I got up this morning and knowing I had to pick up Nikki at the airport in Vegas about 4:00 (6:00pm Central).  So I decided to go to Nelson, Nevada. Nelson is an old mining town now turned ghost town.  People do live there but the “town” is mostly a mix of scattered residences with dilapidated structures in between.  Just beyond this is a general store and more structures renascent of the old west and similar to the feeling of a Madmax movie.  This is where you can go and photograph.  The proprietor of the store and surrounding area will let you wonder the property for a fee of $10 an hour.  If you love old stuff this is the place for you.  When I got there it was high noon and the light wasn’t the best plus I don’t photograph stuff like this much so I wasn’t sure where to start.  But the property itself was interesting and had a lot to offer.  The proprietor of the property was nearly as interesting as the stuff around the property.  He let me and other coming in about the movies filmed there.  “3000 Miles to Graceland” with Kevin Costner has a plane crash scene on the piece of land across the street which still lies in a heap as if face planted into the side of a hill.  Other movies were filmed at this place as well as some popular video game scenes.  There was some independent/B-movies being filmed there that week.  The property has a lot of old cars, signs, parts and pieces of machinery, and old structures.  Definitely worth the price if you love this kind of thing.  On a note of caution you have to be wary on the property.  The owner said he has 20 or so rattlesnakes he carries off from time to time, there are also cacti that are barbed that if you lightly brush against them will stick you.  The needles of the cacti are barbed so it takes several hours to remove.  He has pictures of both people who have been in contact with the cacti and bitten by a rattlesnake.   Trust me the rattlesnake bite pictures are enough to make you just pick up your tripod and head home.  So between the Cactus needles and watching the ground for snakes I wouldn’t call it the most enjoyable photographing experience.  I spent an hour roaming the property  but didn’t shoot a whole lot of photos.  I stuck around an extra 20 minutes listening to the owner tell stories to the people coming in then headed for a McDonald’s in Vegas to write up the last blog.

Vegas…   Well it was raining in Vegas, which according to locals almost never happens.  Nikki’s plane was circling in a holding pattern and I had no way of knowing so I found myself circling the pickup area of the airport until the traffic control guard finally told me to park stating I could leave the parking area every 12 minutes and not get charged.  I did but by that time Nikki was coming out of the airport.  We headed for our hotel with the rain sprinkling off and on.  We had booked the hotel, The Golden Nugget, before we left.  It was a pretty nice hotel and it doesn’t cost a lot.  We decided to leave the hotel which is on Fremont Street, which is the old part of Vegas, they have done a lot to keep it up to date.  They have a large curved screen over the street and closed it to traffic so you can walk it at leisure.  They sell drinks on the street and people go around with beer, liquor, and mixed drinks in their hands.  No such thing as public drunkenness here.   Food and drinks are relatively inexpensive, things like a beer, hotdog, and chips (all together) will set you back $2.  They have all you can eat prime rib for $7.95.  Nikki and I did not partake though, after walking up and down Fremont street we decided to head to the strip with all the newer themed hotels.  We got a 24 hour bus pass for $7 each and hopped on a bus. We arrived at our stop, the Bellagio, in about 10 minutes (much easier then driving).  We witnessed the Bellagio fountains which were very nice.  We walked inside the hotel thinking we could find a nice place to eat but found out it was too expensive to eat inside.  We opted for a P.F.Changs across the street.  After dinner we did a lot of walking around the strip. 

So why did I title this Vegas…, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly?  Well let me tell you.  The hotels, and some of the activities are nice, the lights and vegas shows are wonderful. The prices are good in parts of vegas.  The Bad is this; the strip is loaded with people handing out baseball card size porn images advertising strip clubs.  I don’t mean a few I mean like 30 per block or so.  They snap the cards to make noise and if they see you look towards them they try to get you to take these cards from them as they get paid for how many they hand out.  After a few feet you’ll see where people have thrown them on the ground so the streets are paved with baseball size cards depicting bare breasted women.  And the worst is there are people there with their young children.  And it is all legal.  Also bad is the scamming.  The next morning Nikki wanted to see the casino New York, New York.  As we were walking around and taking some photos.  We got close to what we thought were hotel greeters.  They saw us admiring the Statue of Liberty made out of Jelly-Belly jelly beans.  They asked where we were from and Nikki told them we were on our anniversary.  They acted like they thought that was wonderful and asked if we would like a comped meal at a nice steak restaurant in the casino we said sure, so they preceded to fill out a ticket for $100 dollars for the restaurant and asked for our names, then they asked where we were staying and we told them they they started a sales pitch about some condos they were marketing then the “a-ha” moment came.  We had to attend a seminar on the condos for about three hours (they were busing us off to somewhere) then we would get the meal voucher.  We declined but it was very tricky how they lead us down the path.  Nikki asked me why the casino would allow marketing for a condo as it would take business away from the casino.  I told her I had heard that vegas was mostly owned by the big casinos so they probably owned the condos in question.  We ate inside New York, New York and went on to the wax museum (very cool, ask outside attendant for coupon) near the venetian.  The venetian was probably the coolest casino we saw.  Everything inside the shops there is very expensive. Two gelato cones and a water was $17.  

Now for the Ugly…  Vegas is a place that has a lot of weird people.  People who seem like they belong in a mental health facility, broke and homeless people.  People having arguments with themselves in the streets.  Nikki found herself clinging to my arm more then once.  I never really felt scared, I had mace in my pocket, but it was indeed a different environment then I am used to in small town america.  I both loved and loathed Las Vegas.  I liked the hotels, the price for some things, Cirque De Soleil was very cool, or the acrobatics were anyway, the street performers were very cool and the look-a-likes too, Kudos to the Snoop Dogg look-a-like who I thought might really be him.  The Michael Jackson impersonator was good too.  I could have done without the porn “pushers” and the scamming, and the drunks and crazies.

Nikki and I were ready to go by the next day.  We would have liked to have seen more of the hotels and some of the other aspects of the city but glad to leave behind the street scene.  We headed for the Grand Canyon and Sedona.