Poker, Basketball and SPAM

So what have I been doing in Las Vegas while Leeanne is back visiting the family in Detroit – well, the title summarizes it well – poker, basketball and SPAM.

Leeanne wanted to fly back from a major airport to obtain a direct flight.  I was planning to go to until she told me that I was cheaper than a kennel for Alley cat.  Actually, I didn’t plan to return as we don’t like to leave the motor home unattended very often.  Further, I will be making a trip back to the Midwest this Summer (more on that to follow in a future blog post).  But I am bonding with Alley.  So I had my choice --  spend the time in Phoenix or in Las Vegas.  For me that was an easy decision.

I play small Texas Holdem tournaments of about 10 to 40 players.  I have played one, two or three a day in the last two week.  They cost from $12 to $33 each tournament. I have won two and cashed in another but that has not been enough to overcome my entry fees.  Improbable cards keep raining down for my opponents.  I am very pleased with my play as I am making hardly any mistakes but way too much bad luck has hit so far.  A couple good wins would put me right back ahead.

I have watched basketball, basketball and more basketball.  I don’t bet on sports but there sure are a lot of people who come to Vegas to bet on the games.  I don’t even understand half the bets these people are making, but there sure is a flurry of activity at the betting counter.  I didn’t win the billion dollar challenge, but I did pick two of the final four teams – Kentucky and Florida and I had Kentucky winning it all.  We shall see tomorrow night.  (Not that I am any fan of Kentucky basketball.)

And while Leeanne was gone, it was the perfect time to open up a can of SPAM.  I actually stretched one can out over three meals.  One dinner I had a large green salad with fried SPAM.  The next day I had a fried SPAM sandwich.  And the morning after that I had scrambled eggs with fried diced SPAM.  And of course I had to break out my SPAM t-shirt.

 

 

 

And speaking of shirts, I also broke out the party shirt I purchase the last time we were here.  The bartender at the 777 Brewpub and Main Street Station called me Lloyd Christmas.  I had not made that connection before, but it is kind of funny when you see how Jim Carrey was dressed in Dumb and Dumber.  Now all I need is the orange top hat.  But I am not sure it is a compliment now to be know here as Lloyd Christmas

Another Happy Anniversary, Already?

If it seemed like we were moving north a bit fast and violating our guideline of spending at least a week in each place, well we were.  And there was a reason.  Back at Christmas time, my sisters and I tentatively planned a surprise celebrations of our parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary – 50 years of marriage.  So we had to get to Las Vegas as that was where my flight was booked from.

This truly was a surprise for our parents.  They had no idea I was flying in and that they were hosting a reception in their home.  My two sisters invited them to go to Sunday dinner at a restaurant.  When they had left to head to the restaurant, we installed the banner on the fence at their house.  When I arrived at the restaurant I was able to slip up behind my mother and surprise her with my presence.  My Dad was already in the buffet area and I slipped up on him as well.

After lunch we said, “let’s all go back to your house and visit for awhile”.  When they returned home they saw the banner on the and it was only then that we told them they were hosting a reception in a couple hours.  My Mother then said, “but we don’t have a cake”.  “Yes Mom, we do have a cake”. 

Virtually everyone we had invited was able to come.  It was a nice affair with lots of good conversation and memories of their 50 years of marriage.  Some people might not have been able to deal with this level of surprise, but we think they enjoyed and appreciated it very much.  Below are a couple of pictures of the family

Happy Anniversary

Friday was our 28th wedding anniversary.  So how do you celebrate it in Las Vegas?  It’s off to the buffet at Bellagio.  And just because it’s our anniversary doesn’t mean we don’t try to save a little.  We still “pulled a MarK” – go at the end of the lunch session and just stay for dinner.  Look how the shrimp just happened to fall on the plate to honor us.

While we were waiting for the end of the lunch session, we toured the conservatory at Bellagio.  When we last were here it was decorated in the theme of Autumn, but now it was in Spring motif.  It is always a beautiful display.  Everyone has camera in hand.

But back to the food.  The crab legs were great.  This is about the only place where Gary ever eats sushi.  There are so many stations.  It is just so good.  One of my favorites is the crème brulee.  This time the food was arranged on the plate below left and look at all those other wonderful treats as well.

And finally it was time to take a selfie.  We still are trying to get the hang of it as somehow Gary’s forearm wound up there in foreground.  Maybe we need one of those selfie arm extenders.

A New First For Us

We do like our TV.  We have this wonderful contraption on top of our motor home.  You stop for the night, hit one button on this little box and magically the Winegard satellite dish raises up and finds the signals from the Directv satellites automatically.  In less than five minutes from pushing that button, we are watching any program we want.

But there can be one little problem.  On some occasions, the signal from the satellites can be blocked from the dish -- by trees or some other obstructions.  Back in the Denver area last year, we tried everything to get our automatic satellite dish to work.  We pulled the motor home as far forward on the space as we possibly could.  Gary did some midnight tree branch pruning. But no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get past the obstructions and had to go three weeks without our satellite television.

After that episode, Gary decided we needed a backup plan, or backup satellite dish at least.  Through some Craigslist purchases, we became the proud owners of as 18 inch round dish and a tripod.  Although we bought the stuff, we haven’t had a need to use it until this stop in Vegas.  As we mentioned in our last blog, we have some shade trees this stay, but those very shade trees are preventing our automatic satellite dish from being able to lock on to the satellite signals.

So, it was time for Gary to break out our back up dish and see if we could make it work.  After watching a couple of YouTube videos on dish alignment and satellite box setup, off he went to aim it generally toward the satellites about 20 miles into the sky.  After setting up the dish on the tripod and doing some preliminary aiming, he came in and switched out the cables in the back of the satellite box.  After running a setup on the box for the different dish, the most amazing thing happened.  At the end of the setup, we had picture on the television.  Without any fine tuning whatsoever, he had somehow aligned our backup dish to the satellite signal and we had picture.  What are the odds?  With that kind of luck, off he headed to the casinos.  But somehow his satellite aiming luck wasn’t an omen of gambling riches to come, but it is nice that we have satellite signal for our stay here in Vegas.

Guess Where We Are -- Again

So let’s see, we moved north from Tucson to Phoenix and then northwest to Lake Havasu followed by another northerly move to Kingman.  So obviously we are starting our northward migration.  And what is north of Kingman.  Well, enough of this huge suspense.  As if if isn’t obvious, we are back in Las Vegas.

We took a bit of a longer way from Kingman to Las Vegas, passing through Laughlin, Nevada.  We didn’t go that way to stop at any of the Laughlin casinos, but rather we wanted to test further the repairs that had been made on our cooling fan system back at the shop in Tucson.  There is about a 3,000 foot drop down to the Colorado River and an equal climb back up the other side.  The new fan controller worked liked a charm and we now have confidence in it for our tour this year of Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia  and back South.

We are also back at the RV Park of the Main Street Station Casino where we stayed in September and October.  We gave up the 50 amp electrical service we had the last time for 30 amp service this time but gained the shade of some trees in the deal and moved just a bit farther away from the freeway.  It seems to be a good trade as it very likely won’t be necessary to run two ACs.

Gary already has won one small poker tournament and of course we have made our way back to the 777 Brewery at Main Street Station.  Ahhhhh Vegas.

We Have Water!

No, we did not not have a problem with the water system of our motor home.  We have water in the form of a spring on the raw land that we own in Kingman. Arizona.  After we left Lake Havasu City, we moved just over an hour north to Kingman for a few days.  We reported back in November on our visit to the “ranch” on our way south into Arizona.  But at that time the battery on our GPS was no longer holding a charge and we couldn’t use it outside of the car and couldn’t use it to try to locate the spring that at least used to be on the property.  We had a satellite image that suggested the tanks related to the spring were still there at least and we had the coordinates of those tanks, but without a GPS we had been unable to find them.  We had seen some old tanks along the side of a road leading back into the property and we were afraid that they were the tanks from our property  which had been removed as perhaps the spring no longer functioned.  (There is cattle ranching all through the old master ranch from which we bought the property.)

We had chosen a realtor to list our property for sale based on the fact that she and her husband own a remote ranch property with a rustic cabin in the general vicinity of our property.  When we called her to talk about the listing, she volunteered to drive us back to continue our quest to try to find the spring.  So we did not have to rent a pickup truck this time.

 

With our new GPS, we were able to locate the tanks and the first one we came upon was full of water.  We traced the water line up to a spot where it came up out of the ground and found the other older no-longer-used tank nearby as well.

We felt it would be important to be able to advertise in the real estate listing that there is a working spring, but we couldn’t just rely on Gary’s visit of 35 years ago to that spring to be make that claim.  But now we know the spring is there and working.  Just think, when California breaks off from an earthquake and falls into the ocean, this could be your future Pacific beachfront property.

London Bridge

The story of how London Bridge wound up in Lake Havasu City is a very interesting one.  So let’s get on with it.

It all started with a guy named Robert McCulloch.  That is the McCulloch of McCulloch chain saws.  He had some family money and an engineering degree.  His real desire was to make boat motors but it was his lightweight chain saws that brought him his fame and fortune.  But while he was still dabbling in boat motors, he thought he needed a place to test them so he bought some lakefront acreage along Lake Havasu for testing of his motors.

In that era, the 1960s, there was almost nothing in that area.  It was hot, rugged, and desolate.  The Air Air Corps had a little rest camp in that area and that is the property that McCulloch purchased.  He came to like the area and eventually bought about 25 square miles of land in the area, paying about 75 dollars an acre.

He tried to create development in the area, but it was a hard sell when there wasn’t even a decent road into the area.  McCulloch built a factory there in part to foster growth, but he really needed something that would attract the attention of the world.

About that time, the city of London had an old bridge over the Thames River that was sinking and decaying and needed to be replaced.  Rather that tearing it down, they auctioned it off and McCulloch was the winning bidder at $2.4 million.  He had the bridge taken apart block by block with each block being numbered for reassembly.  The blocks where shipped through the Panama Canal and to the Port of Long Beach from where they were trucked to Lake Havasu.  There wasn’t really any part of the lake where the bridge could be used so McCulloch cut a mile long canal that turned a peninsula into an island and created the body of water for his bridge to traverse.

Lake Havasu was still a very remote city and so McCulloch flew in most of his prospective purchasers of lots, built a hotel for them to stay in, and employed a staff of realtors who drove the prospects around in white Jeeps.

Today, Lake Havasu City has a permanent population of around 60,000 and who knows how many for the Winter months.  It is quite a modern town as it has only a short history.

We really liked the town.  We were able to take a boat ride on the Lake in the form of a $2 round trip ferry to an Indian casino on the other side in California. And we resisted the temptation to gamble, just getting right back on the ferry for the return trip.  

Fortunately, we arrived before the peak of the Spring Break crowd arrived; it is a popular Spring Break destination.  We did catch a bit of the early action in a park across the canal.