Rio Casino, Las Vegas

Wednesday: Lou and Dawn had been exploring while I was entertaining Ernie, but today was my turn to use the car. I made the rounds of the computer stores and stopped by the bank. I had lunch at a nice Chinese buffet at Charleston and Decatur.

Lou and Dawn took a bus further out Boulder Highway to a pioneer museum North of Lowe's, the Clark County Museum. It sounds interesting. They shared a nice cheeseburger at the Club Fortune Casino near the museum. It even included fries and a slice of cake, all for $2.99? A real deal for a great hamburger.

We leave Sam's tomorrow hopefully heading to the Rio casino. They are removing the motocross event stuff but haven't cleared the lot yet. It’s supposed to be open tomorrow?

Tonight is laundry night. The Laundromat here at Sam's has lots of machines and they are really cheap so here is where we're doing our laundry.

Thursday: We enjoyed our last long showers in the RV for a while. We've been staying in RV parks with full hookups for over a week now here in Las Vegas at Sam's and in Pahrump at Terrible's. We now need to change to dry camping mode. All the usual prep work to leave needed to be done. Draining the holding tanks, filling the water, packing away chairs and putting away the door mat, etc. One thing, that fortunately is NOT normal preparation was cleaning the windshield and roof of the deposits left by the birds that roost in the tree in our space. They had a great time feasting, obviously. It took over an hour to get the RV cleaned up but actually was much easier than feared. With that task finished, We moved across the street to Walmart's and left the RV while we went and did a little more exploring nearby in Henderson. We went by Aardvark Ceramic Supply for Lou to get a few things. We stopped by Camping World for me to get a few things. We then stopped by Emily's Cafe in the Club Fortune Casino near Camping World on Race Track Rd just off Boulder Highway behind Kmart, for me to get a chance at the hamburger that Lou and Dawn shared yesterday. We each had our own today. They are good. $2.99 for a ½ pound cheeseburger prepared with grilled onions, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. It also included fries. We then picked up the RV and headed toward the Rio.


The dirt pile is still mostly there but parts of the parking lot are now open. They did close off half of the upper lot where they're now erecting a temporary building. Busy place. Lou and Dawn stopped at the bank for Dawn and got gas on the way over.

We relaxed in the RV for a while then Lou and I went over for the 6pm Masquerade Show In The Sky at the casino. (Here's more on why i like this show.) Dawn wasn't feeling well. I played the big Wheel Of Fortune slot machine. It was a nickel machine, an extravagance, I won $15 dollars on the third spin and left with $10. Quite unusual for me to be ahead when leaving. I usually have to look at my gambling as an investment in the casino.

After returning to the RV we had dinner of a bowl of chili with a hotdog and cheese, a gourmet delight. I returned to the casino later to catch a few more shows and leave a little more of my hard earned money.

Friday: We woke to the sound of earth moving equipment. They are still moving the dirt pile from the parking lot below us where we usually park. Our observation determined that they are moving the dirt to the undeveloped lot across the street.


They’re also actively erecting a temporary building in the lot we are in next to the Rio convention center. When the sun finally rose ,the buildings then glistened. Most are made of glass. They start work quite early here while it was still dark.

We went over to the Gold Coast for breakfast. They have a very good buffet and breakfast was $5.95. Here at the Rio it’s $14.99, a bit too much for our meager appetites. After breakfast Lou and Dawn departed to go to the library and for more shopping. I took a little nap since I was up late last night and got up too early. I then worked on this blog and watched the activities here in the parking lot.

Ernie arrived for a late dinner here at the Rio. I prepared my delicious spaghetti and fried some bread. Ernie just delivered a load here in Las Vegas and was returning right away back toward Salt Lake.

Saturday: Lou and Dawn headed off to see all the thrift stores and book stores here in Las Vegas.

I watched the erection of the temporary building next to our parking spot for a while. I also repaired a broken wire on the solar charging system where it attaches to the batteries.

I then hopped the shuttle from the Rio to Ceasar's and walked the Strip Northward to the Stratosphere then back the other side. Not really much of interest. i did enjoy stopping for lunch at Slots-of-Fun by the Circus-Circus for a $.99 1/2 pound hot dog and a $1.25 margarita. I also tried my luck at on of the $3 blackjack tables. It failed me. That's why I look for the cheapest table minimum to minimize my donation to the establishment. When I did get back to Harrah's to catch the shuttle back to the Rio i had had enough for the day. Actually, almost enough. After a couple of hours rest i did make it back to see a couple of shows, enjoy a couple of free beers and make a small donation to the Rio's Keno game. Lou and Dawn had returned to the RV shortly after I did and after they rested, they went across the street to the Gold Coast to try an interesting slot there with only three columns. Lou prefers fewer columns. They had some luck with those machines when we had breakfast there yesterday and more than payed for our breakfasts.

Today was very windy, overcast, cold and misty. My hat blew off into the middle of las Vegas Blvd but I managed to rescue it before it was redecorated with a tire print.
Sunday: Lou and Dawn continued with their list of thrift shops and book stores. They dropped me off at the Mall on Maryland at Twain. I checked it out finding a very interesting Philippine market and enjoying a slice of pizza for lunch. It was OK pizza, not as good as at home but far above Domino's or Pizza Hut stuff. I walked down Maryland by the University to Tropicanna and then East to Eastern to see the pet Kingdom pet store. Lou and Dawn had visited there earlier and said they had some dwarf cats. Sure enough, there were some dachshund looking kittens there. Rather cute!

As I was walking back toward the strip Lou and Dawn called and picked me up. We did some grocery shopping and returned to the RV. After dinner, I caught a couple of the Rio's shows and Lou and Dawn tried there machines at the Gold Coast again.

It's been very windy today though the sun did shine through the clouds on occasion. It was a little warmer today and there was no precipitation.

Monday: We had breakfast at the RV. We started with grapefruit. Uncle Doug's neighbor has a grapefruit tree and they were ripe so we received a bag full before we left Bakersfield. We haven't been too good about eating at home until recently so it's taken a while to finish off the fruit. We then had oatmeal with sprinkles of flax seed cereal and dried cranberries. Lou and Dawn added brown sugar as well.

We then walked over to the Gold Coast for Lou to try her favorite machine again. It's a Game King multi game machine that we haven't seen too many of. It has two progressive slot games that have nine cells that each spin independently. There are eight possible pay lines three horizontal, three vertical and the two crosses.The games are called Super 8 Race and Super 8 Line.

Next stop was the Post Office we had been told by the Post Office to have our general delivery sent to. They don't accept GD so off we go to the downtown Post Office we had been told was closed to get our package. It wasn't there yet so maybe tomorrow or next week?

We stopped by Sam's Town to get Dawn a new purse. Her old one's zipper failed and Lou had seen the same style there. We then went into North Las Vegas to a couple of thrift stores and finally stopped at Jerry's Nugget casino for tea and cake. They have wonderful deserts there. I had a white chocolate macadamia nut cheese cake and Lou and Dawn had German chocolate cheese cake. We then stopped by a gaming machine surplus store on Main street near downtown. Interesting place and lots of how to gamble books. We picked up a couple of books.

We then returned home to the Rio for dinner of ham and greens at the RV.

Today the weather started out warm and sunny but cooled off and was more overcast later in the day. There wasn't any wind today so it was quite nice. We intend to head up to the Valley Of Fire state park tomorrow. We'll return Saturday to see the balloons at the Red White and Blue Balloon Festival this weekend.