August 8th and 9th-vegas

August 8th and 9th

After my last blog we finished our drive out to vegas arriving at a relatively early time. We brought our stuff into marcus’ house, showered, ate dinner and headed down to the old strip. We had no plans other than to check out the casinos and shops down there and hang out for a little while. The shops turned out to be very cheap so we bought some souvenirs and then went over to the casinos. While we were walking towards the casinos the overhead canopy started having a lightshow, which was pretty awesome.

When we got into the casino we sat down and started playing slot machines. Hans won big right away on one of the first machines we sat at. We didn't really understand how to win or anything but we just kept spinning and hoping for good things to happen. While we were sitting down a waitress came by and asked if we wanted drinks, so of course we couldn’t refuse.

We moved around within the casino and to different casinos because we wanted to continue getting served without tipping waitresses. Were poor. When we left one of the casinos hans realized he forgot his wallet so we hustled back to find the wallet perfectly intact laying at one of the slots we were at. Disaster averted.

We kept playing slot machines and I kept losing my money. I didn't understand. Why was I so unlucky. We stopped at ate dinner at mcdonalds. Yummy. Then we kept playing and kept getting free drinks. I wasn’t so upset that I was losing my money because I was having fun and getting drinks so really it didn't matter. I was considering this to be a very good night. The night was drawing to a close and I was nearly out of money. I kept playing and eventually I was down to 50 cents left. I figured I might as well just play ten lines for five credits each (costs 50 cents). So I did that and the machine started going and when it stopped it started making the win noise. So I was like oh cool maybe ill get a few dollars back. Well it didn't stop counting up until I had 2500 credits. Perfect. 25 bucks on one spin. I immediately cashed out and collected my moneys.

We walked around the strip for a while to let some alcohol wear off. During our walk we were propositioned by hookers and drug dealers alike. “Hey where you boys goin? Need some company?” “No thank you ma’am.” We had to get out of there before we ended up with a disease or seeing a drug deal go bad or something. It’s a pretty shady place to be at 3 in the morning. So we went back to our car and headed out. We both ended the night winning money and getting 5 or 6 free drinks. Not too bad of a night.

The next day was a rather tame day for being in vegas. We didn't wake up until 1 in the afternoon which already set us back in our plans. We followed through on what we were supposed to be doing anyways. We drove out to see hoover dam and lake mead. The dam is a really impressive display of architecture and technology. They were also building a new highway to go around the dam. The new highway has a bridge to cross the gap between two decently sized mountains. The bridge, to me, was as impressive as the dam itself. We headed out after a little bit of hanging out at the dam and found a walmart to do some grocery shopping at. We scored some good deals on soup and other essentials.

After walmart we came back to marcus’ apartment. It was now about 5 oclock. We ate lunch/dinner and hung out for a bit. The rest of our plan was to hang out by the pool and then head down to the strip for the night. We took some beers out to the pool and were pleasantly surprised to see a hot tub off in the corner. We used the hot tub a lot more than the pool through out the evening. After a couple of beers we talked to some of the people in the pool area. We stayed out by the pool for quite a bit of the evening and I think finally came in around 9 or 10. At this point we debated whether or not to go to the strip as we had no way to get there and were pretty tired. After deciding we would just hang out around the apartment for the night, I crashed on the futon mattress, falling asleep before midnight.

Today we are planning to check out Red Rocks national park and hit the new strip for the night because we are leaving vegas tomorrow morning for the grand canyon. Ill let you all know how it goes.