Sunday, October 22, 2017 (KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas, NV)

Sunday morning we hummed and hawed about what to do today. We wanted to take the free shuttle from Sam's Town to the Strip sometime...should we do it today or tomorrow? We finally decided on today.

So at about 2:00, we headed off, stopping at the office to find out where we catch the shuttle (couldn't remember from 5 1/2 years ago when we were last here). We caught the 2:20 shuttle, arriving at Harrah's about twenty minutes later. Steve snapped this shot out of the bus window of a Ferris wheel as we neared our destination, apparently it's called High Roller Observation Wheel..

We made our way through Harrah's to Las Vegas Boulevard. We thought we'd walk down to the Mandalay Bay to see the memorial and pay our respects. Of course, the Mandalay was at the opposite end of the Strip! And the actual memorial is about three blocks further at the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign. I checked Google Maps and it says it is almost 3 miles. What I'm not sure of though is if it takes into consideration the many walkways that take you away from the main street and back....I assume to keep the flow of pedestrian traffic moving. Consequently, I don't know exactly how far it was...but we walked, and walked and walked. We hadn't planned on walking that far! It was hot and the street was very crowded.
Here are pictures taken along the way.
Treasure Island in the distance from outside our starting point at Harrah's...

The Mirage...

Caesar's Palace...

Here is one of those walkways...

Crossing over a major street...

Bally's and and the Eiffel Tower of Paris Las Vegas on the left with the Bellagio and Cosmopolitan across the street on the right....

We saw the real Arc de Triomphe in Paris last year...

Not exactly sure which is which but I believe there is the Aria, City Center, Mandarin Oriental...and maybe Monte Carlo...

Theses buildings are built with a lean to them...

New York, New York...

MGM Grand...

Excalibur...

Finally, the Mandalay Bay. You can see the two windows towards the top right side where the shooter was, they are slightly lighter in colour. 

There were two small memorials at the entrance...

We took a walk through the water gardens...

We found out from a couple passing by that the actual memorial was still another few blocks and not at the shooting site. So, we continued walking, and walking, and eventually made it! We didn't know this sign is a tourist stop and has a parking lot. A lot of other folks paying their respect too...

Four Canadians were also killed and seven others were wounded (one of which is from Victoria, our home town)...

Then we started our walk back. Steve wanted to know if I thought we should get married again at this little chapel...I told him right now re-marrying him was questionable, after walking so far in this heat! LOL!

This is across the boulevard from the Mandalay where the Route 91 Harvest Festival shootings happened. There was yellow tape and a police car, lights flashing still guarding the site...

The Luxor...

We FINALLY decided on a spot to sit down and have a cold beer...Rock n Reilly's! What we weren't expecting was $8/beer plus tax! Thinking we had just picked an expensive place, we soon learned this was not the case...everyplace we had a beer along the Strip was expensive! Sure a far cry from yesterday's happy hour at Sam's Town where a round (beer and wine) cost $5!

By the time we had finished our beer, it was going on 5:30. We had passed an Outback Steakhouse and had had such a great meal at one last Spring when we were stuck with truck issues in California that we thought we'd go there. We enjoyed a very good steak dinner but it was definitely more expensive...this time we both had a mug of Bud Lite, $6.50, somewhat better, especially for the size of the mug.

Dinner was served quickly and we were finished just after 6:00 so we thought we'd see if we could make it back to Harrah's in time for the 7:05 shuttle back to Sam's Town. Unfortunately, it was over a mile away and even with us walking as fast as we could, dodging people, we missed the shuttle by about 7 minutes.

That meant we had a couple of hours to kill until the next shuttle at 9:15...okay, let's find a bar in Harrahs' and have a beer. Those two beer cost us $20 including tip...okay, we'll only be having one of those, and we'll be "nursing it".

After we had finished our beer, we wandered around Harrah's, playing a couple of slots...nothing serious, I think we both lost $5.



Love the statues of a couple with cash spilling out of their suitcase at Harrah's...

Then we happened upon the Piano Bar...too bad we hadn't found it sooner! The place was hopping and fun to watch.

We caught the 9:15 shuttle arriving back at Sam's Town at about 9:40. Exhausted we limped home on sore tired legs and feet...and collapsed into bed! By the way, I clocked 20,000 steps on my FitBit today!