Las Vegas - Losses and Wins

Our plans went awry mid October when we heard that Richard’s brother Don had fallen 20 feet out of a tree while out hunting in Arkansas.  With a dislocated shoulder, punctured lung, brain trauma, cracked ribs and vertebrae, you could say it was a near miss.  He was lucky he didn’t lose his life.

After 3 weeks of recuperation with 1 on 1 attention from his daughter and her family at their home near Dallas, Richard was going to spend some time with Don, to move him home and make sure he would be able look after himself on his own.

Richard's trip meant we had to reschedule our planned stay in Vegas, where we were supposed to be meeting up with my nephew Steven and his new bride Stephanie who were going to there for their honeymoon.  I was going to miss their wedding in Scotland but had contented myself with the thought that I would be able to congratulate them in person in Sin City.  If all went well, we would still be able to spend a couple of days with them at the end of their honeymoon, by which time Richard would hopefully be back.

Since I was to be on my own for at least 12 days, I decided to choose a campsite in a less populated area, for security reasons. You’ve seen the films… gambling attracts all kinds of people.  I also wanted a park that offered some activities so I could have some company.  Crossroads RV Park in Fort Mohave turned out to be a winning choice. 

At only a couple of hours' drive from Vegas, the RV park is far enough removed from the casinos and exorbitant prices, and within easy reach of shopping and more reasonable priced stores and restaurants.  It hosts permanent residents as well as “snowbirds” – RVers who come annually for the winter sun from snowbound northern states like Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota etc, and people like us – itinerant full-timers who trail their RV’s across state borders, chasing the sun, whilst sight-seeing, hiking and looking for adventure.

Crossroads RV Park lies in the Mohave Valley, which follows the Colorado River south of the Hoover Dam. The river is the border between Arizona and Nevada in the north, and California in the south. and although it flows through the gravelly Mojave desert, it provides water for agriculture.  Smaller Casino resorts have blossomed along the river bank on the Nevada side wherever there is a bridge crossing into a town on the Arizona side, such as Laughlin. In the western states of America, gambling is only legal in Nevada, and on Native American reservation land.

So there I was, 3 days after Richard left, celebrating Steven and Stephanie’s wedding vicariously, all dressed up in my finery, congratulating them via Facebook Messenger video and toasting them at 10 am with a glass of wine (which was of course put into the fridge for full consumption that evening).  My son Scott, nieces Tracy and Suzanne, and other friends kept me going on FB with pictures and videos all afternoon.  Social Media may have its downsides, but it made me a winner that day.

Can you guess that Stephen is a fisherman?

My son Scott with his two aunts Alison and Margaret, and cousin Suzanne

Scott with cousins Iain, Suzanne and Tracy

My visit to Vegas was an experience that gave cause for mixed feelings.  I don’t gamble, and so I didn’t care much for its money grabbing ethos, or the way a resort fee of around $35 per night is charged unexpectedly on top of regular hotel room fees.  Bar and food prices are extortionate too. But the buildings along the strip are worth seeing, and Fremont Street in the old part of Vegas has an atmosphere similar to Glasgow on holiday weekend.  

  

View of Bellagio Fountains from our bedroom window

 I could boast that the only thing I lost in Vegas was a filling.  However, loosing that filling cost me $500!  Win some, lose some, right?

That said, it was wonderful to meet Steven and Stephanie, enjoy Fremont Street nightlife, and get a chance to take them out of Vegas for a trip in Benny, our trusty truck, to see another side of Nevada.   

OK, OK, so they had already done a helicopter flight over Vegas and the Hoover Dam.  But on our trip we fuelled them up with an enormous IHOP breakfast first, and they loved the impressive red rocks to the west of the city, and their up close and personal walk through Joshua trees and the unexpected natural oasis of Mountain Spring Ranch, http://parks.nv.gov/parks/spring-mountain-ranch-state-park/

where ranchers settled and sold on their homestead to be upgraded by the rich and famous from California looking for holiday getaways, such as Howard Hughes and German born actress Vera Krupp.  We even got an unexpected guided tour of the Ranch house, 

Spring Mountain Ranch

and saw Howard Hughes’ corner bar, as well as Vera Krupp’s modernization projects which included the addition of that most European of necessities – a bidet.  Her negligees

and other personal items, such as her lapidary collection, were also on display and I got the impression that she loved the seclusion and simple ranching life.  Oh, there was also a picture of her famous 33.19 carat diamond, which was stolen, and recovered.  After she died in 1967 Richard Burton bought it for a measly $307K for Elizabeth Taylor.  

 You can read its history here 

https://www.worthy.com/famous-diamonds/the-krupp-diamond

After the excitement of Vegas, Richard and I settled down to snowbird life, playing horseshoes, dominoes, jokers and pegs, coffee and donuts, and doing jigsaw puzzles.  Almost daily walks with my new walking buddy Karen kept me fit, and we enjoyed the company of some lovely couples, who had looked after me whilst Richard was gone.  We spent a happy Thanksgiving sharing food and banter with them. 

 The local casino provided cheap breakfast buffets on Senior Thursdays, as well as a car and boat show one weekend, including some super stunt bikers. 

Stunt biker at the Avi Casino Resort

All in all, my month there was really enjoyable, and we might well have stayed longer had it not been for our previously made reservation for another RV park in Coolidge.  We had planned ahead for doctor’s appointments and so we could have easy access to the airport in Phoenix – which we will need in January when we fly to Scotland for two weeks.

Of course, we could not leave Fort Mohave without visiting the two local tourist hotspots. 

Oatman is a former gold mining town located on the famous Route 66 which was begun to link California with Santa Fe in New Mexico.  The descendants of donkeys once used in the mines now roam the streets giving tourists photo opportunities, whilst they in turn wander through some interesting stores and soak up the old wild-west atmosphere during a staged shoot out.  The Oatman Hotel is unusual in that it has dollar bills pasted all over its walls – a tradition that began when miners were paid by the mining company in paper money instead of in gold.  The paper money’s durability in the damp underground was questionable, and the miners felt it safer to pin their initialed and dated bills as credit on the dry walls of the hotel bar where they would no doubt spend it on food and drink at the end of their shift.

Oatman Hotel coated in dollar bills

Lake Havasu City is famous for buying and relocating London Bridge stone by stone from the UK to its lakeside shores.  It made headlines in the UK back in 1967 because everyone there thought the Americans thought they were getting Tower Bridge.  But the city developers thought any London Bridge would be a tourist draw and put their desert resort on the US map as a place to visit and buy real estate in the hot Arizona desert.

It does look a little incongruous, seeing this massive sandstone bridge straddling a lagoon lined with palm trees, beside a little replica village in olde London town style. 

 

London Bridge, Lake Havasu City

But, you know, the tourist office has missed an opportunity.  It seems that Richard Burton presented the Krupps diamond ring to Elizabeth Taylor whilst they were on his yacht on the river Thames… I think a little love-boat tethered to the bridge might be an added attraction!