One Final Night in Vegas

I was hoping to get a good night’s sleep last night since I have been sleeping alright, but not great. I’ll say that it was better than most nights so far, but I had a nightmare, which didn’t exactly help. I’m looking forward to getting back to our own bed. We had no alarm set, but I was awake by 7:30. 

Ross woke up a little after I did and we started our day with a little more wedding cake. The cabin had a fridge, so the cake was still good! We only have about 1/4 left. I imagine it will be gone by tonight. After cake, we started packing up our things. Checkout was by 11, but we were packed up and out the door by 9:30. The cabin was a nice retreat away from the hustle and bustle of Vegas. We could see so many stars at night that we can’t normally see at home because of all the light pollution. 

After a few last photos, we headed over the Brewed Awakenings again for coffee and burrito. It was much busier today!! We had no timeline for the day, so we relaxed while we waited for the drinks and food. The shop had some Disney themed drinks; Ross had the Gaston while trying to proudly show off some chest hair and I had the Scar, a praline Chai. One last bathroom break before starting the 3 1/2 hour drive back to Vegas and the Luxor.

The GPS said we had 110 miles until our next turn, so I turned off the GPS to save my phone battery...can you see where this is going? We hadn’t gambled more than the few minutes that one day and Ross had been thinking about roulette strategies for a few days now. Since we had some time in the car, he had me pull up an excel spreadsheet on my iPad. We generated a formula laden calculator that estimated wins, losses, money gained/lost, etc. It was based on the Martingale strategy. We had been building the spreadsheet for a while when Ross noticed a sign that said “Welcome to California”. Uh oh. We were definitely not supposed to be in California. We were supposed to cross over the Pat Tillman bridge right next to the Hoover Dam to enter into Nevada. Instead, we ended up in San Bernardino county. I had to pee and we needed gas. We ended up in CA just to pay way more for gas ($3.99 per gal instead of $2.85) and a pit stop. We think it added on an extra 45ish minutes to the drive. It was a funny moment, plus we had nowhere to be, so it really wasn’t a big deal.

We rolled into Vegas about 3pm and got gas one more time to top off the tank before we had to return it. We decided it would be better to return the car today instead of at 4:30am tomorrow morning. Before we did that, we checked into the Luxor for our final night. The Luxor is definitely a neat looking hotel, but it is nowhere near the quality of The Venetian. That’s probably why it cost a lot less! It’s a nice hotel, but we were spoiled. We got to our room, via a Willy Wonka feeling elevator. With the hotel shaped like a pyramid, the elevators felt like they moved up and sideways while doing a little shimmy dance. Not quite a smooth ride to the 19th floor! We dropped our bags off, searched for some dinner options, and made a plan for our final night of vacation. We saw a couple of restaurants in the Mandalay Bay hotel next door that piqued our interest. First things first, we had to return the car. Drop off was smooth and we hailed an Uber. 

Our driver dropped us off at the one and only “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. There was a quick wedding happening at the sign and a huge line of people waiting their turn to get their selfies. I found it amusing that there was a sign asking people to stay 6 feet apart. Clearly there was no adherence to that request. We didn’t want to wait in the long line, so we scooted over to the side of the line, got a perfectly acceptable photo, and were out of there in 5 minutes. Off to dinner!

We had narrowed our options down to pizza or Mexican. I was feeling like tacos, so Mexican it was. We almost made the same mistake as day one. We were considering two entrees but realized it before we ordered that we clearly only needed one. With the chips and salsa that were already on the table, we stuck with one ear of Mexican corn and an order of fajitas with vegan chicken. The chik’n that came with the fajitas was so close to real meat I was highly suspicious of it. It was incredibly flavorful and the texture reminded me of little pieces of pork. We even double checked with the waitress and she assured us it was the vegan chik’n. It was clear it wasn’t real meat when you bit into it, but whatever it was, they did a great job. Almost too great. I struggled with enjoying it a little because of how close to real meat it was. 

Ross wanted to test out all the work we had done in the car with his roulette strategy, so we found the one electronic roulette table in the Luxor casino. We waited a few minutes for a seat to open up and threw in some money. It was about 7:30 when we started and had agreed to stay until 8 unless we lost. We went up and down a little, topping out at about $30 profit until we hit a bad streak. At 7:51 we were all out of money. If we would have stayed one more round, we would have won it back. But that’s the chance of gambling, isn’t it? It was fun to try and we had agreed on the amount to play, so no big deal! The House wins again. 

It was 8pm, we had cake left to eat, and the morning was fast approaching. We got our showers in, did some final packing and of course had some cake! We left just a few bites which we finished up the following morning. Thanks again Caked! We checked on the cats one more time with the kitty cams in the house and hit the lights. Tomorrow will be an early morning!

Stats: 

Steps: 8,470

Drive from AZ to Las Vegas should have been: 236 miles; Actually: 302 miles

Money lost today: $200

New betting strategies Ross is already trying to scheme up: Too many