Starling Travel

The Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada was a relatively new resort and casino in August 2000. Mike and I were on our tenth anniversary trip and we paid the money to see the sharks. If I remember correctly, I was appalled because it was $30 to get us into the aquarium, which was more than the Monterey Bay Aquarium cost and I was sure that there was no way Mandalay could beat it. Back then, $30 was a lot to pay for us, so we were uneasy. We decided that we were on a fun trip and it was one of the few things we wanted to do, so we shelled out the money for it.

If you look closely, you can see Mike and me in the reflections of almost every one of these photos. It makes me smile to see us there, enjoying the aquarium in these inadvertent self-portraits. I remember really enjoying the aquarium but thinking that they had played up the shark thing a little too much since all their sharks were under three feet long.

It’s almost six years later and Mandalay Bay is still playing up the shark theme, although now, maybe their sharks have grown older and larger. Now, the cost is $15.95 for adults and $9.95 for children. There is a guided tour, which there wasn’t before, so I’m sure the event is much more educational than our visit. We are fish enthusiasts, so we were able to identify all the different varieties, but a guided tour would have been fun for us.

• Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino – Entertainment – Shark Reef

I think I’m ready to go back there and see the sharks again. Maybe this time they will be more menancing.

Continuing our series on small pleasures in Las Vegas: the Flamingo Las Vegas, one of Vegas’s oldest remaining hotels, may not be the most elegant place on the strip, and it may not have the shopping and restaurant options of the newer casinos, but it does have one thing they’ll never have—Penguins.

Actually, they have a variety of different birds living in an enclosed outdoor area behind the casino, next to the parking garage. As you might expect, they have pink flamingoes, but the penguins outnumber them, and are far more entertaining to watch.

In case you’re wondering how penguins survive hot days in Vegas, don’t worry—these are African penguins and can handle higher temperatures than the typical antarctic varieties. They are native to warm islands off the coast of South Africa. They handle the summer heat by spending most of their time underwater, and since they’re not accustomed to the chills of a Vegas winter (temperatures in the 30s to 40s) their island is artifically heated.

They actually have professional zookeepers on staff to manage the birds, and if you go at the right time you can hear them talk about them while they feed the penguins. (They eat surprisingly large fish, swallowed whole, which is not quite as cute as you’d expect a penguin feeding to be.)

Other birds in the garden include various ducks, Crowned Cranes, and Ibises, along with the local blackbirds and sparrows that have moved in. There are waterfalls and ponds filled with colorful Koi. All in all, it’s a peaceful oasis right in the middle of the Vegas Strip, and you can easily spend a couple of hours there without spending any money. There’s a food court nearby and you can eat at an outdoor table while you watch the birds.

Directions: Flamingo Las Vegas is at the center of the strip, next to Caesar’s Palace. It’s a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, so it’s easy to reach from other hotels on the strip.

When to see: When the temperature gets to 80 degrees or so, the penguins spend most of their time underwater to avoid the heat, so it’s best to visit them in the colder months, early mornings, or evenings.

• Official site: Flamingo Las Vegas: Wildlife Habitat
• More about African Penguins from National Geographic

The Luxor Hotel has one of the world’s largest atriums. The camels near the Cairo Bazaar are happy to tell you that nine Boeing 747s could be stacked within the Luxor’s atrium. I’ve never seen that demonstration, but when I am standing underneath the inside of the pyramid, it’s impressive. They say it has 29 million cubic feet. That means nothing to me, but standing within it, I am awed.

The atrium is so large that I can’t take a picture of it. I have tried several times. The pictures from the balcony of my hotel room, look like they were taken from a rooftop and the pictures taken from below can’t encompass the enormity of it. I have to just remember it, since I can’t document it with my camera.

The first time Mike and I noticed birds in the atrium, we were looking at the attractions level from our balcony. (Continue Reading…)

At the Sloan Exit just 12 miles South of Las Vegas, sits three and a half acres of pottery called Pottery and Patio World. You can see it from the I-15 Freeway. The colorful pottery beckons to me every time we drive past it. I don’t actually need any pottery or statuary, but it looked so beautiful from the freeway that we stopped this time. It was even more impressive close-up.

We talked to the manager, Missy, and she said that all their pottery is Asian. They purchase it from China, Malaysia and Vietnam. One of the benefits of this pottery is that it’s fired instead of baked, which makes it last far longer. Their fountains and some of their statuary are concrete. Most importantly, their prices were very reasonable.

Here is a slideshow of the beauty that we saw when we visited Pottery & Patio World a couple of days ago:

I found this place to be incredibly relaxing. The color-coded pots were lined up in military rows. The fountains gurgled and bubbled at me. The wind was strong that day and kept whipping my hair into the photographs. Missy said she loves it here when the temperature is 100° F, but the day we were there, it was a cool 55° F day. I contemplated spending the day there, among the fired pots, writing and watching the random tourist drop by. Instead, I ran off to do other things in Las Vegas, but I was calmer and happier because of my time I spent there.

Here is a link to Pottery & Patio World on Google Maps:

• Google Local – Sloan, Nevada

Continuing our series on small pleasures in Las Vegas, here’s one way to have some fun near Vegas without losing your shirt. The Ethel M Chocolate Factory and Cactus Garden is located in Henderson, Nevada, about 10 miles from the Vegas strip. While chocolate and Cacti don’t have much in common, fans of either one will find something fun here.

(Continue Reading…)

We have been in Las Vegas covering CES (the Consumer Electronics Show). All over the Las Vegas Convention Center are these small billboards, urging conventioneers to stay an additional night. They are from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Based on the flock of people heading for the airport, not many people heeded their call.

We planned on staying another day past the end of the convention, so I find the signs funny. Even though we are staying a night longer than the convention, they are enticing me to stay yet another night. Even as I type these words, I find them appealing. I feel like I should stay another night.

Las Vegas is the town that people always say they lost their shirt in. That’s not because of the hotel costs or even the rising cost of food and gasoline. It’s because of the gambling. The appeal of winning 10.7 million dollars might be what makes people stick the coins in the slot machines, but gambling isn’t the only thing to do in Las Vegas. This week, I will be highlighting unique and interesting things to do in the city without spending big bucks. I call them Small Pleasures and you get to enjoy them all this week.

Last month Laura posted a slideshow of photos we took in September of Eats, Nevada—the remains of a cabin-style roadside motel at I-15 exit 25, about 12 miles south of Las Vegas. We’re in the area again, and discovered that the dilapidated cabins have been torn down…

September 3, 2005:<br/>

January 5, 2006:<br/>

It took us a while to verify that this is the same place, since they did a very thorough clean-up job—even the power lines that used to feed the site are gone—but you can see how the mountains match up in the photos above, and we found a freshly filled-in hole where the signs shown in our slideshow used to be.

For now, seeing this view is very strange, as if the desert has reclaimed the area from civilization in just a couple of months. I’m sure some nondescript condos will appear in a year or so, and there will be nothing to show that the cabins ever existed. Granted, they were falling apart and probably quite dangerous, but we’ll miss them.

A couple of weekends ago, we stayed at the Rainbow Hotel in Wendover, Nevada for a family party. A weekend in Wendover is by no means, “travel on the cheap.” Unless you stay there on a weekday, Wendover tends to be pricey. Our total cost for the two night stay was $185 for a normal hotel room with two queen beds.

The room was equipped normally for a Nevada hotel. There was a coffeemaker and hair dryer in the bathroom, but no mini-bar. If you want to drink in a hotel/casino, you’re expected to go downstairs and play on the slots. A lovely lady will come bring you a drink for free if you plant your butt at a slot machine.

There is gambling and eating and little else to do in Wendover during the winter. I don’t care for gambling and I’ve finally got my eating under control, so I was surprised with how much time I had on my hands. I was able to exercise at the Montego Bay hotel gym (Rainbow, Peppermill and Montego Bay are all owned by the same company). I was able to get a little writing done. Mike and I folded oragami Christmas ornaments. We were able to do all that and I was also able to spend a little time with my family and eat at the seafood buffet.

Part of the reason that I love to camp is that it forces me to slow down. There isn’t much to do after we’ve put up the tent and blown up the air mattress. That’s how the weekend at the Rainbow Hotel was for me. We rested. We enjoyed each other. We drank some inexpensive alcohol. It was a great weekend.

That weekend, we drove down to Las Vegas to unwind and be casual. We didn’t have too many things on our agenda. All I wanted to do was shop at the Fashion Show Mall (I was looking for a watch, didn’t find one) and take some pictures. On the way to Vegas from Jean, we found the coolest spot to take pictures. It’s right off the Sloan Road exit, but I call the little area, Eats. After you see the pictures, you’ll understand why:

This slideshow requires Macromedia Flash Player. You can download it for free here: Macromedia Flash Player 7.

If you are driving north on I-15 from Jean to Las Vegas, you’ll see these little cabins, but you might not be able to see where you should exit to get there. You need to exit on Sloan Road, and take the frontage road south to the cabins. Here’s a link to the aerial map on Google Maps:

• Google Local – Sloan Road, Nevada

These cabins are private property and you MUST stay off the private property. All these photos were taken by sticking my camera lens between the chain link fence. Mike, Stacey and Dan wouldn’t let me trespass and in retrospect, that was probably a good thing. You can’t take a picture of yourself standing in the doorway of these old abandoned cabins, but they do provide a wonderful photo opportunity if you are willing to stay on the legal side of the fence.

I love thinking about the people who used to visit these cabins. Were they unbearably hot or did the thick adobe walls keep out the Nevada sun? Did they used to be the favorite spot of people like me? Were they inexpensive and so close to the lights of Nevada that they were a “good deal”? Were they a tourist trap? Why did they close? Who are those people living in the trailer homes right next to them? Do they own these cabins and if they do, would they let me trespass?

I wonder if there is anyone out there who can answer these questions about these cabins. Until then, we’ll just have to romanticize them.

Update 01-06-06: We visited Vegas again and these cabins are GONE. They were so gone that we thought we might be looking in the wrong place. Then, Mike found the evidence…

• Starling Travel » Eats, Nevada is no more

Last time Mike and I stayed in Jean, Nevada, it was in September. We went there with my sister, Stacey and her husband, Dan. They are our best friends. We rode in their Hummer and they drove the whole way. I should feel guilty for that, but it was a new car and I was scared of scratching it. Plus, I’ve never driven anything bigger than a VW Beetle before, so I was doubly scared of driving that big thing. We paid for half the gas, so I guess I shouldn’t feel too guilty.

The trip to Jean was mostly spent in Vegas. We drove up and down the strip in their bright yellow Hummer and I stood up through the sunroof and took pictures. You can see those pictures here:

• Pick Me! » Weekend In Vegas – September 2005

In Jean, however, Mike and I spent the morning taking a nice walk around the hotel and clicking pictures. In the very last photo, you can see the Nevada Landing hotel in the background. I didn’t really get a good picture of the hotel while we were there, so you’ll have to be happy with this. You can see the pictures here:

This slideshow requires Macromedia Flash Player. You can download it for free here: Macromedia Flash Player 7.

The walk started with a trip to the gas station near the hotel. Mike and I weren’t really in the mood to sit down at the cafe and the snack bar wasn’t open yet, so we took a walk to the convenience store. He had a Krispy Kreme donut and I got a pint of water. We walked back to the hotel via a little dirt road. We saw lizards, blackbirds and lots of dragonflies. I was only able to click a picture of the lizard, though.

The entire walk was less than a mile, but don’t underestimate the Nevada sun. It can get REALLY hot there, so if you’re going to do this walk, do it in the morning or late evening so you don’t get burned to a crisp. You can see the route we took here:

• Gmaps Pedometer – A Nice Walk Around Nevada Landing

Another note about Nevada Landing. There isn’t a hotel gym where you can exercise. There is a tiny pool where you can swim. I’ve never tried it out, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. I have, however, jogged around the parking lot along the edges. It’s a pretty easy run because it’s very flat. There are usually big semi-trucks parked along those edges (you can see them on the map below), so you’ll have to dodge them. Other than that, I’ve enjoyed the runs around the parking lot. One trip around is .65 miles, so you can plan your workout accordingly. Here’s a map of where I run when I stay at Nevada Landing:

• Gmaps Pedometer – Jogging Path Around Nevada Landing – .65 miles

That day at Nevada Landing, I ran around the parking lot for free (that was my workout). Mike and I took a walk to the convenience store, which was $5 for donuts and drinks. The walk around the wild, deserty areas was free. The photo ops were free. The stay at the hotel was $50 because it was a weekend. We had a lot of fun for pretty cheap and that only brings us to that morning. That afternoon, we found another great place to take pictures.

Tune in tomorrow to see the photos from the rest of the day.