To Las Vegas!!!

Woke up around 10 or 11 and got all cleaned up. Maile played awesome hostess again and made breakfast which was more than we could have hoped for...resh fruit...ahhh reminders of the 'rica :)

After Maile headed out to work we heard from Cookie, who had gone home after night shift and crashed. We decided to head to Coronado ("where San Diegoans go to vacation") to see her for a bit. Got there and chilled for a bit to catch up, so the awesome location of her and the fiancee, Brian's, new place...awesome. Literally 2 blocks from a beach on the bay overlooking San Diego and on an island with the opposite side on the ocean. The life. Sara gets married in two weeks. Time flies.

Finally, we were on our way to Vegas, after searching out and finding Salvation Army in search of a pot for cooking on our camping nights and being turned away at the gated doors only to realize it is Sunday and they are not open. Ug. Oh well. We were on our way to Vegas!!!

Tried to meet up with Garrett but he had family stuff so that didn't work out. We watched the temperature rise up over 100 degrees...I've decided that when it gets past about 80...the temperature gage of my body just reads "hot."

We stopped at some point to change drivers...typical that we would find a Starbucks at our first exit turn. Upon entering, after taking a good 20 minutes or so to get out of our overpacked car, we encountered the happy-go-lucky Starbucks baristas ready to serve...and apparently we were so pathetic looking AND sounding (after discussing the fact that we were going to have to share the 2 remaining hamburgers from last night between three of us and that we would "work it out") the manager offered us a bag of free bagels, donuts, and apple fritters. Wow. We must really be in bad shape! We gratefully took the bag and headed off into the sunset to continue our journey.

Got to Las Vegas around 9 I think...clearly in the dark, and with all of the lights in their glory. The most prominent, at least to me, seemed to be the pyramid. I still don't know what it was called. It's made of black glass and the point streams a beam of light skyward. A definitive "look at me" icon, as is the rest of the strip.

We got settled in at the hotel and showered after a long, hot day in the car and headed out around 10 only to return at 10:15 because my Costa-Rica-fied brain has forgotten what "being ID-ed" means. Back on track, we headed down Tropicana to New York, New York...it's almost like being home...but not...at all. I will admit, though, the entire scene is pretty incredible and getting a job designing such fun and imaginative projects as casinos/ hotels/ shops/ restaurants/ etc. with whatever goofy theme you can dream up might be the opportunity of a lifetime.

We walked up the street to the pyramid, alongside old couples as well as 9 year old girls...hat a strange place this is. The truth is, the casinos, while definitely lit up inside, are not what I would call daylight-reminiscent in the least. They are actually rather dreary and draining if you ask me because the only diversity is not in the natural shadow caused by your typical lighting fixtures, but in the colors and flashing and noise of machines. AND! The nickel machines??? They don't even exist...well, not really. You don't get to play with straight up coins, and most of the machines don't even have the pull handles but are solely push buttons so that aside from becoming a zombie-head....your body could also deteriorate easily from lack of stimulation and/or blood flow. I played $5 and lost it within one minute of my time...that is just not my idea of fun and after livin in a place where the average pay is only 300 dollars per month I felt royally unjust in wasting money that way. At least on the cruise to the bahamas I was entertained on $20 for hours a the quarter-game which deals more with skill and coordination than just pure luck...I do enjoy the people watching, however, and the designs are just cool. The bars are all reallly unique and I guess they have to be in order to compete with one another and be memorable enough to have people keep coming back.

We left that casino and headed down the strip to take in the myriad of themed casino-resorts, lights, and people. Talk about sensory overload! But it was, in all reality, a really awesome experience. From racing up and down the multiple stairways of street crossways to staring endlessly at interesting buildings, to traveling the world by simply walking through a doorway...Las Vegas lived up to the myths. The one myth that I'm happy to say I did not encounter the truth of, however, was its dirtiness. I really felt like, aside from the slapping cards of the naked women in the hands of men just trying to make a living, the streets and casinos were clean and the only drunkenness that I really witnessed were those brave enough to jump on stage for karaoke, which was enough entertainment to last me the entire night!

We lost track of time, as people are wont to do in a place this magically different from home, and ended up back at the Wild Wild West, sore feet and all, around 4am. We had breakfast at Denny's and it's now 5am and definitely time to sleep. We're off to the Grand Canyon tomorrow. This is unbelievably surreal.