Years ago a national newspaper trade group that I belonged to held its annual convention in Las Vegas, and I used to enjoy an occasional trip to Sin City. The casino buffets were affordable, and even if you weren’t a gambler, people watching could provide hours of free fun.  But both myself and the city have changed over time, I’m not sure if either one for the better.

We took a ride down the Strip the other night, admiring the bright lights and unique architecture of the casinos, and marveling at the crowds. The folks who design the casinos truly are artists, and on a drive down the Strip you can see everything from castles to pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and pirate ships.

This is a fantasyland for grownups, and whether you like angels, demons, winged goddesses, Elvis impersonators, drag queens, magicians, country superstars, or anything in between, an hour on  the Strip will provide just what you’re looking for. Yesterday, we drove part of the busy road again, to see it in the daylight, and I was glad Greg White was driving, so that I could eyeball everything around us.

The country may be in a recession, but you wouldn’t know that from Las Vegas! The streets, sidewalks, restaurants, and casinos are all packed solid. The lines in front of popular places like Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville were so long that we didn’t even think of stopping for a Cheeseburger in Paradise. 

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to see a line of people waiting to get into a Las Vegas pawn shop, but the folks waiting to get into this one probably aren’t there to hock their wedding rings for enough gas money to get back home. This isn’t your everyday pawn shop, this is the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, made famous by the History Channel’s reality program Pawn Stars. A couple of weeks ago our friends Stu and Donna McNicol were in Las Vegas and stood in line about ten minutes to get into the shop, where they were lucky enough to meet Rick Harrison, one of the shop’s owners, and Stu even got his picture taken with Rick! We wanted to check the shop out too, but decided to come back mid-week, when hopefully, the line would be shorter. 

Playing tourist can work up an appetite, and Las Vegas has more places to stuff your face than fleas on a hound dog! Every casino has a buffet, but unlike the old days when I came here every year, the $1.49 breakfast buffet and $5.99 dinner buffet are ancient history. These days you can expect to pay a minimum of $15 for a buffet dinner, and over $30 per person at many of them! The Village Seafood Buffet at the Rio Casino is very highly rated, but at $38 a person, we’ll never know.

We did find a good deal at the Boulder Station Casino, a few miles from downtown, and not far from the Thousand Trails campground. After registering for our free players club cards, we paid $15 each, including tax, for an excellent selection that ranged from Chinese food to prime rib, barbecued ribs, and a half dozen other entries, along with plenty of sides and a great dessert bar. Everything was delicious, and we promised ourselves we’d go back again while we’re in town.

With our players club cards, we each also got $3 in free slot machine play, and while Greg and I promptly lost ours and went bust on penny slot machines, Jan ran hers up to about $40 and Miss Terry topped out at $54. But alas, they didn’t pay for those elaborate casinos by giving money away, and by the time the ladies’ streaks had run out, Jan walked away with a penny and Terry cashed out with ten cents! But what the heck, we got a great meal at a good price, and we got to play for an hour or so on the casino’s money. The smart thing is to walk away once you spend their money, and not dip deeply into your own pocketbook to keep playing. But judging by the number of fancy casinos here, I don’t think too many people can resist the urge to tempt Lady Luck just a little bit longer. 

Thought For The Day - Tourists don’t know where they’ve been. Travelers don’t know where they’re going. – Paul Theroux  

We spent most of the day yesterday playing tour guide at the RV Hall of Fame Museum to members of the Heartland Owners Club, who were in the area for their annual rally. It was a lot of fun.

Here is a picture of Terry sitting with her new friend, Poker Alice. Poker Alice was a famous lady gambler and madam who was well known in Deadwood and Sturgis, South Dakota in the old days for her luck with cards, the cigars she smoked, and the .38 revolver she carried in a pocket in case some card sharp tried to cheat her. I wrote a story about her which is in my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery. Of course, this isn’t the real Poker Alice. That luminary died in 1930 and is buried in Sturgis. But this likeness of the old gal on display at the museum is pretty accurate.

Things got off to a slow start, because of a scheduling mix up so Terry and I, and several other volunteers called in for the occasion, spent the first couple of hours just chatting with regular visitors to the museum. Then the chartered buses pulled up with the Heartland group and the floodgates opened. Over 150 folks from the rally had a good time seeing all of the neat old RVs on display, and we had a good time visiting with them.

In ten years of publishing the Gypsy Journal, we have been approached by several RV manufacturers about advertising, but Heartland is the only one we have accepted advertising from, because they convinced me that they build a quality product and stand behind it.

The Heartland owners we talked to at the museum were just as impressed. The factory is located here in Elkhart, and they sent a small army of service techs to the rally to handle any problems owners had with rigs. Everybody was impressed with how accommodating they were. One comment I heard was “They promised less and delivered more.” A fifth wheel does not fit our needs or lifestyle, but if Terry and I were going to buy a fifth wheel, Heartland would be the first and last one we looked at.

I also talked to some of the vendors who were at the Heartland Rally, and all of them were impressed with the reception they got and the amount of business they did. I really wish we would not have been sick so we could have attended.

Unfortunately, we did have a Bad Nick sighting at the museum yesterday. One of the most unique vehicles in the collection is this wild custom motorhome called Star Streak II, built on a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado chassis, which has been featured on the Discovery Channel.

I enjoyed taking visitors into the RV to show them its many unique features, including a large screened roof vent. One family had a little boy who immediately started flipping switches and pulling on things.

His father immediately chastised him and told him not to touch things, but you know how kids can be. In no time at all he was reaching for a toggle switch on the wall and I told him “Be careful there, I’m not sure which switch it is, but one of them operates the ejector. A while back we lost a nine year old who touched it and went right through that hole in the roof. We looked for him everywhere, but the place closes at 5 o’clock, so what could we do? He still hasn’t turned up.”

The boy’s eyes were bigger than the RVs’ hubcaps, and his mouth was hanging so far open a sparrow could have flown in. I couldn’t resist taking it a step further, so I said “The security guard says sometimes late at night he hears the boy’s voice calling out, but it’s a big place and he’s an old man, so who knows?” The boy stuck his hands deep into his pockets and never took them out until he was well clear of the RV! Bad Nick!

I had another one of those small world events that happen to me all of the time while I was giving some folks a tour of the Cadillac motorhome. Paul Jones, the man who built it, was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the car has two West Point emblems mounted on the front fenders.

Back when I was a young solder, about 100 years ago, I spent a couple of years at West Point as a firearms instructor. (Sleep well tonight, I helped train the guys running the Army today!).

As one couple was looking at the RV, the husband saw the emblems and commented that he was sure familiar with them. “Were you a cadidiot?” I asked him, using the slang term we enlisted men assigned to the Academy used for cadets. “No, but I was a firearms instructor there,” he replied. As it turns out, he had the same job I did, only about four years before my arrival! How cool is that?

Thought For The Day – Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally