Day 6-7: Vegas, Baby!

Rather than rushing into the day, we had a leisurely breakfast and spent time on our campsite reading and relaxing. It was rather windy so we sat outside on our camping chairs, rugged up sipping hot tea and coffee. Sheila was hilarious–despite us putting down a rug for her to lie on top of outside, she only laid half of her body on the rug and had her head touching the hard and cold rocks!

Once we were on the road, we made our way toward Las Vegas. We passed a few places that were doing ATVs and had a pit stop at Love’s (quickly becoming our favorite place to refuel), before arriving in Vegas. At this point we we realized we were producing the best solar energy of the trip at over 550 watts.

Broadacres Marketplace

We parked at an AutoZone for a couple of hours to get some work done, before driving to Broadacres Marketplace, a sprawling Latin flea market that’s open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 4pm. We got in early, which meant that many stalls were not yet open or were still setting up, but we could see that there was a huge array of tents selling everything from furniture, mattresses, cheap clothing, candy, fruit, and other knick knacks. There were some stalls that sold food and drink but there was also a more permanent hall for this, which is where we ended up ordering food, as there were also tables and benches to sit and eat.

Michael’s eyes were probably bigger than his stomach when he ordered his pastor fries, while I got a nopales (prickly pear) quesadilla. The servings were huge enough to eat as leftovers the next day, and still be full! In the middle of Broadacres Marketplace there was a stage for live music, and there was a band setting up.

Neon Lights Museum

We ended up leaving early to head to the Neon Lights Museum, which features signs from old casinos and other businesses to get a second life. It was interesting to see the signs from well-known brands like the Hard Rock Cafe, Moulin Rouge, the Flamingo, Tropicana and more, although tickets were on the expensive side ($72 for the two of us). Apparently there are more than 200 signs, but maybe because not all of the lights were on and it’s in quite a condensed space, but it felt like there weren’t as many on display and it didn't take that long to see everything.

Fremont Street

We walked with Sheila the short distance to Fremont Street, the second most famous street in Las Vegas after the Strip, which is full of restaurants, bars, casinos and other entertainment. It’s what you would expect from Vegas–from Michael Jackson impersonators busking, blindingly bright, flashing lights outside stores, hourly music shows, to a zipline overhead for tourists that wanted to soar above the street and get a bird’s eye view. As we were there on a Friday night, unsurprisingly the street was packed with people–many fairly inebriated–stumbling around and checking out all that Fremont Street had to offer. Poor Sheila was overwhelmed (and we didn’t appreciate drunk folks sticking their hands in her face wanting to pet her), so after Michael placed a few bets at a casino, we hightailed it out of there to head over to North Las Vegas, to the neighborhood of our friends Stephan and Stephanie. They live in a gated community, so we wound up finding a quiet spot around the corner from the entrance, where we spent the night.

Meeting up with friends and getting some chores done

We had a solid night’s sleep–at last! Sleeping in a residential, quiet neighborhood was helpful. After taking Sheila for a walk around the block, we drove into Stephan and Stephanie’s gated community, where we hung out with them for a few hours to catch up, do a couple of loads of laundry (so grateful!), pick up an Amazon delivery (service dog vest, grain strainer, Brita filters!) and show them the RV. As friends who love to travel, they could potentially do their own road trip in the future, so maybe we gave them some ideas… They currently live with Stephanie’s parents, who keep everything so their place is like a museum–from Buddhist statues, the full set of Encyclopedia Britannica, enough magnets to fill the entire fridge, and more!

Washing Sheila

Sheila has been stinky and overdue for a bath (unfortunately we ran out of time in our dash to pack and wrap up life in San Francisco), but we found a self-service dog wash 6 minutes drive away from Stephan and Stephanie’s place. We’ve never washed Sheila outside of our own home (outside in the backyard or in the bathtub), so it was a new experience for all of us! Sheila hates baths so she did try to escape and squirmed for a while, but we were able to get her nice and clean, and it was very convenient to have the much deeper, dog-specific bathtubs to use, with a dedicated spray, towel and blow dryer.

We returned Sheila’s defective service dog vest at Whole Foods (note: if you ever need to return something purchased at Amazon and you have no fixed address, you have to call customer service so that returns can be made from any store), and did a shop at Trader Joe’s (one of our favorite grocery stores!), before heading over toward Red Rock Canyon. We had a random potato that had come along from the move, so Lisette made a dinner centered around that, which was a delicious hash with sauteed potatoes, onion, yellow capsicum, and soy chorizo, topped with yogurt, avocado and Cholula hot sauce. Fortunately Lisette loves cooking and coming up with different meals based on leftover or random ingredients, and this is even more critical when our fridge and pantry space is limited!

Red Rock Casino

We parked outside of Red Rock Casino and it turned out to exceed our expectations in terms of how nice the decor was and what was inside. There were a lot of delicious-looking restaurants (the sushi and Greek restaurant menus caught our eyes), there was an awesome bowling alley that was busy and had a ton of lanes that glowed the colors of the rainbow, and there was a lot of options to be entertained (bars, watching sports, cinema), that didn’t involve gambling (although of course there was a lot of that too). We slept toward the back of the parking lot at the casino–while there were speakers playing music in the lot, we were far away enough to get a decent night’s sleep.

Route Map