Las Vegas and Habitat for Humanity

What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas for us.  We will share our first visit to Sin City with you.  They enthusiastically sell sex here figuratively, and I guess in reality too.

We spent a whole week here, working with Habitat for Humanity during the week.  We enjoyed the privilege of working with Mary and Gary Welch—dedicated Habitat volunteers who are here for months building houses and coordinating the Care-a-vanners who come in their RV’s to work.

Darryl is the construction supervisor coordinating all the various locations that Habitat Las Vegas has going on.

 It is always nice to work with the future homeowners, and we had the chance to do that here.  Tomika and I planted shrubs that were donated to the affiliate for the houses.

The Circus Circus KOA lets Habitat volunteers stay at a reduced rate—a great contribution to Habitat’s work here.  It gave us the opportunity to live on The Strip and walk to see the amazing, over-the-top casinos.

We went to the old Vegas downtown one evening for the Fremont Experience—a pedestrian street covered with a curved roof—the largest screen light show in the world, four blocks long, with the show arranged to music.   

 

The Legends show is a long-running musical tribute show to some of the greats who played Vegas in the past.  The acts change—we saw Liberace, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, and of course, the King:  Elvis.  While they performed excellent renditions of various numbers, footage of the original stars was shown on the screens.  Very nice.  A great show.

Liberace smoozed the audience a bit and when he asked a woman in front where she was from, she said Wisconsin.  He said, “Good for you to get out of that mess.”  Later he made a joke about getting away:  “Maybe we should all go to Wisconsin and help with the recall.”    That has been the attitude everywhere.  When we say we are from Wisconsin, it used to be, “How about those Packers.”  Now it is all outrage about our governor and the terrible things happening to unions.  People are afraid their state might follow suit. 

The famed fountain show at Bellagio was cancelled due to high winds, but their spring flower show in the lobby was phenomenal. 

I guess everyone at some point does the time-share presentation to get some freebies.  We sat through one for free Cirque du Soliel tickets and $50 at Pampas Brazilian restaurant.  Little did we know that entrees are $45 there.  We settled for the salad bar at $23.95 each!!!  It was scrumptious, and we had plenty to eat.    Cirque du Soliel is just amazing.  The strength of those acrobats is beyond belief.  How do they do that?!!!

We did a lot of walking on the Strip.  Those casino resorts are huge, and you walk miles to wander through a few of them.  I asked Don for his overall impression of Vegas.  He said self-indulgence.  Everything is very expensive, but money pours out everywhere.  People drink and gamble constantly.  Vegas is an unreal world.

Now it is out of the big, bad city and back to our kind of place—the wilderness.  We are finally heading to the Utah canyons.  Oh, if you are thinking you can use our Las Vegas time-share—no, we did not buy one.