The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 4

The trip from the North Rim to Las Vegas proved surprisingly uneventful. Fatigue and exhaustion probably played a significant role in that. We ended up skipping Pipe Spring National Monument, a fantastic historical site The Wife and I stumbled upon during our honeymoon road trip. We gawked at the unfinished houses in Colorado City of the Mormon tax cheats. We had lunch at a Del Taco in St. George (I hadn't thought of Del Taco since they ran a few commercials on Houston television in the very early '80s. I'd never eaten at one. The verdict? Nothing to write home about). Eventually we made it to Sin City, and this is where we stayed:

I'm a fan of fantasy and renaissance festivals, and enjoy medieval history, so this should've been the prefect hotel for the family to stay at. It would've been, too, if the Excalibur hadn't been the most half-assed of all the theme casinos in Las Vegas. That garish faux-castle facade? That's as good as it gets. Aside from the over-priced joust/dinner show that any renaissance festival can top, there just isn't much else here to back up the theme. There's some fake stonework through the foyers and a sad suit of armor here and there, but beyond that it's generic casino and Super 8 motel rooms. No, scratch that. Super 8 motels at least have refrigerators and coffee machines in their rooms. Excalibur didn't. They also wanted to charge 25 cents a minute for internet access. No thank you. The room really was pathetic when compared to the one The Wife and I stayed in at the Stardust, which was sadly imploded in 2006 and is now an abandoned construction site.

Las Vegas and I, it should be pointed out, don't really get along. My wide-eyed wonder lasted about two hours back when I first visited on my honeymoon. I learned quickly that I don't have the gambling gene. I don't get excited about paying $10 for watered-down drinks, $40 for mediocre buffets or $150-plus for whatever show I can catch in Austin next week for $30. The sleaze was a major turnoff as well--now, I'm a fan of the erotic, but Vegas can make donkey shows in Tijuana look classy by comparison. I'm more interested in the historical and quirky stuff. I wanted to visit the historic Las Vegas Springs Preserve, but admission was $20 for adults and $10 for kids. No thank you, again. We had to settle for the nos-closed Liberache Museum (which I got the nifty shot of above in infrared).

The fact that I'd agreed to spend an extra day in Vegas should no way be construed as my endorsement of the place. I took the kids to the pool and the rest of the time we went on little excursions to Hoover Dam and the like. We also took them to Caesar's Palace so they could see what a themed casino looks like when it's done right. And as much as I dislike Vegas, I have to admit I could spend hours admiring the architecture of Caesar's. The two false-color infrared photos of fountains above were taken during this outing.

About the only concession to the superficial glitz of Las Vegas I made was a photo excursion down the Strip to get in some night photography of the dazzling buildings. Above are two shots of the Luxor, which was right next door to Excalibur. As botched as Excalibur's theme was, the Luxor did the ancient Egyptian motif right.

Across the street was the MGM Grand, quite an imposing, if not magisterial, building. I didn't go in, but the outside certainly gave an impression of old-school Hollywood, back in the days when MGM was a real studio.

Across the street in the other direction was New York New York. It's every bit as gaudy and over-the-top as a Las Vegas casino can get, but very well done. The architectural effort that went into recreating the New York skyline is impressive. The Statue of Liberty replica is so good that it tricked the U.S. Postal Service into issuing a commemorative stamp picturing it rather than the real one in New York. There's even a Statue of Liberty made out of jellybeans inside.

Paris Casino was another example of well-done architecture. The fake Eiffel Tower at night is quite pretty. It's almost subdued when compared to the rest of the strip. The giant Montgolfier balloon with the flashing Barry Manilow billboard on the other side of the tower? Not so much.

You'll notice there are very few people in my photos. That's because there aren't that many people out and about in Las Vegas at 1 a.m. on a Thursday morning. The Wife and Monkey Girl went out and did some Las Vegas street photography earlier in the evening, and once they got back and we managed to get the kids settled, it was pretty late. Considering the photographic bust the Grand Canyon and Horseshoe Bend turned out to be, I was determined to get something in Las Vegas. So I grabbed the 50D (my infrared camera was pretty useless at night), my EF-S 10-22 ultrawide angle and a tripod and set out to get some long-exposure shots of the Las Vegas strip. I ended up walking far more than I'd intended, and was dog tired by the time I got back to the room. I'm disappointed I didn't get any shots of the now-closed Sahara before it's demolished, but you can't have everything. The important thing is that I spent two days in Las Vegas and came close to having a good time (mainly by avoiding all the stuff most people actually go to Las Vegas for), which is more than I can say about my two previous visits to the city. Ironic that Las Vegas, the stop on our road trip I was dreading most, turned out to be the least stressful two days of the entire vacation.

A full gallery of road trip photos can be found here.
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 1
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 2
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 3
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 4
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 5
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 6
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 7
The 2011 Griswold Family Adventure pt. 8

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