I’m writing now from Las Vegas and the MGM Grand Hotel. I have found, over time, my blog entries slow down when I’m in Vegas. I’m not in the room as much and there’s not much to talk about when I’m mainly playing cards (though we will be seeing some shows and visiting places I’ll want to tell you about).
I’m currently up, but a McDonalds employee makes more per hour!
It was sad leaving Palm Springs. I know I can speak for Helaine when I saw, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The hotel was great. The city was great. The experience was everything we wanted and more. I even had a great time at the Rick Springfield concert.
We left Palm Springs around 9:00 AM and headed west in the slightly circuitous route necessary to get to Las Vegas. Traffic was moderate, but mostly moving at or above the speed limit.
We weaved through San Bernardino¹, then to Victorville and Barstow. Now we were in the middle of nowhere and the speed ramped up to 80-85 mph, as the drivers took it on their own to improvise what the speed limit should be.
Most people from the east think of desert and think of the vast trackless sand of North Africa. Most of the US Desert Southwest isn’t like that at all. There is vegetation, mostly in the form of scrawny, low to the Earth brush.
We didn’t eat before leaving Palm Springs, which opened us up for a quick lunch at “Peggy Sue’s 50 s Diner” in Yermo. Yermo is a town of around 2,000, adjacent to Ft. Irwin.
The food was fine, but Peggy Sue’s needs a little updating and freshening. Much of the diner looks like it hasn’t be refurbished since the 50s!
We continued east on I-15 (it’s really a north-south road, so we were officially going north), stopping again in Baker. Our destination was Alien Fresh Jerky!
Here’s a place that’s successful because of its catchy positioning. After all, you can get jerky anywhere, but how many places have Alien Fresh Jerky?
Baker to Las Vegas is only a hundred miles or so – next door in terms of the desert. We were at the MGM and in our room by early afternoon.
By mid afternoon we had found my Cousin Melissa, gone to Wynn (up the Strip), had dinner and deposited me a the poker table.
If that’s not a full day, what is?
¹ – San Bernardino is the county seat for San Bernardino County, which is larger in area than the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware combined. It is the largest county in the United States.