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Trip: Las Vegas 2008-A (L08A)
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Las Vegas, August 23 - August 28, 2008
I went to Las Vegas for the fourth time in six years for this year's annual ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Conference. As this is a conference trip and because I have other plans for my vacation days, this trip was primarily focused on the conference itself.
I like the location of Las Vegas as a convenient point for accessing the sites of southern Utah and northern Arizona, and there are some nearby sites of interest in southern Nevada as well, but Las Vegas itself doesn't mean much to me. I'm not a gambler, I don't care for the atmosphere and tourist crowds of the Strip, so I don't even stay there - this time I stayed at the Comfort Inn, about about a mile away.
But I did work in a bit of sightseeing. As many times as I have been to Las Vegas over the years, I have never been to downtown Las Vegas. I took care of that on this trip. I also had some time for a few hours drive that introduced me to the Mojave National Preserve, just across the border in California.
I have created some entries on Worldisround where you will find pictures from my trip:
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title (description) - To Appear |
Saturday August 23 -
I didn't sleep well last night, but at least it was a 10:20AM flight from Seattle to Las Vegas, so I didn't have to get up too early.
Easy flight. East-facing window seat, so I got some nice views of eastern Oregon's volcanic fields and escarpment faults region during the 2 1/2 hour flight. The usual luggage delay at Baggage Claim. I finally picked up my suitcase an hour after our plane landed. Then it was a shuttle bus to the rental car center - at least that went faster than last time, but it was approximately 100 minutes after the plane landed when I finally left the Las Vegas airport.
I headed for my hotel, checked in, dropped my stuff off in my room, and then hit the road. If it wasn't 104 degrees out, I might have considered going hiking somewhere. But for all of my trips to Las Vegas over the years, I had never been to downtown Las Vegas. Its Fremont Street is home to a cluster of older casinos and hotels, including the Golden Gate, which opened in 1906, making it the oldest hotel in Las Vegas. I don't know much about the city's history, but it is my understanding that this was the original heart of Vegas as a gambling and show destination, but the Strip developed, evolved and eventually came to dominate Las Vegas because it was outside the city limits, giving those who ran the casinos at the time a lot more freedom and flexibility with respect to how they ran things.
Most of the downtown streets were deserted. Fremont has been turned into the Fremont Street Experience - a high tarp covers the street, the hotels are a lot smaller and more easily accessible than the ones on the Strip, and the look seemed to be more than a bit dated in spite of a few newer buildings. A pleasant surprise was the collection of old-fashioned neon signs, part of the collection of the Neon Museum, that have been relocated downtown to the area surrounding the Neonopolis. I love old fashioned signs and especially neon signs, so I snapped photos of most of them. Other historic sites included the El Portal Theatre building, the El Cortez Hotel and Casino, and Binion's Casino.
I decided to get some dinner downtown, hoping that they'd start turning on more of the neon lights before I was done. Alas, they held off, and I was nearing the end of my 4 hours prepaid parking, so I began working my way back to the car. I stopped to check out a few wedding chapels, including Graceland where my brother got married last year.
Back to the car and back to the hotel, where I unpacked and got ready for my nightlife and tomorrow's conference. As for nightlife, I headed for Piranha, a dance bar just down the street that I routinely frequent when I'm in town.
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Near the Main Street Station is a set of train cars that had been used by Buffalo Bill's traveling show, featuring cars used by Buffalo Bill, Teddy Roosevelt and Annie Oakley. |
Sunday August 24 -
The conference began today. My specific conference plan for today - a tutorial - didn't begin until this afternoon, so I decided to take a morning drive. I headed south on I-15 into California, making a brief photo stop at the Nevada border town of Primm.
Once I-15 crosses into California, it follows the northwestern border of Mojave National Preserve. I made a few photo stops in the park, mostly featuring desert scenery with lots of Joshua trees.
Instead of doubling back to Vegas, I cut east across the desert through the little town of Nipton, CA. Very small, rustic, and home to a small hotel that in the old Hollywood days was a getaway destination for silent movie star Clara Bow. Bow would eventually buy a nearby cattle ranch, but she continued to entertain her Hollywood friends at the Hotel Nipton. After some photos and a refreshment break, I continued on to Searchlight, NV, and then headed north to Henderson and the conference site.
One of my Dayton-based colleagues was also at the conference as was a former colleague who lives in Las Vegas, so it was fun connecting with them again.
Back to Piranha for my nightlife, tonight featuring a Latin-themed night tonight.
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Sign at the Whistlestop Oasis Cafe in Nipton, NV: "Best Burger Around. Coldest Beer." I didn't have the chance to sample either, but I did note that Nipton is miles away from any other restaurant, so it would have been hard to dispute their claims. |
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The conference hotel has a Morocco theme of sorts. Meeting rooms are named after major cities in Morocco, and the decor is supposed to inspire feelings of Morocco, I suppose. At least for those who have never been to Morocco. It looked kind of cheap to me, and their description of at least one of the cities that they named their meeting rooms after was flat out wrong. |
Monday August 25 -
A full conference day. Back to the hotel. Dinner. Catching up on conference papers as I tuned into coverage of the Democratic convention that started today.
No late night plans tonight. I almost decided not to go out, but instead I headed for the nearby Buffalo bar, a Levis/pool hall-type neighborhood bar where I figured I'd read one of the bar rags. Almost immediately I noticed someone across the bar looking at me. He looked like someone I know from work, actually. After a few minutes, he came over - and sure enough, he was indeed one of my colleagues from our Dayton office. We got caught up and then headed on our separate ways. I had an early start on the agenda for tomorrow morning.
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Stormy weather hit this afternoon. Lots of clouds, strong winds and several lightning strikes, not weather I have ever seen in the Las Vegas area before. But my car was just as dusty at the end of the day as it was at the start, so I don't think we got any rain where I was. |
Tuesday August 26 -
Another conference day today. No nightlife tonight. I just haven't been sleeping well.
Wednesday August 27 -
The final conference day today. After it ended, my colleague, his wife and I headed over to our former colleague's home to share a meal and conversation with her and her husband.
No nightlife tonight. I needed to be up by 6:30AM for my morning flight.
Thursday August 28 -
One last poor night of sleeping. I sleep best in a cool room under warm covers, but I don't think that the air conditioner for my room was strong enough to offset Las Vegas heat. Temperatures were routinely over 100 in the daytime and in the 70s at night. (A sign in my room suggested that I turn off the air conditioner when not in the room in order to save energy. A worthwhile goal, but coming out of 100 degree temperatures into a 100 degree hotel room didn't appeal to me.)
Get up. Check out. Drop off the car. Fly to Seattle. Get some window seat photos of Death Valley, Reno, Bend, the Three Sisters and the Columbia River west of Portland. And then finally the trip was over.
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There was a so-called "gentlemen's club" next door to my hotel, and I walked by it several times as it was between me and a cluster of restaurants, a drugstore where I bought my pop, and the nightlife spots I chose. One evening as I was returning to my hotel from Piranha, one of the women who worked there left their parking lot by car and then followed my into my parking lot, where she proceeded to hit on me and suggested I visit her the next night at the club. I explained that my orientation pointed me in other directions. |
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I gambled away one dollar in a downtown Las Vegas casino. I thought I'd empty my pocked of change at the airport slots, but they only took currency. So I attempted to gamble away a second dollar there. Only thing is, I kept winning. I finally walked away withy $2.50. So I figure I came out of Vegas 25% ahead when it came to gambling. |
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