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As some of you may know, last weekend I went with 4 other friends to a mid-US trip traveling across 3 states – Nevada, Utah and Arizona. It was mainly a sightseeing and photography trip, so I ended up with lots and lots of photos which I will slowly process. But meanwhile I figured I’ll write up on my experiences and post a few photos here and there.

The trip starts on Day 0 because nothing much happened for me on Friday (no photos either). The 4 of them went on to Vegas earlier in the day to enjoy some buffets and “working” at the poolside, while I labored here in Seattle until it was 4:30pm and I left for the airport. I arrived to LAS 40 minutes earlier than expected because of strong tailwinds (which made for a bumpy flight), and found out my friends just got into the buffet at Rio and couldn’t pick me up, so I ended up finding my way to the strip to join them.

Being a cheapskate :P, I asked the info desk at the airport for the cheapest way to get to the strip – turns out a cab will run me close to $17, while a shuttle bus will only cost $7. So I hopped onto the first shuttle bus I can find to Rio. Big mistake! Lesson learned here: there are multiple shuttle bus companies, so go find the bus that is nearly full before hopping on! When I got onto the bus there was only 1 other person, and it turns out the bus doesn’t leave until it is full (or has a substantial amount of people). So I ended up waiting on the bus for almost 30 minutes before it finally started heading towards the strip. By the time I got to Rio, my friends were done dinner and we ended up meeting at the garage where I loaded my luggage into the rental car.

The rental car was a Jeep Patriot; the “trunk” space was smaller than I expected, (later found out it is significantly smaller than a Rav4) and with my luggage, the entire back is stacked to the top and you can’t look out through the back anymore. Anyhow, we went to Bellagio to watch the 10pm showing of “O” – my 3rd Cirque du Soleil show, and the one that has been most raved about. My short review is it is quite artistic and pretty, but thin on “plot” compared to the other cirque shows, which I prefer more.

After “O” we went back to our hotel suite – we had a suite at The Venetian 🙂 I was super hungry so I went with 3 other people to the casino where I got food and they played some Pai Gow poker and Roulette (the 5th guy was too sleepy so he went to bed). On our way back to the suite we came across this ‘Star Trek’ penny slot machine which appealed to the geeky side of all of us and we ended up spending over an hour on that machine – it played like a video game where you can login, gather medals (achievements) and even had bonus minigames! It was actually the bonus minigame that we initially saw that got us attracted to the machine. Basically to get to play the minigame, 3 “bonus” icons has to show up on the screen (doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t even have to lineup), so the 4 of us gathered in front of the slot machine and tried to use our fingers to manipulate the outcome to get 3 bonuses (the slot machine had a touch sensitive screen and touching it will “stop” the spin for that column – it is a legit feature, we aren’t breaking the machine :P). The bonuses had really good payout (one bonus we did paid out $35.00+ on a 35c bet).

Anyhow, after spending some money there, we went back to our suite and slept for the real start of our adventure tomorrow!