2019/2020 5 Trips to Vegas Report

I used to be a long time reader of this message board thoroughly living vicariously through everyone else. I don't know why I haven't been around, but the last couple of days reading and catching up on trip reports has inspired me to write my own. I have absolutely nothing to do for work today, so I figured I'd give y'all something to read until you get to go. Our next trip is slated for 4th of July weekend since we all contracted and subsequently "recovered" from COVID-19 with absolutely no symptoms.

Trip 1 - New Years 2019
This was a bucket list trip. I had always wanted to be in Vegas for New Years and this was the year. It was immediately regrettable because we are pool people, not people who want to wonder the strip watching the hookers with winter coats on. Oh well, now I can say I had the experience. We booked into Excalibur because it was comped and we don't care much about fancy rooms. I also bought a Groupon for the ATV/Gold Mine Tour figuring it would be a nice distraction from gambling, which we obviously needed because we weren't spending our days at the pool. That turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

Gambling Highlights: Got off the plane and were checked in and down in the casino around 11 the first night. Played for a looooooong time and finally had a nice win on the Deal or No Deal Machine around 5 am (8 am our time). It's old school and malfunctions half the time, but we always play it for some reason. Pardon the fact I look like shit, I'd been up 24 hours at that point...


On our last day of the trip, we hung out in the room for a long time, got some dinner and decided to finish up our gambling for the trip. I did something really stupid. That Deal or No Deal Machine gave me $600.32. I went to cash out considering this a win because I couldn't do a damn thing all trip. Inserted the ticket, grabbed my money and walked away. Went back to the machine where my SO was playing, sat down, went to get out my money and only found .32. What the fuck? Realized I grabbed the change and not the dollars. Went through a whole big deal with security only to find out the person behind me grabbed the cash and took off. I was defeated..... That's the first time in all of my trips that I had done something so stupid. I hadn't even been drinking. I'm an idiot and now if I want to play more, I have to hit the ATM. I had a couple of drinks, wallowed in my own misery and hit the ATM. Got out my last $200 in gambling money and sat down at my favorite, although a little expensive for me on max bet Simpsons machine. A couple of spins in I hit this:

Karma maybe, I don't know, but I sure did get drunk and have fun until we left.
Trip Highlights:
As I mentioned earlier, we went on the ATV/Gold Mine tour through Awesome Adventures Las Vegas. It was easy to book and our tour guide Sherman picked us up at our hotel around 9am on the day of the tour. Sherman was super knowledgeable and we had great conversation with him and the other passengers on our 45 minute van ride out to the site. Once we got there, we learned a lot about the Techatticup Mine and the surrounding area. We were given a brief safety lesson on the ATVs and off we went.



After our ride, we had some excellent subs (forget the name of the place) in the top deck of the barn overlooking the river. Next we went on to tour the grounds and the gold mine. Again, Sherman was very knowledgeable and made it a lot of fun.



After all of that, we loaded up back into the van and headed back to Vegas. Sherman was happy to take us to a liquor store on the way back and we tipped him accordingly for being so accommodating!

When we booked this trip we thought we'd be staying in Vegas the entire time. Ohio State made it to the Rose Bowl, so we did drive out to Pasadena for the game since my SO is a huge Buckeye fan (yuck, Penn State fan here). We had fun, but damn, it was an expensive time, lol.


TRIP 2: The Reunion That Wasn't to be had... (to be continued because this is getting really long)

 

Why aren't my pictures showing up?? Who can help me with this? LOL. I don't wanna post more until I can fix this.