Las Vegas. Home of over 160 casinos, 2,500+ restaurants, nearly 40 museums, and hundreds of shows. So, what’s the first thing that we do upon rolling into sin city? That’s right. We find a strip mall with a hair salon so Lisa can get her hair trimmed. Just another not so glamorous part of van life in one of the most glam places on the planet.

After Lisa’s haircut we make our way to our home base for a few days. From what I’ve read, campgrounds within Vegas are notoriously sketchy, so after careful review I narrowed our choices down to two, both far from the strip. We ultimately select the KOA at Sam’s Town because it’s quite a bit cheaper.

Nevada!

Before diving into Vegas, we gotta slap on a new state sticker to our adventure map since this was our first overnighter in Nevada, wrapping up the Southwest!

Sam’s Town Hotel and Gambling Hall

We spend our first afternoon in Vegas checking out the Sam’s Town casino (which they call a “gambling hall”). It’s right next to the KOA, so we were able to easily walk there. It looked (okay) and smelled (icky) like a typical casino, but did have a very nice central atrium with nightly light and laser shows. We watched the 6:00 PM show and then headed back to Usain for the night. Wait, doesn’t everyone go to bed early in Vegas?

Las Vegas Strip

Our next day in Vegas was a bit more traditional from a tourist perspective, or at least one that doesn’t feed slot machines. Rather than take Usain to the strip, we hopped in a Lyft at the KOA and had the driver drop us off at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. From there we started walking along the famous Las Vegas Blvd. It was another cool, windy day (the same wind that drove us out of Death Valley a day earlier). Although we primarily walked the strip outside, we occasionally made a trip through a hotel to warm up and get out of the wind.

We ended up walking from the Flamingo to the Stratosphere, which is 3 miles according to Google Maps. From there we headed back to a pizza place we had saw on the way called Flour and Barley, which had one of the best brick oven pizza crusts I’ve ever eaten.

After lunch, we headed back out to the strip again and took a trip through the Bellagio Hotel while waiting for the famous fountain show to begin at 3:00 PM. Lisa had remembered the Bellagio Conservatory from our first Vegas trip back in 1998 and wanted to see it again. Unfortunately, they currently have it completely under construction getting ready for their Easter display. We did get a glimpse of one of the giant Easter eggs being transported down the hallway toward it. From there it was out to see the first fountain show of the day. The first song was the national anthem followed by Bellagio standard, “Time to Say Goodbye” sung by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman while the fountains danced in the background.

Our legs and feet were tired from walking so we called up another Lyft for the ride back to Usain and the cats at the KOA. We had a chatty driver this time who was interested in our campervan travels. He really hopes that he can do the same some day.

We didn’t snap a bunch of pics, but check out this slideshow of the few we managed to take.