Arrival at airport:
My NYC eyes love those LV hiway horizons:
[This cactus on the right below is actually a metal sculpture. The artist has many wonderful ones of varying animal and plant subjects on the inside median of the highway in my brother's area. Next visit I would like to do a highway walkabout and capture them with camera. Too hard to do in a speeding car. The history of this guy's artistic career is quite a story.]
Visiting the Las Vegas strip at night:
[I usually go gambling only one night when I am visiting LV. So I did end up playing just the 25 cent slots this time. I like the video poker games but they are stingy with rewards imho. I think I am brilliant but the machine paying mechanism obviously does not. Four of a kind and that is all I get???
1 $20 bill this night gave me a 2-3 hour ride on one "seemingly" lucky slot machine that had a spin wheel attached to the top of it. I could have walked away with $200 at one point, but the spinner kept going between that $20 and $1000 border on the wheel from those teasing free spin configurations from time to time -- of course more on that $20 edge, so I kept on lusting after that $1000. Sigh.
My very wise sister-in-law once told her son (as he earnestly relayed to me this visit) to look at the dazzling and luxurious opulence of the casino-filled strip and ask himself where the money came from to build it all. From the all too willing, easily seduced, luck-hungry gamblers who came to town, that's who!
Still, I had a couple of free drinks and got into that suspended gambling trance and that $20 gave me the longest and cheapest gambling ride I'd ever had until my brothers came to finally fetch me since I had vowed maybe I'd play half an hour or less and time had lost all meaning. By then I was already in ultimate crash and burn end of the line zero mode. But my machine was near an Elvis impersonator performance at a nearby lounge so that was fun as well. He wasn't bad. :-)
My first time at a slot machine in Vegas long ago, beginner's luck, I won $250 jackpot and loved the bells and whistles going off so soon after sitting down. Of course the machine read 1000 in winnings, but that was in quarters so already my nerve endings were being jerked around with that jackpot since I thought I had won $1000. What a tease. And too many of us have that shoot the moon hope for the BIG PAYOFF. Why not us? Hah!!!
Maybe the only time I cashed out early after that, and it was less than $100, was leaving a slot machine at the airport in LV one year and if I didn't close out I would have missed my plane back to NYC. That seems to be the most profitable time for me to play with a boundary to interrupt the gambling buzz. Hah! I'm thinking, good thing I don't live near casinos. Atlantic City I have never been to, though some nice neighbors have invited me to take the bus with them. I don't think I want to cultivate that pass time. Sigh.]
Checking out vintage neighborhood of LV during the day sans neon:
[I was in a moving car and sorry I didn't capture the pawn shop better. I think this is the same one of tv fame!]
A fun, quirky place called "Container Park" [the mall part constructed out of giant box-car containers!]:
I visited a few lovely outdoor malls:
[this was wallpaper in one shop]
[I'm thinking the rest of this board was X-rated. :-)]
[an LV skating rink!]
Driving around miscellaneous shots:
[Now wait a minute. Did an alpha duck order all the other duckies to stay on the sidewalk in this next one? Or, maybe it was the sound of our car slowing down for me to take the pix that sent them scurrying away from us.]
Happy New Year!
We are in sub-zero temps here in NYC today. I wish I were back there for both family and climate warmth!!!
I still have the LA group of pix to post. Oh yes, and the NYC T-day parade that got stuck for too long in my camera!
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