On this leg of the trip, the scenery got MUCH prettier! We stayed four nights at Las Vegas RV Resort, about 20 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. It was really nice to be able to keep the RV in one spot for a few days! We slept late, hung around the RV during the day, then went to the strip late afternoon / early evening and got back to the RV around 11PM each night. We thought we’d be using Uber to go back and forth, but after using it Monday night, we learned that would cost us $70/day minimum and that it was hard to find anyone who wanted to drive us back; it costs about $30 to go from one end of the strip to the other, so they’d much prefer picking up those trips instead of one that costs almost the same and puts them 20 minutes away. We got lucky the first night, with a guy who lived near the RV park and picked us up as his last ride of the night.
So the next few nights, we found several resorts that had uncovered lots or oversized garage spaces to park the truck. It was easy enough to park for the evening, then walk or Zoox (see more below) to get to where we wanted to go. I didn’t realize when planning our itinerary that exploring several resorts right next to each other would involve at least a mile or two of walking. It’s crazy how huge the casinos are — many have multiple buildings on their property to walk past, plus it seemed like we walked a half a mile just winding through a single building. According to Apple Watch, we walked about 7 miles total one evening. And it definitely felt like it by the end of the night!!
Our favorite thing about Las Vegas was definitely the shows we saw: Blue Man Group, Tape Face, Wizard of Oz @ Sphere, and Penn & Teller. Sphere was super impressive — the tornado effects, especially. We sat in section 305, which was great for the movie, but I would guess if you were watching a concert, the lower section might be better. We enjoyed watching the Bellagio Fountains, too, especially at night. Neither of us really cared to gamble, but I put 5 dollars in one slot machine that had the arm that I could pull. I won once, then played the winnings until I lost it all (took less that 2 minutes; and most of that was me trying to figure out how to place the bet, so the arm would work, ha!) We had time to kill one night before a show, so Randy decided to try his luck at Blackjack. He found a minimum $10 table (which was rare), and got $50 worth of chips. He didn’t win a single hand, unfortunately, so we still had a lot of time to kill before the show, haha!
Another highlight, weird as it may be, was using Zoox to get around. It’s a self-driving “robotaxi” that Las Vegas is beta testing, so it was free to use within the Strip area. There are only around 50 available, so the app usually said they were all busy. It also seemed like you had to be in certain areas for it to give you the option to schedule one for pickup, but we didn’t figure that out for sure. We’ve heard stories of Waymo (also self-driving taxis) getting into accidents and causing traffic jams, and were a bit skeptical, but thought it would be fun to try. We did three different trips in it and didn’t have any big issues. It got a bit confused when dropping off near an ambulance that was parked with emergency lights on, and took just a minute longer to SLOWLY scoot past it to park. Another time, there were 4 or 5 Zoox vehicles lined up behind a car that illegally parked with no driver in a pick-up area, and cars were honking behind us. The Zoox in front eventually decided to go around the parked car and the rest all followed, so no biggie. It’s kind of funny to watch them figure things out. Ours had to brake hard one time when another car pulled into our lane. I’m guessing its reaction time was better than a human’s would have been, so that didn’t seem like a negative. And I think the ride was much smoother than either of the Uber/Lyft drivers we used, ha. When the Sphere’s show let out, the ride-share area (where we thought the Zoox would pick us up) was pretty chaotic, so we were wondering how well it would do. When the app said it had arrived, we realized it was waiting in a different location. Turns out there was a dedicated cul-de-sac area for just Zoox to use, which worked MUCH better! I’m guessing human drivers get frustrated with the extra time it takes them to park and pull out, but better safe than sorry!
Here are more details of what we did each day…
Monday:
- took an Ubor from RV Resort to Luxor
- wandered around, exploring Luxor
- split a burger at Public House, then an apple crepe from Blizz for dessert
- loved Blue Man Group @ Luxor, Blue Man Group Theater
- explored New York, New York
- explored MGM Grand (I had forgotten that we’d be here the next night to see Tape Face)
- took Lyft back to RV Resort
Tuesday:
- parked truck at Circus Circus then explored it
- walked to Resort World and ate dinner at the food court
- explored Venetian
- walked almost 2 miles to MGM Grand then another 1/4 miles inside to get to the theater
- Tape Face @ MGM Grand, Underground Theater
- explored Excalibur
- Zoox to Circus Circus to pick up truck and return to RV Resort
We were actually heading to a monorail station to take it back to near where we parked the truck when I tried the Zoox app again and was able to finally schedule a ride instead of it telling me it was too busy. We were excited to try it out!
Wednesday:
- parked truck at Treasure Island then explored it
- explored Caesar’s Palace
- explored Bellagio (the Fountains and Conservatory were both beautiful!)
- walked back to Caesar Place for a Bobby Flay Burger in the Celebrity Food Court
- explored Flamingo’s Wildlife Habitat
- walked .7 mi to see Wizard of Oz @ Sphere (It was AMAZING!!)
- Zoox to Bellagio to see the Fountains at night
- Zoox to Wynn (the closest spot it would drop us off near the truck)
- walked to Treasure Island to pickup truck and drive back to RV
Thursday:
- drove to Rio
- dinner at KJ Dim Sum
- saw Penn & Teller @ Rio, Penn & Teller Theater
- parked downtown and walked under the canopy at Freemont Street Experience
- enjoyed some Ice cream @ Sorry, Not Sorry Creamery, Freemont East District
The Canopy on Freemont Street was neat, but I think we might have enjoyed it more if we had been able to see it earlier one night. By 10pm, the bars were all hopping, including scantily cladded women dancing on them. Several large stages down the street with different bands playing REALLY loud music, plus music from street entertainers. I’m not sure what the appeal of large gorillas are (& probably don’t want to find out?!?), but there were a couple of those roaming around, too. I’m glad we decided to get ice cream from Sorry, Not Sorry Creamery, since that led us to Freemont East, which I did not learn about when researching things to do. I enjoyed seeing the older, simpler neon lit signs as opposed to all the high tech LED ones. There were cops walking around, more drunk people and just all-around not as good as a vibe, in my opinion, but still glad we went and walked around for a bit to see what was there.
Well, we can check Las Vegas off our Bucket List now. Been there, done that and probably won’t bother going back. It was fun to experience once in my life, though! I’m looking forward to some fresh air and exploring quieter, peaceful National Parks next!!
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