Drumroll please.....................the moment you've all be waiting for has arrived.........keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times and sit back and enjoy the exciting conclusion to the Spork's summer vacation saga........Spork goes to LAS VEGAS!!!!!!
If you'll recall from parts 1 & 2 Spock and Kirk went their separate ways for a week before reuniting in Las Vegas for a weekend of fun and frivolity. So....without further ado.....here we go!
Day #1
Kirk and I flew into Las Vegas on a rainy saturday afternoon. (It does actually rain in Vegas...who knew?) When we arrived Nat and Spock were there eagerly awaiting our arrival. We said goodbye to the babies and sent them home with their mom and Grandpa and Grandma and headed off to start our adventure. Now, let me preface these adventures with the following disclaimers: a) I was running on about 3 hours of sleep and had just flown across the country with a baby on my lap so I was practically a zombie and b) Nat, Kirk & Spock were all Vegas virgins (I just mean they hadn't been there before...geeze...get your minds out of the gutter) so we had a lot of ground to cover in the 2 1/2 days ahead of us. Also I have to apologize for the lack of pictures, I took some, but not nearly enough so I'll supplement the ones I took with ones from online.
Our first task was to get to the hotel and get my clothes changed as I was covered in baby goo. We navigated the busy streets of Vegas and soon arrived at the semi-fabulous Tropicana Hotel and Casino!
Now the Tropicana may not be the newest hotel on the strip, but for $100 bucks (it was a $120 but Orbitz is giving us $20 bucks back with their low price guarantee....I sure hope a little guy on a hovercraft delivers it to us) it was pretty dang nice. We checked in and headed off to the room with low expectations as to what awaited us behind the door of room #424. Much to our surprise and delight this is the sight that unfolded before us.......
(ok, so this isn't our ACTUAL room because I didn't take a picture of our room, but this is what it looked like sans the hideous bedspreads...the spreads on our room were just a nice taupe color)
We settled into the room and Spork took a moment to check out the view from our hotel room.
The sight of the bed was almost more than I could take, but I pulled myself together and got dressed so we could head out to find ourselves some dinner. After freshening up Kirk and Spock were ready to go as well so we headed out. Food was first and foremost on everyone's mind so we headed across the road and into the MGM Grand to go to the Rain Forest Cafe....which is awesome. If you've never been there I highly suggest it. It's quite fun and the food was pretty dang tasty too. We had a waiter who was hilarious and very much batting for the other team, but he kept us laughing the entire time we were there.
After dinner we wandered around the MGM Grand, the New York New York and the Excaliber before I decided I was about to drop from pure exhaustion. It was only 9:30 or so, but Kirk and I were still on Memphis time so it was 11:30 as far as my body was concerned so once we got back to the room I promptly fell asleep. I know....I'm in Vegas and asleep by 10 pm....that makes me a total boring nerd, but I was tired! Turns out it was a good thing, if I had known what the next day had in store I would have gone to bed at 7 pm!
Day #2
The next morning we woke bright and early ready to tackle Sin City......that is until Nat discovered that we had NO hot water...at all. Not even luke warm water. So we called guest services and soon Gary the friendly fixit man came up to check things out. Turns out the boiler that heats water for the whole tower we were in was dead, but Gary fixed it up and soon the hot water was flowing again. By this time it was nearing 10 am so we hurried to get ready and headed out the door with Spork to get some breakfast and head out to the strip. Spork decided it would be a good idea to work our way down up one side of the strip and then back down the other to maximize all the Vegasy pleasure, so we started out once again at the MGM Grand. It was our goal to see all the free attractions the strip offered in one day so the first on the list was the MGM lions. Big fat hairy dissapointment. All they did was lay there. For all we knew they could have been dead stuffed lions, but the sign outside their enclosure ensured us that they were real, I however have my doubts.
After Spork had had their fill of staring at comatose lions we headed out to find the monorail station to buy passes to save ourselves a little walking and then back out to the stip. Spork's next stop was M&M World and the Coke Factory. It turns out that Spork had never tried Mexican Coke, so we had to stop for a tall cold one.
There are few things on this earth that are as delicious as the sugary goodness of Mexican Coca~Cola. God Bless Mexico....or at least the Coke factories in Mexico!
After we'd been refreshed with caffinated goodness, we headed back out to pound the pavement. Our next stop was Planet Hollywood (formerly known as the Aladdin) and the Miracle Mile shops. Now, you'd think with a name with "Miracle Mile Shops" you be walking into some slick urban shopping area, but you'd be wrong. Basically it's still the Morroccan Market it was when it was the Aladdin....weird. Anyway, while in the Miracle Mile shops we stumbled upon a Godiva chocolates store. Now Spork isn't much into candy, but neither Nat nor myself can resist a good quality chocolate so we gave in and went to purchase one of the delectable treats. Turns out that if you sign up for a Godiva Chocolate Club card you get free chocolates so we were all over that. After first delicately nibbling then giving in and devoring the chocolates we continued down through the shops till we reached the fantastic and amazing indoor rainstorm (that was sarcasm if you didn't catch it). We waited 20 minutes to watch water drip from the ceiling. Spork was slightly less than impressed, but it did give us time to rest our feet before the miles of walking that lay in store for us.....and as you'll see by the string of pictures coming up you'll see that we did a LOT of walking. This is just small sampling of what Spork saw and did during the 13 hours they spent on the strip that day.......
Spork stopped by the Flamingo to see the flamingos....some random guy gave them a impromptu lesson in flamingo education by making sure we knew they were pink because of the shrimp they ate....very random thing for one tourist to rush up and tell another group of tourists I know, but it's Vegas...weird things happen there.
I can't really remember why we took this picture...it kinda looks like Kirk and Spock are dating or something....but the giant umbrellas were pretty cool. They had cool light stick things hanging from the ceiling with them that looked like the light was dripping down from them like rain drops. Ok....so it sounds really lame when you write about it, but trust me...it was cool.
Watching the gondoliers on the Grand Canal at the Venetian
Posing in front of the living statue at the Venetian. Spork (or Natalie) was too chicken to actually just go pose with her.....
It wouldn't be a trip to Vegas if Seigfried and Roy weren't involved somehow!!! Spork thought about going to see the white tigers, but turns out it's pretty expensive and they are kind of cheapskates so we passed on that one.
At some point during the day we decided we should probably eat something so we stopped at McDonalds on the strip (nothing by the finest of dining for us). We didn't get any pictures inside, but we did see a rather interesting cross dresser there. He was at least 70 and was wearing a very nice pants suit, heels, lovely jewelry and carrying a pretty little clutch purse. So weird.
Another weird sight we had the privilege to behold....Midget Elvis!!!
These were taken at the aquarium at Caesar's Palace. Spork sat and watched the sting rays while they waited for the super exciting fountain show to start (sarcasm again in case you didn't catch it). While we all waited there was a family of Latino descent sitting next too us. At some point the dad of said family decided it was time to go but their little girl didn't want to go. She kept saying in her whiney little Latina girl voice "No Papi!" Well I have no mental filter when I'm tired and without thinking about it I blurted out a very good mocking imitation of her "No Papi!" I really did just think I was thinking it in my head, and then I realized I had said it out loud. Luckily no one but Spork and Nat heard me or I might not be here writing this blog because "Papi" was one big dude. Nat nearly had some incontinence issued laughing about it, but eventually she got herself back under control.
Ahhhhhhh.....the Bellagio. Really....do I have to say more? Next time we are making Spork foot the bill and we're staying here!!! Maybe we'll even see Terry Benedict....heeheehee
Spork posed for this lovely eiffle tower pic while waiting for the fountains at the Bellagio
random shots of the strip at night.....cell phone cameras and lights really aren't friends, but I kinda thought they looked cool.
After seeing all the sights and walking what felt like several thousand miles we decided it would be a good idea to catch the monorail back to the MGM so we didn't have to walk all the way back to the hotel.
Delirium and dehydration had officially set in at this point, so as we waited for the monorail to arrive we attempted to purchase an over priced bottle of water from the monorail station vending machines. Those machines are evil....I think they just put them there to taunt thirsty tourists because for the life of me I couldn't get a dang bottle of water to come out. Eventually we did triumph over the wretched machine and got a delicious cold bottle of fantastic monorail water.
The actual interaction with the monorail water machine was beyond hilarious, but not fit for publication so I'll leave it at that.
After a quick trip down the strip on the monorail we arrived back at the MGM. We stopped by to see if the lions were indeed real as we'd been told earlier in the day, but they had "gone to bed". Seriously.....I still have my doubts....everyone knows that lions are creature of the night.....hmmmm.
As we made our way up the escalator Natalie made a comment about how much her feet hated her. Me, being the witty person that I am, fired off the reply that my feet hated her too. Since we were well past delirious that started uncontrollable laughter. I'm fairly certain that we probably looked and sounded more drunk than any of the people who were actually drunk. It was about this time that we realized that it was almost 11 pm and we hadn't bothered to find any dinner so we headed over to the Excalibur to see what we could find to eat. Turns out that there really isn't much good food to be found at 11 pm at the Excalibur. We eventually settled on some mexican food for Nat and some Chinese food for me (Spork only has to eat a bean and they are done....10 points if you get that joke). Once we had our food we drug ourselves (literally) back to our room to eat and enjoy the view.
That is the last sight I remember before we all passed out from sheer exhaustion.
Day #3
Monday morning dawned and we gathered out things so we could check out of the hotel. Spork was sad to leave the Tropicana, but there were still a few things to see and do before we made the long trip home to Utah. We didn't make it to the Luxor the night before so we headed over there to check it out and do a little gambling. I've never been a huge gambler, but playing the penny slots is pretty dang fun.
Spork also got in on the gambling fun.
but they didn't have much luck.
We also hadn't partaken of a fabulous Las Vegas buffet so we decided to head to the Round Table buffet at the Excalibur because it was close.
The buffet was pretty tasty and Spork even found some food that was just their size.
After we'd eaten our fill we headed to Caesar's to do a little more gambling before we left town. We tried the whole time we were there to try and get on this machine, but it was being monopolized by a couple of old grannies....
After the gambling money was gone, sadly it was time to leave Las Vegas and head back to Utah. We left Vegas several hours later than we planned so it was a very very long drive late into the night getting back home. Spork tried to stay awake by riding on the dashboard watching to make sure rogue deer didn't jump out in front of us.
We stopped in Beaver for a quick break and to have dinner and then we headed back out on the road. We hit Scipio around midnight and Spork was in dire need of a pit stop
So we stopped at a gas station there to wake up a little and to take care of business.
Not long after we left Scipio Spork gave out on us and crashed on the dashboard.
(don't judge....we had to do something to keep ourselves awake!)
We finally made it home around 2 in the morning. We were tired and sore, but Vegas was a blast and we can't wait to go back!!!!
