What happens in Vegas…
June 5, 2009 Category: Albino Bowler 2 Comments »
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What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas as the saying goes… unless of course you’re the Albino Bowler. In that case it gets plastered all over the internet. I get the feeling though that this is not the first time that has happened to someone that visited Vegas.  I don’t think the Albino Bowler minded though.
My wife Holly and I had been thinking of a vacation out west for a while now, and after doing some looking around at what we wanted to see it seemed that Las Vegas |
| would be the perfect launching point for the trip. It also didn’t hurt that neither of us had ever been there before and had always wanted to go… oh, and flights there are relatively cheap. I’m sold.
After talking to several people, and doing some thinking about what we wanted out of our Vegas experience, we decided to stay at one of the lesser expensive hotels on the strip, Treasure Island, instead of the big named places across the street. Turns out TI might not be “Vegas” nice anymore… but it’s still a really nice place, and was convenient to everything. As you can see from the pictures, we obviously did some gambling, which was a LOT of fun. Roulette was our game of choice as it seemed to have the lowest learning curve… and wasn’t Black Jack. Also on the must do list was stopping by In-N-Out Burgers. |
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According to the wifey, this is a frequent watering hole for celebrities… and while we didn’t see any there (other than the Bowler of course), they did have really good hamburgers and I’m quite certain their fries are laced with crack. Good stuff!
I have to say, that while Las Vegas was a neat place, I don’t know that it’s my kind of place. Big city lights and crowds of people just aren’t my thing, but we definitely had fun while we were there. I was ready to head out of town after a short stay… and that we did. |
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Next stop? Area 51. Area 51? Yes… well, as close to it as you can get as a civilian and not go to jail anyway. When I was a kid I was fascinated by UFO’s and “the unexplainable”. Naturally all the talk of Area 51 and the top secret Air Force base at Groom Lake, Nevada caught my attention. I’ve since given up my fascination with UFO’s (well, mostly… okay I’m just lying now), but I still wanted |
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to go see what we could see. A little “town” called Rachel, Nevada is the closest thing to civilization around, so we pointed our car north, and took off up the Extraterrestrial Highway (no kidding). Rachel sits almost 3 hours outside of Las Vegas, and at least 2 hours away from anything else. It’s quite literally in the middle of nowhere… and I kind of think it only exists because of geeky tourists like myself, and the transient alien needing a place to stay while their spacecraft gets fixed over at the base. One of the saucers was in transit while we |
| were there in fact. The Albino Bowler posed for a picture. About 10 miles down a dirt road from Rachel you’ll find what’s known as “the Rachel back gate” and is one of two easily accessible entrances to the base. The other is off of Groom Lake road… another dirt road that’s 13 miles long, but ends abruptly (for non-service people) at a collection of signs saying things like “Photography of the Areas is Prohibited” and “Lethal Force Authorized”. The Rachel back gate though actually has a guard building, |
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gates, and lots of cool cameras that you can see. Oh… it also has the signs that seem to suggest that you’ll be shot if you take pictures… but we didn’t drive 3 hours out of the way to not at least chance it! Come on! It’s hard to tell from this particular picture, but the cameras turned and were facing us while we were there snapping away, so if we all disappear without a trace… you’ll have a good idea why.
Enough with the geeky stuff, lets check out some parks! |
Check back soon for the second installment of the Albino Bowler’s Southwest adventure!
– Dan Thompson
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