We made it to Nevada today. We are staying in searchlight Nevada tonight. It is our one and only night in Nevada, and it is only 60ish miles away from Vegas, so we really had no choice but to stop in and say hi to Vegas while we were in the neighborhood.
In all actuallity it was fairly difficult to make our little side trip to Vegas. Searchlight, the town we were staying in was far enough away that we couldn’t change our route and just ride to Vegas instead of staying in searchlight. Also we had to ride 76 miles to get to searchlight, so it wasn’t like we could just ride to Vegas once we got in. The leaders tried to think of all different ways we could make this side trip happen. At one point they were considering flying in one of their parents to rent a van to shuttle us even. However what we ended up doing was a bit more simple. We caught a ride on a bus that normally runs between a casino in searchlight and the same one in Vegas, and then we rented a party bus to drive us back. Considering the large group interested in going it didn’t end up costing too much, however it did come with a fairly major time constraint. The bas was leaving from Searchlight at 1:30pm which meant we all had to be in, and showered by then if we wanted to go. Considering it was a 76 mile day it seemed like a tall order to fill, but we did what we needed to to make it happen including getting up at 4:00am for the first time on the trip so that we could leave with the morning’s first light.
I found the days ride to be very enjoyable, though also very challanging. The best part was the first six miles. We were on a back road that was just a little hilly with some good curves, and since it was 5:30am when we left there wasn’t much traffic to worry about. After that we had a short climb and then a long decent until mile 20 when the mountains started. We were trading off long climbs and decents as we crossed the Colorado river into Nevada, and continued with more of the same through lunch when the decents dropped off until we hit highway 95 where it was just straight as an arrow with a very slight incline and a great tailwind all the way into Searchlight.
I made it in sometime right around noon which isn’t bad for a 76 mile day. Showers were provided for us at a local motel, so once I got in I quickly showered and got myself to the casino where the bus was going to pick us up.
The bus ride in was nothing special and took a bit longer than I would have liked, we didn’t getting off until almost 4:00 pm. We got dropped off at Cesars palace and the first thing we had to do was get food. We decided just to walk around and find something so we went into the forum shops and ended up going to Max Brenner which is some kind of chocloate shop that also sells food. My dinner was good, but the desert was great. It was a little chocloate cake with rasberry filling with a side of vanilla icecreal and a shot of chocloate milk.
Once we finished dinner we headed off to treasure island casino for our show. Our large group or riders all split off once we got to Vegas, all wanting to do different things without time there. I want off the group who wanted to see a show. We saw mystere, which is one of the cirque du soleil shows showing. We all really wanted to see Love which is the beatles cirque show but it doesn’t show on Tuesdays si we went to mystere instead. None of us were disapointed at all in the show we got to see it was amaizing. The things the preformers were able to do was just stunning and beautiful, in ways I just can’t do justice to describe to you here.
After the show ended we still had some time left before the bus picked us up, so I went and saw the fountain show at the bellagio and then lost my 5 dollars to the slot machines there. Since I didn’t win a new car on the slot machines I then packed it up and made my way back to the bus. The bus picked us up at 11pm. We had to make one stop at a 7/11 because one of our riders enjoyed vegas a bit too much, but we all made it back to Searchlight by 12:30am, when we all proceded to pass out.
It was a late night, and a difficult journey to get there, but in all it was another fantastic day on bike and build and I wouldn’t have and it any other way.
Too bad you didn’t call John Belgeri. He would have enjoyed seeing you
Mom