Author: Mary-Ann Knight

We head out to the Strip about 7pm, drink in hand. It is so much colder than we thought it would be, turns out it is unseasonably cold, we soldier on… here we come!!

The Strip is closed to vehicular traffic, the centre median has more police officers and vehicles that we ever saw in one place.  Buses and tanks are being used to barrack streets.  They must have every Nevada State police officer here. At least we feel safe.

We are having fun, lots of people. Many ladies dressed or undressed to the nines with CFM heels, oh to be so young again!!

Because every celebration requires the crazy ones, we offer

We decide an indoor drink is in order to warm up, we thought perhaps New York New York would be the casino to be at Times Square and all but whoops you need a wrist band.

 

 

Plan B:  We stayed at the Luxor when we got married 24 years and 2 days ago they will welcome us and YES they did. Warm up & drink time. Our sweet server said Caesar’s Palace is the place to be come midnight for the fireworks and festivities.

Off we go, what an adventure we are on. OMG, there are so many people we are making progress and finally we are in the throws of way too many people in front of Caesar’s awaiting the fireworks.  This photo doesn’t give justice to the 300,000 celebrating people.

There are warning that due to heavy winds the fireworks may be delayed.

Way too many people, we can’t move, everyone is sandwiched. There is a barricade behind us, people start jumping over it to escape – a fight breaks out. Fortunately on the other side of the barricade.  This side, a very drunk man standing on the barricade falls back on Allan.

All those police who made me feel safe earlier are not responding.  2 officers standing on a nearby staircase are witnessing the flight and all they do is shine their flashlights making it easies for the combatants to view each other to land their punches.

I fear the crowd will become even more unruly and we’ll be stampeded.

Finally the fireworks ring in the new year.  That calms the crowd down.  It was a good show, not great, but good.

We hope the crowd will dissipate but no we end up having to make our escape over the barricade to escape and head back to Bailey.

Motto – Be careful what you wish for!!

Freezing, fear for your life but another bucket list item done.

We walk to Fremont St and come upon “World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop – Pawn Stars” The lineup was snaked around the block to get in.

Neither of us knew why, Allan’s theory! These were people pawning items they stole over the weekend.

Some of the sights.​

One of the things we having a hard time with is…drum roll… remembering here they have no clue what a washroom is. We’ve had several blank stares when asking for directions to one. SO to remember RESTROOM not washroom. Allan found his and had to share as it is full of Marilyn Monroe prints.

A chilling and walking the strip day in anticipation of New Year’s Eve.  Bucket list item soon to be scratched off my list.

This must be an amazingly good Taco place based on the way long line ups.

Some sites around town..

We’re going to a show tonight, Piff the Magic Dragon who we first saw and loved on America’s Got Talent.  The show was super entertaining, with some “how did he do that?” thrown in.

Walking home after the show we encounter this bus

Mystery in Bailey!!!   We keep finding silver, flecky, flecks on the floor. Many, seemingly never ending. We haven’t a clue what they are or where they come from but getting tired of picking them up.

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary to us!  We got married in Las Vegas 24 years ago, lots of reminiscing going on 😊 So  many wonderful (some not so), but way more wonderful have happened in this thing we call life.

One of life’s mysteries.  How to you pronounce Zzyzx?

Closer we get the more traffic there is, don’t slow us down we want to get there!

Staying at Circus Circus RV Park. Not to let anyone down, YES, we make the wrong turn.  Where the heck is the RV section?  We get turned around and voila!!   We are here!

Arrived noonish, got set up and heading out to walk the strip.

Silly us, we thought we would be wearing summer clothes.

We walked to the Luxor Hotel which is where we stayed on our honeymoon.

Us then and now…

8:55a, 46,566k getting an early start cause today is the day we go to Costco. True to us it is a 5-minute drive from the RV camp, yet we still manage to take a wrong turn. Around a building we go… We do make it and thankfully the parking lot is relatively empty. We park in the back and stock up on stuff, back on the road at 11.  Today’s destination is Bakersfield.

We opted to take the scenic old Pacific Coast Highway until we had to turn inland. We drive through several cute towns with extremely narrow main street. Allan gets to use his air horn for the first time. Scared the crap out of the lady who was inching onto our road without looking. Allan decides his nerves have had enough so now we head to the main highway, I5.

We have a choice to turn left into a marina, not for us, or right we can’t tell where that goes so right we go. Whoops, this is a military base, complete with an armed guard at the entrance.  There is no way we can U-turn in the street.  Turns out it’s Camp Pendleton’s housing area. Mary-Ann jumped out and sweet talked the guard into letting us drive in and turn around but not before he called for armed backup to make sure that was all we did. Got turned around and headed back to a safe I5.  So happy to be back on the highway.

It’s getting late so we stop at the KOA in Bakersfield for the night. We did not expect it to be as cold as it was, little did we know it was just going to get colder.

We did Traegar dinner, relaxed by the fire and we anxious to get to Vegas.

 

Back to the trolley this time heading to Seaport Village.

Had lunch at the same restaurant the sleazy bar scene in Top Gun was filmed,  Kansas City Barbeque. Unique place. Allan found a beer as good as RR, named Red Trolley, brewed in San Diego 😊

Toured around for the day then headed back.

Last day here, on the road again tomorrow.

Beautiful sun filled day, unlike yesterday, off we go to Old Town San Diego using the trolley. Whoa!! in some areas the rails are so high you almost feel like you are flying.          Old Town was much fun, looks like you are in a Mexican town. There were lots of “interesting” people some yelling louder than others. The stores are all touristy but that’s what we are so all is good.

 We ate at the highly recommended, Café Coyote and were not disappointed.

Many seem to fly a flag at their RV site, we stumbled upon a flag store and bought Bailey’s first flag.

We walked around and came upon a bar, go figure!

We did consider going to Tijuana as the trolley takes you nearly there but didn’t want to take the chance of getting stuck in Mexico due to the unrest.

Such a fun day, now back to the trolley and home.  Must admit it is colder than we thought it would be so got a good deal on these.

Merry Christmas to all!!

Rain rain rain, then more rain! B2 wants to go out to play but rain, rain.  We fill the time playing crib and cards.

B2Rain

 

 

 

 

Finally, the rain stops, off we go for a walk to the liquor store, yep it’s opened here on Christmas Day to finally get some Bailey’s! Started raining again on our way back but we’re happy we have Bailey’s. We can now formally introduce Bailey to Bailey.

 

Allan did Traeger us a turkey   Dinner was delicious.

A visitor to our park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ended up the evening in the hot tub.  Love hot tubs 🙂

 

Travel day to our next park San Diego RV Resort in La Mesa, California.  La Mesa is a suburb of San Diego.We selected this park because it is on the San Diego trolley line, we can hop on and go everywhere.

We leave at 9:25a, mileage 46,207k.  Still need groceries so off to Walmart arrived 11:55a, back on the road again at 1:30p.

All of Bailey’s parts are working well.  Such a nice change, but not as exciting.  The drive was uneventfully picturesque.  We travelled through Ripley, Blythe, Brawley, Ocotillo, Imperial and several more towns.  Imperial and Ocotillo are wind turbine rich.

Arrive in La Mesa 3:40p.  Super tight corners and our first back in site. Allan handled it like the pro he is. Nice sunny day.

 

Overnight what do our ears hear but pitter patter, splish splash not …

Santa doesn’t splish splash.

It’s a torrential downpour!!

 

Arrived in Goodyear, AZ on Friday December 21st @ midnight thirty.  Restless night awaiting our Bailey reunion. 

8:05a Walking from the Marriott to Palm Storage it’s sunny but cool 5c. 

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While we were gone, Tim Baker of Baker Mobile RV Repair made repairs for the issues we had last trip.  Fingers crossed this trip is a bit less eventful mechanically. 

Bailey is filthy!  We can barely see out the windshield with the sunshine and the rear view camera total blur off to Blue Beacon Hand Truck Wash.  Arrive at 8:50a several tractor trailers ahead of us but we need to be clean so we wait.  Our first Holy Shit of the trip, weird sound coming from the back, rodent attempting to make its escape??  We see a flock of birds fly off – Solved birds on the roof not trapped between as it sounded like.  Relief.  Keep waiting.  10:11 yep over an hour wait and we’re up next…

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And we’re clean now just to the drying station

Finally off to Costco what were we thinking? Costco on the Saturday before Christmas – simply no room for Bailey in that parking lot. 

A few photos from the drive

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Arrived at Arizona Oasis shortly after 3:00p.  Prepared Bailey, slides all worked wonderfully.  Allan was so happy to be reunited with his Traegar.  This is our appetizer, jalapeno stuffed with cream cheese. wrapped in bacon.  Had hamburgers for dinner then relaxed in the hot tub.  What will tomorrow bring?