like playing anymore. Turns out that I was right. We stopped first at the Mirage, where we saw one of Seigfreid and Roy's white tigers, and checked out the exteriors of several nearby casinos. Somewhere along the way, we ate a nice buffet (albeit overpriced, but still delicious), gambled some money away, and saw the sights of Vegas. My favorite part of the evening was in one of the smaller casinos, where I played a 1 cent slot machine that was modeled after the Star Wars universe. For instance, when you got 3 or more Chewbaccas in a row, he comes to life and screams his mighty Chewbacca roar. This would be the beginning of a long trip for the others as I replicated that Chewbacca roar whenever the opportunity presented itself.  Soon, day became night and we went to see some cool shows.