Ahhh, Las Cannabis, er, I mean, Las Vegas. The last time I was on the Las Vegas Strip was on New Year's Eve 2020. It was a rather memorable time, you know, because of the 'Vid.
After competing in the USAYESS Western Regionals Skeet And Trap Championship for three solid days, the kiddos were ready for a bit of a diversion. So, one mom and I hopped in their pickup truck and took the brood downtown to take in the sights.
It was interesting. Very interesting.
Right off the bat, our blood pressures became elevated because of a little man with a suitcase. He jaywalked across all the lanes of traffic and bolted right in front of our friend's F150. She slammed on the brakes and we barely avoided hitting the diminutive dimwit. He didn't even look up. Weird.
Anyway, after figuring out where to park, we all trundled out of the truck and began what became a six mile stroll.
Right off the bat the kids and I noticed the air was nowhere near as pot-fragrant as the last time we were in Vegas, and everyone was way less, well, stressed.
In fact, everyone was having a great time and super nice. We joined the fray and made our first pit stop at the four story tall M&M store.
The shrine to candy coated chocolate was a delight for the senses and designed to separate you from your hard earned cash. Well, I suppose that's all of Las Vegas, but c'mon man, $9.50 for a 1/2 pound of M&M's? No thank you!
It was a super fun place to meander though! They even had a machine that would print your face on custom M&M's, a race car, and the wall of M&M's in every color conceivable was most intriguing.
After the candy store, we crossed the skywalk over to New York, New York. Soon the boys were in the little replica village munching on Sicilian Pizza while I took in the human safari as I sipped iced tea.
One memorable highlight as we wandered was the 1%er stores. The boys saw a watch store as we perused the high end establishments and came back to me gushing about the watch they had gazed upon. The entire store only carried three watches, they were all encrusted in diamonds, had their own media policies (no pictures or videos) and oh yes, were 300K plus apiece.
As nice as the time piece craftmanship and crystal-encrusted sneaker sights were to behold and giggle at a bit, we found ourselves moving on.
During our last visit due to the Covids, there weren't many street performers, so the we really enjoyed everyone, the bucket drummers, the electric violin lady, the leaping dudes, the spray paint artists, and especially the bagpipe dude close the Bellagio.
Oh yes, and we really enjoyed the fountains at the Bellagio, complete with a mariachi band. Good times.
The kids wanted to take a peek inside Caesar's Palace, so we did. I noticed the minimum bet on the floor was like 100K, which was interesting, and another interesting thing was the very tactical police presence in Caesar's lobby. Honestly though, what struck me the most about that casino, and many of them to be honest, was the absolute sparkling cleanliness of it all. As they never seem to shutter their doors, I wonder how many house elves they got cleaning the places incognito. Seriously, Caesar's was spotless, like so much so that I would probably eat something that fell on the floor.
Okay, okay, I am just kidding, but it was super clean.
After three days of competition and due to the fact the other mom had to be up at five am to head to the airport, we all decided to walk back to the truck and head back to our accommodations for a well-deserved rest. As we strolled by the Vegas Eiffel tower, we all marveled at the sights and sounds around us, including the dreadlocked dude who was unloading his stomach in the trash can in front of us under the lights of said tower.
That might possibly have been the best scene representation of the city I have ever beheld...
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's really good at counting steps and still taking pretty dang decent photos iPhone.
