A Robot Made Me a Cocktail, and Then We Went to the Circus: More Adventures in Las Vegas

 Look at my luck, having the perfect view of so many beautiful sunrises on this trip!

Of all the cool Sphere displays I saw from my hotel window, my favorite iteration is the Moon that shines overnight. I wake up pretty early even when my body isn't on East Coast time, so I got to enjoy a lot of the Moon over peanut butter sandwiches and canned coffee and terrible sci-fi novels. For a tacky spectacle every other hour of the day, the Moon Sphere is genuinely lovely and charming and magical.

We mixed up our usual schedule on this day, because we wanted to hit the Wynn buffet during its slightly less outrageous but still very outrageous brunch pricing. 

The prices genuinely are outrageous, but I feel like the buffet did its part to make it worth it:

The signage claimed that these decorations were made entirely of confectionary, which I thought was pretty impressive.

I'm kind of low-key addicted to charcuterie, so I was delighted by this section and made myself my own little charcuterie tray. They had black cheese!

And obviously if somebody is making bespoke crepes, you HAVE to get one!

Crepes, meat, a gourmet tater tot that did not live up to the hype, hot chocolate, and the kid has clearly found the sushi and dumpling section.

Chorizo street taco, ube pudding, and I also found where the dumplings lived!

The kid is a particularly adventurous eater, so she had a fabulous time trying all the new-to-us foods, and my partner had a fabulous time eating every meat on offer. I just genuinely love buffets, and although COVID nearly broke me of that, I'm calm enough now that when a buffet looks very sanitary and tidy and organized, I can get back into that halcyon happy place I lived in before I knew what a global pandemic looks like. 

I sent this photo to the kid at home, who was suitably impressed. She gets through a LOT of kimchee when she's home!

And, of course, someone special is 21 years old today, so we have to have some special desserts to celebrate!

We did not have to be rolled out of the buffet afterwards, but it was a close thing.

Better go back to our room, change into swimsuits, and spend a few hours lounging by the pool while we digest!

Later that afternoon, it was time to give the 21-year-old kid a proper introduction to the casino floor. None of us are really the gambling type, but when in Vegas, etc. etc.

The casino is actually a LOT less fun than it was back in the day, because most of it is computerized and digital. You don't even get to pull an actual lever to operate the slot machines anymore--it's all video style with push buttons and ridiculous animations! And, like, everything in the world is computerized and animated these days, so it's not even worth doing it for the novelty, much less the poor odds. The stupidest thing I saw, though, is how many of the table games have switched over to be automated and/or computerized. You can't even get human interaction while playing poker anymore! And I literally saw an automated craps game, with people sitting quietly around a pneumatic-looking tube containing dice that rolled themselves. 

Anyway, none of that bullshit for MY kid! My partner escorted her around to a few different types of table games so she could learn the rules and experience the joy of getting poor quickly, lol, but ONLY the table games that had a real dealer, because WE want an authentic old-school Las Vegas, thank you very much. The kid quickly became famous, because whenever she and her sweet baby face sat down at a table, the dealer would greet her while immediately turning on the "help" light to call the pit boss over, who'd then check her ID, wish her a Happy Birthday, and give her some free drink tickets. She'd play a couple of hands of whatever, lose a little money, and then go find a different table with a different game to experience losing money at. She'd sit herself and her sweet baby face down, the dealer would greet her while flagging down the pit boss, and the entire exchange would repeat itself. I'm surprised the pit boss didn't just stick with her, since he kept having to come back to see her every ten minutes!

In the end, she did not win a penny, but she lost 15 dollars less than we'd budgeted for spending at the casino, and she made out like an absolute bandit with free drink tickets, so honestly--I think we came away with a net gain!

Of COURSE the bar that we'd been waiting to try until the day of her birthday didn't take drink tickets, but whatever--the kid wanted her very first legal drink to be served by a robot, and so that's what we did!

The kid is actually not really a drinker, so she didn't like her Tequila Sunrise (I tried to warn her about tequila, but she was choosing based on which menu illustration looked the prettiest), so I had to drink it along with my own robot-mixed margarita, but whatever. Life is tough sometimes!

And that's how I hit the streets of the Strip with a drink in each hand:

The kid did not know a thing about Siegfried and Roy so my partner and I regaled her with the full story, talking over each other in excitement because we love horrifying gossip the MOST.

The plan was to take our very sweet time walking down to the Bellagio, as we had Cirque du Soleil tickets that night, so we spent quite a long time wandering in Caesar's Palace. We rode one of the only three spiral escalators in the United States, and admired every single god and goddess in the mall:

Gotta take a photo of Athena to send to my kid back home--she's her school's patroness!

The mall is basically the same style as the one in the Venetian--stores have thematically-appropriate facades, and the ceiling is bewitched to look like the sky outside--

--but I like Ancient Greece more than I like Venice, so I really enjoyed the vibe.

They also have a beautiful aquarium that has some cool broken statuary in it. Very atmospheric:

We were there specifically to see the Fall of Atlantis, a free show that runs on the hour during a very limited time period, so we really wanted to make the effort to see it and waited quite a while for the next showing.

We were there early enough that we got excellent placement front and center in what was actually a pretty sizeable crowd, so we had the best view of what is possibly the worst animatronic show that I have ever seen in my life:

I think most of the effects were kind of broken? Because there's no way it was meant to look that janky and stupid. It was pretty cool when the monster came out at the end, though:

When the show ended, a few people sort of clapped, but the woman standing next to me BOOED! It was hilarious. Like, it's fully automated--there is nobody there to accept your criticism!

OMG you guys. I just Googled the show because I wanted to know what the monster's name is. I didn't find it because I got distracted by a YouTube video of the show, IN WHICH THERE ARE A BUNCH OF FLAMES THAT EXPLODE OUT DURING THE CLIMAX!!! My show did NOT have a bunch of flames! WTF!?!

By the time we made it back out onto the Strip, loudly roasting the Fall of Atlantis as we went, night had fallen:

This was the first time we'd been this far south on the Strip on this trip, and the first time we'd been on the Strip at night, and I haaaaaated this combo! Further north and earlier in the day, there was always a constant low level of buskers and scammers attempting to sell you $50 photos or get you to buy their CDs or prayer beads or whatever, and a constant undercurrent of drunk idiots stumbling around, but honestly, it was basically any Saturday at home when you're trying to walk downtown to the library but there's a home football game that day and maybe it's also Parents Weekend. 

But dude, at night and in the busiest part of the Strip? Omg what a sensory nightmare. All the buskers had speaker systems. All the scammers were in giant costumes--who is wanting to pay fifty bucks to get their photo taken with a guy in a giant Bluey costume in front of the fake Eiffel Tower? All the tourists were drunk and standing in big groups in the middle of the sidewalk shouting at each other. This one drunk dude in front of us literally put his cup down ON THE SIDEWALK so he could take a selfie and when the big kid, not noticing, kicked it over as she passed, he started screaming, "THAT BITCH KNOCKED OVER MY DRIIIIIINK!!!!" and lunged for her. I was behind them, so I was all, "Well, shit. I'm about to get in a fight," but fortunately, his equally drunk but less violent pals pulled him back. 

The kid wisely didn't even stop, so I think she could have escaped him even if I hadn't been a half-second from leaping onto his back like a pro wrestler. 

There was an absolute mob in front of the Bellagio Fountains, but they were still pretty!

Another huge mistake we made was in scheduling our Cirque du Soleil show. I don't even know how much attention we paid to the start time for "O," because the ticket price and the seats were what we wanted, but dude, it did not start until 9:30 PM. Like, by 9:30 on the East Coast I'm already sleepy and getting ready for bed, and this was 9:30 West Coast time--by 9:30 West Coast time I've usually been snoozing for two hours! And I'd been enjoying all those West Coast sunrises by getting up at my usual East Coast time, sooo... 

"O" was beautiful and enchanting and thrilling and surprising and I spent the majority of it dozing on my partner's shoulder.

One day I want to go back so I can actually appreciate it, ideally via a matinee showing:

The fresh air woke me up a little bit, and the post-midnight chaos on the Strip was very slightly less, so I even had the energy to watch one more fountain show--

--before making the long slog back to the Venetian.

Tomorrow is our last day!

And here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Omega Mart and Driving to the Grand Canyon
• Day 2: Grand Canyon National Park
• Day 3: Vegas Strip, The Sphere, and the Lake of Dreams
• Day 4: Wynn Buffet, Caesar's Palace, Bellagio Fountains, and Cirque du Soleil
• Day 5: Walking Tour of the Strip and a Red-Eye Home!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

If You're Afraid of Heights, You'll ALSO Hate the Sphere, and Other Las Vegas Adventures

The kid's 21st birthday bash vacation seems to have been specifically chosen to be deeply troubling for just one parent. Was she traumatizing him back for the time when she was eight years old and really pissed him off so he grounded her from the library for a week?

She's denied it, but it's awfully suspicious...

Anyway, I had an AWESOME time in Las Vegas! Our hotel room looked out on the Sphere, and every morning I could watch the sunrise over Frenchman Mountain behind it. I don't know how you drive on the streets around the Sphere at night or even live your life near it, but for a vacation, it was a sensory experience akin to a grown-up version of Cocomelon. It definitely warped the structure of my brain, but omg I could stare at it indefinitely. 

So every morning the kid I would wake up and watch the sunrise over the Sphere while eating leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches, drinking a canned coffee, and reading. I was steadily working my way through the stupidest sci-fi series I have EVER had the dismay to find myself wading through, but also I kinda had summit fever about it and so I couldn't just stop reading it, either. Mid-morning, when my partner woke up, we'd head down to the Venetian pool--

--for another few hours of lounging and reading and taking a swim when we got hot. I can't tell you when I've last hung out and relaxed by a pool--honestly, probably not since before I had kids, because after kids, even during the few times we went to a resort-level pool I'd be watching them, not relaxing. Or I'd be "relaxing" while my partner took a turn watching them, but also not really relaxing because even when it's someone else's turn to supervise you still can't forget that you have children in the water. 

So this whole genuinely relaxing by the pool business was a revelation. I LOVED it. I can't wait to get back to another pool that I can lounge and read beside and swim in for fifteen minutes every so often!

When we'd start to get hungry enough for lunch, we'd go back to our room to shower and change, and then we'd hit the Strip to see the sites and eat some food and find something weird to do. I will ALSO say that having a giant shopping mall basically in your hotel is also fucking awesome. We didn't shop in any of the stores, but there were a billion little places to eat, from expensive novelty doughnuts to expensive alcoholic slushies to expensive tacos. Everything is at theme park prices, so you just have to kind of lean in and submit to the experience. 

The canal is cornball, but still very pretty:

I cannot even believe how much people were paying for these gondola rides. Theme park pricing, indeed!

On this day, we walked over to sightsee around the Wynn, and to scope out a couple of places I wanted to visit later. Here's the Lake of Dreams, where they do short shows every half hour after dark:

Reviews of it online were VERY mixed, but it's a show, you can see it for free, and that's what we're here to do!

I also wanted to check out where this buffet was, so we could visit it on another morning:

Theme. Park. Prices! None of the stereotypical stuff that used to be cheap in Las Vegas, the shows and the buffets, are cheap anymore, probably at least partly because too many tourists like us have obviously been coming to Vegas not to gamble, but just to do the other stereotypical stuff, and no matter what, Vegas gets its money! At least I'd priced everything out beforehand, so I knew about how much we were going to be spending and I could make some choices. 

Because believe it or not, this is NOT the most expensive buffet on the Strip!

This show at Treasure Island used to be the best thing to do on the Strip, in my opinion. My partner and I were pretty bummed to see it in its current decommissioned state, with a Senor Frogs on top of it, and we stood there in the heat bitching about it together for quite some time:

After we wore ourselves out walking around in the heat, we spent a couple of hours back in our room cooling off and resting (and, in my case, watching the Sphere like it was TV), before heading back out for the event that the kid and I had been anticipating the most:

Time to worship the Sphere from the inside!

While we were there the Backstreet Boys were doing a residency at the Sphere, and I was eating my heart out that I wasn't going to one of their shows, but Jesus you wouldn't believe how expensive the tickets were, and I'd for certain be the only one of us into them. So instead I got us the nevertheless still shockingly expensive tickets to the Sphere's one-hour intro film that's supposed to show off all its cool features:

And it was... hmm. 

In the lobby are a few interactive features, robots that do a show--

--and an area where they demonstrate how the speakers can customize what sound each seating area hears, and the whole place is fancy and interesting:

And it looks really cool from above, too, when you're riding just flight after flight of these long and narrow escalators up that open space while looking down on the lobby:

But then you look over at the person next to you to point out something six flights below you that you didn't notice on the ground, and you see that person is absolutely fighting for their fucking life on this long and narrow escalator that's hanging in mid-air with nothing to look at but open air around them and the ground far, far below them. 

It is possibly the greatest achievement in the lives of many, many visitors to the Sphere that they neither vomited nor fainted on the giant Escalators of Acrophobia. 

And what's your reward when you finally make it to the level your seats are on? You have to then enter the open air of the actual Sphere dome, and scale a narrow and very vertical set of stairs to your row, then walk a very narrow path down your row, stepping over feet and around other people, the backs of the seats in the row in front reaching exactly shin height to embody the perfect tripping hazard, knowing that if you did trip, you would tumble very, very, very far. 

We were not the only party who contained someone who was absolutely beside themselves when they finally sank down into their assigned seat and commenced clinging to the armrests like their life depended on it. The kid and I entertained ourselves before the show started by watching people pull themselves up the steps hand over hand clutching the single banister that kept abruptly breaking off before commencing again a heartstopping few feet later. We saw more than one person literally crawl up the steps. We saw people get to their seat within a row by scooting their butt seat by seat, clutching the armrests as they went. We saw adults genuinely crying. Children were screaming. It was like bystanding the actual hell of a decent proportion of humanity. 

The show was very pretty and interesting on a sensory level. Definitely not worth what we paid for it, but Las Vegas! Picking apart the plot gave us a lot to talk about over the next few days, and if any of y'all have seen it, I'd still be interested in picking it apart some more! If I hadn't gone I'd probably be wishing I had, and I would like to go to a concert there, ideally one for which the graphic capabilities are utilized more thoroughly than they were for this show that was essentially a nature documentary. 

But overall, if you're just a tourist and just in Las Vegas for a few days so you need to be choosy about what you do, the Sphere is cooler from the outside. 

Also, on the way out, point any acrophobic people in your party to the elevators. There are only a few compared to the masses of people seeking exit, and they were guarded by employees, but my partner had no issue gaining access and made it to the ground floor long before we did and having suffered no additional trauma.

Wouldn't it have been hilarious, in a horrifying way, if the elevators had been glass?

After the show, we moseyed back to the Wynn to claim spots to see the Lake of Dreams show. There is one single balcony from which you can watch the show for free without having to patronize the expensive bar or more expensive restaurant, with only a few tables and chairs set up, but most of the people in those prime positions tended to clear out after each short show, so we didn't have to wait long before we, too, had prime positions:

Then all we had to do was grab drinks from the bar and hang out in comfort, picking apart Postcards from the Earth while we waited!

I'd told everybody to manage their expectations, because again, reviews are VERY mixed. And indeed, the first show that we stood to the back of the balcony during was pretty cornball and forgettable. But you guys. All three of us, even the two of us who don't particularly enjoy music, FREAKED OUT with excitement when this happened:

 
The younger kid didn't come with us on this trip, but we are all WELL versed and very conditioned by her multi-year, and clearly permanent at this point, love of David Bowie. We all, no matter our individual interest in music, recognize all the most iconic David Bowie songs, and they all have a special place in the heart of our family, and we're all excited whenever we hear one out in the wild.

So we were all so excited by this particularly bizarre turn of events!

As soon as it was over, I tried to send the kid a couple of the videos I'd taken, and she was all, "um what am i looking at?!?"

It was a very weird, PERFECT Las Vegas experience.

Here's a random antique gondola accompanying a display on the history of gondolas that we found on the way back to our room:

In my opinion, the perfect ending to the perfect day in Vegas consists of sitting in your hotel room, freshly showered and wearing comfy pajamas, eating take-out dinner from one of the billion food places still open in the middle of the night, drinking whiskey on ice out of a wine glass, and watching your lord and savior, the Sphere:

It's more of the same tomorrow, plus Cirque du Soleil!

And here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Omega Mart and Driving to the Grand Canyon
• Day 2: Grand Canyon National Park
• Day 3: Vegas Strip, The Sphere, and the Lake of Dreams
• Day 4: Wynn Buffet, Caesar's Palace, Bellagio Fountains, and Cirque du Soleil
• Day 5: Walking Tour of the Strip and a Red-Eye Home!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

If You're Afraid of Heights You'll Hate the Grand Canyon

I'm not afraid of heights. The kid is not afraid of heights, as you well know. I'll leave it to your brilliant minds, then, to dial down to who among us had a medium-ish panic attack on the rim of the Grand Canyon in the middle of nowhere, scared the absolute snot out of the rest of us, and will never be visiting the Grand Canyon again if I, at least, have anything to do with it. 

Anyway, that mystery, unnamed, soon to traumatize themselves and us individual was still sound asleep early on this morning when I pulled a sweatshirt over my pajamas, stepped barefoot into my sneakers, walked out the door of my cabin, turned right, and found myself on the edge of the Grand Canyon just before sunrise:

In this pre-dawn hour, the fire at the North Rim was very visible:

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and after a couple of texts back and forth, the kid also padded out in her pajamas to join me and a few other early-morning souls for sunrise over the Grand Canyon:

I for sure almost missed it behind that ledge to the right. I scooted over a few feet just in time!

The smoke in the canyon was still visible on this morning, but it didn't look like it was filling the entire canyon like it had the day before--at least not yet:

After the sun was fully up, the kid and I sneaked back into our cabin to silently change into our proper clothes and pack everything up--funny how we can make that much of a mess in one night!--and then we brought our peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and cans of coffee outside to have breakfast with this beautiful fellow:

Has anyone ever eaten a peanut butter sandwich in a more beautiful spot?

If you look, you'll be able to see the North Rim wildfire in every photo I take of the Grand Canyon. Here was the fire forecast for the day we visited. There were also several local news teams whose base camp seemed to be the Bright Angel Lodge parking lot, who seemed to be constantly busy filming various reports every time we walked past. The night before, I'd even snarked on a random guy sitting on the wall of the canyon rim, working on his laptop instead of taking in the beautiful view. Why would you go to the trouble of going to the Grand Canyon just to sit in front of it and work, I bitched to my family. Answer: if you're part of the Arizona Channel 5 Storm Team and you've got a report to file!

After breakfast, the kid and I figured out the shuttle system, then took the scenic route via shuttle to the visitor center. I was underwhelmed by the displays, which were good for what you got but I just thought there would be more of them--

--but you know how I feel about a national park passport stamp! This is my first for Arizona!

By the time the kid and I had finished the museum and watched the film, my partner was up and about, and he loaded the car, checked out of Bright Angel Lodge, and took his own scenic shuttle trip to meet up with us so we could continue our shuttle tour of the South Rim.

The trail visible in the photo below is as far as you could travel Bright Angel Trail on this day. The bottom of the canyon was closed to everyone but river rafting groups, and the South Kaibab Trail was closed entirely:

Y'all, I have the gnarliest tan lines on my forehead, because I spent all summer outside with my hat on like this where it did essentially no good at all. Although I guess the top of my head and the back of my neck stayed nice and sun-free?

The Grand Canyon is the best national park for transportation, because all you have to do is park in one of their big parking lots, and shuttles will take you to every single beautiful viewpoint along the South Rim. 

There are also a couple of extra museums to visit along the route. 

The Yavapai Geology Museum is small but very good.

Way back in 2010, I took this picture of my four- and six-year-olds:

Here's me and that once upon a time six-year-old, now two days from her 21st birthday, at the same spot:

It's not close to the edge at all. It's one of my favorite photo spots at the Grand Canyon because it just LOOKS like it's close to the edge!

Another photo of a little girl long ago:

And here she is today:

The kid and I had a lot of fun trying to pick out the Colorado River from our various viewing spots:

I had to use my zoom lens on this one so it's pretty grainy, but how cool is it that you can see this footbridge across the Colorado all the way from the top of the canyon?

The kid and I were freaking out with excitement over this bird that was riding the wind all around over the canyon at this stop. We'd just been to the San Diego Zoo the previous month and had our environmentalist spirits re-radicalized over the story of the California condor, and we were CONVINCED that this was one of them:

I'm sorry to say, though, that this is definitely a turkey vulture. It's evident in the y-shape of the wings and when I overexpose the photo, you can see the turkey vulture's wing coloration.

Oh, well. Wildlife is wildlife!

Here we are confidently and excitedly observing our California condor:

Again, we're not even close to the actual rim. I took my reading of Death in Grand Canyon very seriously!

We'll skip past any and all panic attacks and/or apocalyptic nosebleeds suffered by anyone in our party on this adventure, and frankly I wouldn't mind having them deleted out of my mind entirely because Jesus Christ that freaked me the fuck out--I was half-convinced I was actually dealing with a heart attack, but I didn't have cell service to Google if an apocalyptic nosebleed is a heart attack symptom--and skip straight on down to the last stop on the South Rim shuttle, Hermit's Rest:

The big claim to fame for Hermit's Rest is that there's a small gift shop and cafe there where you can buy popsicles:

Another nice thing about the shuttle is that although it makes a billion stops at scenic sites on the way out to Hermit's Rest, on the way back it only makes a couple, so it's a very convenient way to get back to one's car. 

Back at the car, we cleaned up, made some more peanut butter sandwiches, and hit the road back to Las Vegas. Four hours later, we were checking into the Venetian, with a room that, in my opinion, has the best view on the Strip:

The next three days will be filled with spectacle and delicious food and poolside lounge chairs and all the ridiculousness that Vegas has to offer!

P.S. Want to know more about my adventures in life, and my looming mid-life crisis? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!