The Las Vegas Hilton Casino is “Star Wars” themed! It has always been “Star Wars” themed. I stayed here on my very first visit to Las Vegas back in…..gosh, back in…..well, let’s see here, I was 21 years old when I first visited Vegas, so that was…..HEY, that would give my age away! Forgot it! LOL! You almost got me there….LOL!

You enter thru this door to go to the other side of the casino area……

Neat slot machines……

So those pictures were inside the Las Vegas Casino. Very nice.

Today we walked from Circus Circus Casino to Sahara Casino and then to the Stratosphere Casino…..it was a long walk but in nice weather, so nice to enjoy the outdoors…..

It seems like Las Vegas is always under construction…..

There’s the Stratosphere Casino…..

There’s the Sahara Casino…….

There’s both casinos…….as you can see we have quite a walk……

Okay, we are back to the RV park. If you want to call this an RV park. No one is really here and this RV park is never over half full. As you can see there is a lot of open spots here.

On this side of the park. Picture above was to my right, picture below is to my left. This is the section of the RV park for monthly tenants. The empty section to my right is for daily tenants. Of course a big price difference. Can you see our RV??

There, I got a little closer to our RV. We kind of spread out a little bit!

Well, other than that, I met some online friends at the Beer and Blog meet up we had tonight. It was nice to talk to others in the area that are always online and talking tech stuff. These group of people get together once a week to talk about blogging, tech gadgets, and beer! They are pretty cool and I did have a great time. They eagerly accepted me into their group once I told them I’m an online social networking addict too! Ha!

Well, I hope you had a great week. It’s Friday!!!! And Superbowl weekend! It should be very busy here in Vegas for the Superbowl and I’ll bring my camera with me to catch some good shots for ya! Have a good night. I’ll be back tomorrow!

That’s what happened today. Did I win a lot? Not a lot, but I stayed within a small profit all day today. I won some money in Keno and I won some money on those Red 7 slot machines! Gotta love those 7’s!

I was talking to someone the other day, a friend of mine back home (he doesn’t read my blog so I can tell ya this story without making him feel bad), anyways, he was asking me if it was really as dangerous out here as he has heard. I would love to know where he “heard” this from. He said, “It must be dangerous there, a lot of robberies, shootings?” I looked around and I admit, I would think twice about walking down a dark back alley here, but  overall it’s pretty safe. I’ve been here, gosh, at least 10 times in the last 15 years and I don’t think I’ve really ever feel unsafe in a heavy tourist area of Las Vegas. Yeah, I said, “heavy tourist” where cops already roam around. I’ve never seen a casino get robbed, I’ve never even seen a gun pulled in Las Vegas, and I’ve never felt my life was at risk here. So don’t be afraid to come to Las Vegas.

Other than that, everything is quiet. Jake is doing great. He’s eating a lot lately and going for plenty of walks around the RV park. I don’t have pictures today, but I’ll get some tomorrow if we do something interesting! Have a great night and thanks for checking on me.

After we all got our bus tickets, we walked around Fremont Street, but during the day it’s very limited action there and I lost 30 dollars. We then took the bus down to the brand new casino and mall named Aria down by the Monte Carlo on the Las Vegas strip. The Aria is huge, you can definitely get lost in there. We walked around and explored the mall and casino. This is a three level mall and the casino is on the second floor. It was about lunch time and we ate at the buffet at this resort. Very good food, but remember, you get what you pay for, it was a tad pricey.

When we left the Aria it was raining. We found a bus stop and rode the bus back to the RV park. Now we are just hanging out until we go out a little later tonight. I hope it stops raining. Let’s look at some pictures.

This is Fremont Street…..it looks alot neater at night…..

These following pictures are of Aria Casino and Resort…..

Outside the Aria is a wall waterfall surrounding the valet parking area…..

Where we ate lunch today at their buffet…..this is my strawberry shortcake dessert and brownie……yum!

Well, that’s it for today. We are back in the RV and it is pouring out. It’s actually coming down alot worse than an hour ago. Hmmmmm, maybe I will stay in. I see Jake is a little nervous about the weather. Have a good night.

So, what did we do today? Packed up a little bit. It was a tad windy today with winds getting up to 30 mph. We loaded the bicycles on the RV and packed away the outside table and all the chairs. We are not in a rush to leave in the morning. Laughlin is a little over 200 miles from Yuma! Easy skip over to there. Tonight we went to the Quechan Casino, ugh, I didn’t do too well at all there today, lost about 100 bucks.

As for Jake, he’s doing super! He eats his new food twice a day, takes his medicine twice a day and has a treat once a day. I got two emails today asking how he’s doing. I’ve got people calling me “Crash” and asking how Jake is doing. “Hey Crash, how is Jake doing?” Nice, huh? I’ve got great friends! In the slight chance that you were wonder how I’m doing. I’m doing great. Healing nicely, the hand and knee will take a little longer to get better, but I can walk just fine. Don’t need a disability plaque card just yet

All in all, everything is great. Arizona was fun and we did a lot, but time to move on. Hope everyone is doing good and thanks for checking on me (or checking on Jake!) – LOL!

This morning wasn’t too bad. I called the vet here just down the road from us and scheduled an appointment for Jake. If you’ve been following along you know that he hasn’t been keeping his food down at all for the past three days. He eats and four hours later, it come up and lands somewhere on the floor of the RV. Poor little guy.

So enough is enough. Time to bring in the professionals and no, we didn’t change his diet at all. Same food as always. So I called up a local veterinarian at 8am and and ask for an appointment to bring the little guy in. They tell me “Thursday at 3pm.” I laugh! That’s not going to happen. So I say, “How about today?” They say they have nothing open for appointments until Thursday at 3pm unless I do an “emergency walk-in”. Oh, so I ask, “How much is the walk-in going to cost me.?” They say “65 dollar office visit fee” I say, “How much is the office visit if I make an appointment?” They tell me 45 dollars and I tell them I will be in today. They tell me to come in between 11am and 2pm.

Okay, so we hang out until 11am and say goodbye to our neighbor who is leaving for a week to go to Quartzsite. Quartzsite is nice, it’s in Arizona and it’s an hour north of where we are, I’ve been there before, it’s a huge outdoor RV and Sport Expo show. Hundreds of thousands of RVs come together to hang out for a week, shopping, and checking out all the neat RV vendors that come to town to sell what they are selling, from RV club memberships to health products to heater units to everything that you can imagine using in or with an RV. Not sure if we will hit Quartzsite this year, we will try. So we say our goodbyes to our neighbor and off she goes…..

Anyways, we get to the veterinarian office at 11:30 and of course, with being a walk-in, it’s now a waiting game. We see the doctor at 1pm and I’ve never seen any doctor come to a conclusion of what’s wrong with Jake in a matter of minutes. I brought all of Jake’s papers with him from his doctor’s in New Hampshire and after I tell her what he’s recently been doing (being sick), she comes up with “Intestinal Lymphangiectasia” and nails on the head every previous symptoms that Jake has been through in his life. Bloated tummy sometimes? Yes. Difficulty breathing at times? Yes. Low protein level? Yes. So the doctor does a blood test on Jake and it comes back great because of the pills I have him on to increase lack of protein from my doctor in New Hampshire. Yes, this is an on going case of lack of protein that never had a title to it until today.

So, I’m excited to get some solid information on this disease. Yes, it is a disease and I’m happy to know that if I treat it right, the disease and symptoms will settle down and Jake can still live a normal, long, life. She puts him on a totally new food by Science Diet and we get some dry food for him, some canned food for him, and Science Diet even makes treats we can feed him twice a day. She also took one x-ray in case something was lodged down his throat causing the sickness after eating his meal. The x-ray came back perfect, nothing inside of him that shouldn’t be. She also gives him three shots and Jake didn’t care for that too much as he screamed so loud after the third shot, it echoed within the small room we were in. Poor guy.

After I pay the bill of $310.48 to be exact including the purchase of food and treats, we leave the office with our new information and go back home. It didn’t take Jake long to fall sleep on the couch after his big day, so we leave him alone. Oh, before I get too far, if you want more information on Intestinal Lymphangiectasia you can click HERE to read more about it. After Jake falls asleep, Mom hops on the laptop and my Dad and I take the electric bicycles out.

Well, I guess it wasn’t my day because I lost traction on a dirt patch with the electric bicycle and it was all over. I went down and it wasn’t good. Three cars stopped around me to help because I must of scraped up myself pretty bad. So, we managed to get back to the RV and I clean myself up checking out the damage. And damage there was! My right knee is swollen, both my hands are scraped up pretty bad, and the side of my face will probably turn black and blue for the next 20 years with two cuts, one below my eye and one below my cheek bone.

You wait! Someone will walk by me and say, “Ohhh, honey, don’t do that to yourself, leave the guy, he isn’t worth it.” Yeah, I look THAT bad. Ha! Yes, now I laugh because I’m in bed doped up on pills killing all the pain and that Tylenol PM is about to kick in…..

BUT, wait…..wait…..my day isn’t done! Nooooo, you think a couple of scrap and the sight of blood is going to hold me down??? No way, we went to the Paradise Casino tonight! Hey, I had to do something to make me feel better. You betcha we went! And I won! Woo-Hoo! I won 70 dollars on the Quick Hits slot machine and I won 422 dollars on the Keno machine getting 7 out of 8 numbers!

Ahhhhh, my day is now complete. I’m still in pain that is masked by pills, I dread looking in the mirror tomorrow at all the day-after damage, and actually I’m not sure how I will get out of bed tomorrow.

Hey, retirement isn’t always soft and cushy, there will be bumps and bruises along the way that you will deal with. Take it as it comes, take it easy, and tomorrow will be a better day.

Have a great night and thanks for checking on me!

Today, we didn’t do too much. I’ve got a friend from back home, he and his wife come to Yuma in the winter like us, so he emailed me and told me he was down here, but when we stopped by today (3 miles from our RV park), they weren’t home. But, that’s okay, because we will try to visit again shortly. He emailed me and told me that most of New Hampshire is hanging out over there! I’ll have to go check out that party……

Today we went to the flea market. It was a short trip just to stop by and our neighbor bought some some stuff for her RV. After that we went to pick some oranges in the……what do you call it……orange farm…..fruit farm……well, it’s a lot area with orange trees, grapefruit trees, and lemon trees. Don’t touch those lemon trees, they have those thorns on them that will bite you if you get close enough So, we got some oranges and I pulled out some lemons from the lemon tree with a “picker” that has a wooden stick handle. Alot of the fruit has been picked already, but this picker thing helped to get some of the fruit off the top area of the tree.

We returned to the RV and relaxed in the afternoon, very hot in the sun today…..didn’t do much and then 4:30 rolled around and it was time for dinner. The recreational hall had a dinner tonight and I love these types of dinners. We had to buy tickets to this two days ago and it’s so worth it. You pay $6 per person and you get your choice of a steak, chicken, or pork. So I choose steak and tonight they gave me my uncooked steak and I went outside the rec hall to one of the 6 or 7 pre-heated grills that they provided and I cooked my own steak. And I’ll be darned, I’m a pretty good cook! Couldn’t believe it. Came out perfect! After I cooked my steak, I took it back inside and went to the buffet style table set up and got my baked potato, corn, bread, and salad and then went to my table. Yeah, just like that. It was too cool! Me, personally, I’m not that fluent with grill cooking. I don’t get that much practice cooking with fire, but I did it and it turned out great. My steak came out medium-well and no one got hurt. Can’t wait to do it again! There’s another dinner just like this one coming up later this month. I can’t wait to go.

Later tonight we went shopping. Our neighbor wanted to buy these mini speakers that you use on a laptop to get great sound quality. So we visited Staples and he found ones that he liked and I ran across the E-Book Reader by Sony. I’ve heard of these, read about these, but never actually seen them. I didn’t thing they were so big, I was thinking maybe the size of a blackberry, but these E-Readers (or whatever you call them) come with a 6 inch screen and I guess the Kindle now comes with a 9 inch screen. Too Cool! I was browsing around in Staples for the Ipod Touch (I was dreaming of getting one), but ran across these E-Readers on display and it just caught my attention. I love to read and I can easily get lost in Barnes and Nobles and I’ve spent a couple of thousands of dollars in books…….so I was thinking…hmmmm…maybe I can keep reading and not have so many books stack up in the corner that I never touch again after I read them. And THEN I saw that the Sony E-Reader holds 350 books and my excitement started all over again! And then my eyes swiped the price and my excitement didn’t last too long. Wow, they aren’t giving those away for free, huh? So, tell me, tell me, tell me, do you have one of these E-Readers?? And I don’t want to hear Yes or No, I want the scoop!!! Tell me which one you have, why you love it, and if you hate it, I want to know whyyyyyy……

You have a good night and I’m still thinking of all the comments I’ve gotten so far – You guys rock! Nite Nite!

This morning was “Jake” time! He wasn’t feeling so good yesterday, but now, he’s back to normal again. Whatever was wrong with him to make him sick yesterday had now moved on and Jake is back to his good old self again. We went for a walk this morning. I got a few pictures around the park, not many, but it’ll give you an idea of what’s around me…..look, alot of empty sites for you to come on down and perch with me!!!

That’s our street….there are some RVs already and in January it is suppose to be loaded, packed full here, so you better hurry if you are coming down to hang out with me…..

This is our street, home is at the end of the street…..I’ll let Jake lead the way!

We are almost there…..This RV Park has manufactured homes in it too, at the other end of the park, and on this side of the park is mostly all RVs…..

See! There we are….The RV closest to you is our neighbor we hang out with….she is showing us all the good places to go! And the Montana is right next to it! Nope, not much grass around here……

Okay, around 1pm we left to go to a Tamale Festival in Somerton, Arizona. Do you know what a Tamale is?? Me neither!! So, let’s check it out……

This is a picture of the T-Shirt you could buy for 10 dollars…..I didn’t buy one…….

They have a live band here….they  were playing music from Santana…..

Alot of vendors are here to sell food…..

What’s the commotion down the street?? Of course I’m going to go check it out – Ha!

Ohhh, they were showing everyone what “Zumba” is! Do you know what Zumba is? I do…I’ve done Zumba before! It’s alot of fun! And you want to hear something funny…..this Zumba team is here from the Cocopah Casino! The Cocopah Casino has Zumba in it’s huge conference room every Tuesday night from 7pm to 9pm. I’m thinking about going……

Awww, now they have another dance show with kids!

Tap dancers made their debut here at the festival! They are very good too…..

Okay, enough fooling around….we are going to find out what the heck is a Tamale!! This is what it looks like….I’m glad I got a picture of this because I don’t know how to explain it to you….

Well, let’s get one…..HA! We got one and didn’t know what to do with it. We were talking to the vendor lady that we ordered it from and asked her, “Do we eat this part?” Meaning the outside part of it. She smiled that big smile and said, “Noooooo, here, let me fix it for ya.” So, she was really nice about it and she showed us how to open it up and peel out the inside….

Scrap, Scrap, Scrap……

Add some fixin’s to it and Viola! Yeah, I tasted it….well, it taste kind of bland. There really wasn’t any taste to it. I don’t know…if you want to try one, come on down, I’ll “fix” it up for ya!

NOW we are in my favorite area! This is my Margarita man…..he is here from the “3 Amigos Tequila” company serving up mini Margaritas for free to pass out…….

Okay, I got my Margarita and my free T-Shirt…..

There are alot of people here. Tequila, 72 degrees outside, and food….yeah, I see why it’s packed here……

What is that?????? Is that a……

YES!!! I wanted to go over and hug it!! A slot machine!!!! Oh Boy!!!!!

I got three free spins on this slot machine, I lost, my Mom won a T-Shirt because she hit the bonus on the slot machine with her three free spins. Then we decided to leave…….we were driving around and, wow, they were picking the lettuce field on a Saturday. They usually don’t work on a Saturday……

Okay, we stopped and there’s our neighbor (our driver too) out there waiting to get free lettuce….You think that those workers are going to stop working, get some lettuce, and bring it to her????

Yep, take a look. The guy in the blue shirt in the background asked her how many she wanted and she said, “Two” and sure enough…..

He gives them to her…..

Another happy customer with her fresh lettuce. OH, you can not tip these workers. They absolutely will not take any money from you at all. And the guy in the blue shirt goes back to work…..

Okay, that’s all we picked up from the field today. We are on a roll and decided to stop at Paradise Casino (you knew THAT was coming up didn’t ya – ha!), so on the way to Paradise we had to go down these back roads (short cut roads) and there were cats all over the place……not sure why….I guess someone is feeding them……

So we went to the Paradise Casino and of course I couldn’t bring my camera inside….that’s a no no, unless I sneak it in….and I really didn’t want to get kicked out. So we spend about an hour at the Paradise Casino and I won $35 on Keno. They have the Keno on the slot machine (not live Keno), and I had a good time…..

After we left Paradise Casino, we went out for dinner. So, let’s head over to the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant!!! Have you been to this restaurant before?? They have peanuts everywhere!

Yep, I’ll take some of those…..

Oh, our name is called and I can’t wait to open the menu……I’m hungry…..

I know! I know! I take pictures of everything! I brought my camera with me……I order the ribs and the salad. Very good food there…..

And of course!! An appetizer……we had a coupon for a free onion blossom…..

I got a to-go box. Did I finish all my food? Yeah, I did….but I still got a to-go box, bet you’re wondering why……

Yum! Peanuts! The waiter says, “I don’t see anything, I don’t know anything” Haha! So we walked out and I brought my peanuts home with me…..

Well, I know that’s alot of pictures, but I wanted to share my day with you! I hope you enjoyed my blog because I had a great day today. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day and I hope that’s exactly what we do – relax and hang out! But you know us, we could be doing anything, so check back tomorrow so we what we do! And don’t forget to leave me a comment. Nite Nite!

Hi! Well, I guess what I meant to say is when you buy lemons from a road side fruit stand, this is what you get……

We stop by the road side farm……just a pick truck on the side of the road with the bed of the truck filled with bags of oranges, lemons, and grapefruits. A bag of lemons (probably 10 lemons inside the bag) was $2.50 – not bad, huh! I couldn’t resist! So we got out the electric juice machine and…..tra-da – Lemonade!

Electric juice machine, electric bicycles….yeah, yeah, I know, we are lazy……LOL!

I think later this week or next week we are going to an actual farm (actual farm! Ha, I’m such a city girl!) to pick our own oranges and grapefruits right off the tree. Yep, we walk into acres of trees and start picking all the fruit we want. We did it last winter too. One of those 5 gallon pails filled is $3.00. Don’t tell me you can’t live affordably healthy down here. We used five lemons today and we will use the rest next week. OH, I forgot to tell ya, speaking of affordable healthy food…..that corn on the cob we bought at the flea market was so good. It was 5 for a $1 dollar and we are going back there to get more too.

Oh, the news last night on TV…..I took this picture with my Blackberry of the TV screen. Is that legal? Anyways, yep, that’s the weather here…..I knew if I told ya, you wouldn’t believe me, so I decided to show ya…..nice weather, huh?

And no blog is complete without a picture of Jake. He’s doing good too. We went shopping today at Lowe’s and we put him in the basket seat and rolled him around the store shopping. We picked up some little things here and there for the RV. Nothing important…..it’s just that the molding is falling down from our ceiling, but we took care of that. Nothing a staple gun and a little bit of paint can’t handle!

Hmmm, that’s all we did today. It’s 6:21pm now and usually, well most of the time, I do my blog entries late at night around 10pm or 11pm, but tonight you are getting an early blog entry because after I publishing this one, I’m shutting down the computer, and I’m going to the pool for a while, and then I’m going in the hot tub, and then I’m going to run back to the RV before the temperature drops below 50 degrees and I freeze between the pool and the RV. HA! Okay, I’m outta here. Have a great night, I’ll talk to you tomorrow!

I walked Jake around the RV Park, went for a bicycle ride with Jake in the front basket around the RV Park, and went to Bingo tonight at the Paradise Casino (no, not with Jake ) and I didn’t win a darn penny! Bingo is 6pm to 8:30pm every night, but I just go on Monday nights because it’s a night that is not very busy. Tonight there must of been 50 people there and I still couldn’t win. Ha!

Today was a very nice day out today and I’m glad I spent most of the day outside enjoying it. It must of been touching 70 degrees today and it’s suppose to be nice the rest of the week. “Nice” meaning in the 70’s all week.

This week we are going to Castle Dome….I’m not really sure what this place is. A mine? A small town? Outlaw land of the cowboys? Not really sure but someone recommended that we go see it and it’s not too far away either, just a few miles.

Other than that, I’m not sure what’s in store for tomorrow, but I’ll have my camera, so on check on me tomorrow!

Have a good night!

Hi! We didn’t do much today. This morning around 10am we headed off to the Quechan Casino. It was a last minute decision, or maybe I was just the last one to know, but anyways, I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast so when we got to the casino, I took advantage of their buffet! I got one of those player’s cards and that magic card took 2 dollars off my buffet bill, so I ate for $4.95 instead of the regular price of $6.95. Yeah, the highlight of my day, huh? So I scouted around for a Keno machine. They don’t have live Keno there, but they have those Multi-Games machines where you can play Poker or Keno on. So I found a Keno machine. I love Keno! $40 bucks lasted me 3 hours at that machine. I left with cashing out $17.11. So I lost, but it’s okay, I had a great time. I love Keno! (I know I said that already!)

So we came back home and our neighbor helped Dad install the screen for our RV….now, hang on, let me explain this to ya. We bought one of those screens that hook to the end of the awning and comes down to the ground blocking the sun out. I couldn’t get a picture of it today because by the time it was all set up and the guys got done fooling around with it, the sun went down, but I have to get a picture of this tomorrow, it is so cool! Looks great tomorrow. I’ll get pictures tomorrow.

Tonight at the recreational hall was Card Bingo at 7pm. I’ve never played Card Bingo before and it’s pretty easy and I like it alot. You play Bingo with playing cards and four players. Each player gets 13 cards and then the cards are called out by an announcer, and if your card matches his card you place that particular card in a pile in the middle of the table and whoever is out of cards first is the winner. Pretty easy, pretty simple. Now, that is every Wednesday night at the recreational hall. Hey, I’m getting my schedule set up here. I’ve got Bingo at the Paradise Casino on Monday nights, I’ve got Card Bingo at the recreational hall on Wednesday nights, okay, I’m ready to retire. I can live with this schedule. We played 13 games tonight and it lasted an hour and a half.

Tomorrow we are going back to the Flea Market to look around and pick  up some more corn. We bought some corn on the cob last time we were there for 5 for a dollar and it was super good, so we are going to mosey around and get some more corn. Hey, when you live the retired life, it’s the little things that count!

I did watch the weather today on TV and saw the snow up north. Some people emailed me and let me know just how long they had shoveled for today. Tell me how you are managing with all that snow. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment! Well, I’m going to call it a night, so I’ll be back tomorrow with picture. Promise!