A colleague of mine would always say that the worst thing about travelling is “the comin’s and the goin’s” and boy was she right! Our trip back to Vegas to restart our vacation was uneventful….a smooth plane ride with no delays, good service and friendly people…you know, the typical Air Canada or Westjet television commercial. What they DON’T show you is that for 8 1/2 hours you must endure that cattle car feeling because you are stuffed into an overheated and cramped row of seats, jockeying for elbow space with a complete stranger who is clearly too big for his seat. And to top it all off, even though you aren’t hungry but eating helps pass the time AND is a good distraction, you are forced to purchase overpriced food and add unwanted pounds to your already bulging Christmas waistline. Let’s just say that the 12 degree temperatures when we arrived 11:00 at night and the obvious lack of 10 foot high snow drifts was all worth the torture! We had traded those nasty snow days for glorious sun rays!
Upon our arrival, we had arranged for a cheap hotel room downtown close to the “Fremont Street Experience”! Though we had had the pleasure of
experiencing this feast for the senses back in November, the need to get out and breathe some oxygen and move our bodies was just too great and so we headed down for another visit. Our Uber driver had explained that the city had installed a new overhead HD canopy back in December and that “the experience” was even better and, I have to say, it was pretty impressive.
The next day we went to the storage facility in neighbouring Henderson to retrieve our motorhome and discovered it had been broken into. Somehow the would-be bandits had popped open a back compartment that held storage containers of our clothes. They had rifled through our things but nothing seemed to be missing. They had also jimmied the other compartment locks and the main door but luckily didn’t gain access. So much for paid and secure storage. We jumped aboard the RV, started her up and she purred like a kitten. It was so nice to be on the road again!
We decided to go back to Sam’s Town KOA Park for a couple of nights. The park had great facilities, was clean and safe and the jet lag was killing us! Not to mention, there were still a few things on our Vegas bucket list of places to see that we hadn’t gotten to on our previous visit. Our first night back at the park we went to bed at 6pm!! We were so exhausted! Steve was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Me, on the other hand, I tossed and turned for a bit and was just beginning to doze off when our trailer began swaying back and forth. This went on for a few minutes! I thought I was hallucinating or something but came to find out the next morning that the rocking we had felt was a 4.6 magnitude earthquake that had occurred in Barstow, California just two hours south of us. Wow! That was the first time I had ever been in an earthquake!!
That day we took the motorcycle out for a drive through the Valley of Fire and then headed back down on the street to visit Pawn Stars. Steve is a big fan of
this History Channel reality show and it was nice to be able to see where everything was shot. Of course, the stars of the show, Rick and Chumlee, weren’t there. We went next door to Rick’s Tavern for a bite to eat in hopes that he might make an appearance but no such luck so after a couple of hours we jumped back on the bike and headed back to Sam’s Town. Tomorrow we are leaving Sin City and heading South!
