Las Vegas stop on our cross country RV Trip 6 nights

intro
Welcome to RView podcast where we talk about life travel and real estate. Join George and Lisa Hernandez each week as they share insights and parenting tips about their life as a blended family with for teens, their crazy travel and adventures and get Lisa’s input about real estate as she juggled it all while still managing her Top Producing real estate brokerage view properties.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, friends. Welcome back to our view podcast. I’m Lisa RichartHernandez.

George
And I’m George Hernandez.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And we are going to continue today with our trip details as we left Hawthorne, Nevada, and we drove into Las Vegas.

George
Yes, one of my favorite places. We go to Vegas quite often, we used to go like twice a year. But

Lisa RichartHernandez
we’re so fun. We’re back, George and I met in Las Vegas. And that’s where our love affair began. And then we had our bachelor bachelorette party there together when we got married. How much fun really like to play poker and we like to gamble. And we just enjoyed Las Vegas a lot. But we had never ever been there an RV. And when we talked about getting an RV and when we got the RV, we’re like, wouldn’t it be so cool if we could take this thing to Vegas? And it’s just if we were to drive straight directly from Charleston, South Carolina to Las Vegas. And we drove full on pretty much every day. It’d be about a four, three to four day trip.

George
No, it would definitely be for closer to four to five.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so that’s a lot of driving. And I was like, we’re just gonna fly there. And stay in a fancy hotel.

George
That was before we had RV.

Lisa RichartHernandez
No, it was when we even when we had the RV. Anyways, I didn’t want to drive five days to get where I could just fly.

George
Oh, in the old days when the old coach Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah. So when we plan this trip, we debated we were excited because we were already going to be on the west coast to the United States. And we debated whether or not we should go to Las Vegas at all, because of COVID. So many things are closed down. So we debated back and forth about that. And we thought okay, well let’s just spend a couple of days there. And we had stocked this place online. Like us for years before we ended about there and it’s called the Las Vegas motorcoach resort. And this is a Luxury RV Resort. It’s a it’s only for a class. I don’t know if you can stay in a B or C class. They’re drivable units, no tow behind. No trailers, no fifth wheels, nothing like mostly what’s in here and they have to be less than 10 years old, is a luxury motorcoach which we have a 2018 40 foot tiffin Phaeton, and we’ve been in there just fine. But this place if you’re going to splurge on camping, quote unquote, camping, yeah, it is definitely more of a resort than a campground, which are fraught with Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we were super excited to try that out. And we sounds we were when we ended up having to be rerouted from the Sequoia National Park. We ended up having to go east to the Sierras. That’s how we ended up in Hawthorne. And we added two days to our to our stay in Las Vegas. And we were fortunate enough to get a space there for six nights?

George
Six nights. They had to twist my arm. But we did it you know what else we got to do?

Lisa RichartHernandez
We This is another place that we almost bought a lot at they had the lots of range in price from I think they were around like 150 starting up to four or 500,000 for an RV lot.

George
Yes. And then that was that one ridiculous one that was like 800,000

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so they had little casinos and outdoor kitchens. The place we stayed on how to fireplace, outdoor kitchen. Really, really beautifully landscaped?

George
All the lots were beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And some were still just the bare pad and then some were completely over the top. Two of the lots were I guess owned by Siegfried and Roy

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh yeah, you could tell the ones that were Oh,

George
and all statues of animals all over both of the lots is actually pretty cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, if I have any pictures like I have to post those to our to our website because that was pretty funny. Actually.

George
I do need hold on I need to correct you in something you said you can bring a tow behind vehicle. You said no tow behind. Well, no no trailers no

Lisa RichartHernandez
like a fifth wheel.

George
I can’t right right.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay drivable you know, fifth wheel, tell your your car Jeep or whatever like our jeep. We can go there. But you can’t say in anything else. Aside from an A class,

George
but the place is absolutely beautiful. The landscaping is beautiful. They had what six pools?

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s 41 acres and they have a nine hole led a lighted putting course. Tennis, tennis pickleball they had like a 10,000 square foot entertainment facility. We didn’t really get to go inside there very much because of COVID but they have a concert hall like big flat screen TVs and outdoor kitchen. I mean it looks like when it’s not COVID it’s probably really nice. Upstairs. They

George
have a full bar.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, outside outside. Like exercise equipment, sauna. Really nice showers. Yeah, everything is really, really nice.

George
Part of the property is a diner.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, there’s a restaurant on site, which is great. So if you don’t have a tow vehicle, this is a great place to go. You can just you know, literally go to the diner for it was open from eight in the morning until about two o’clock, I think

George
breakfast and lunch, no dinner.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And it was very good. I think probably the best avocado toast I’ve really ever had. They’re really really, really good. So it was like a diner but it was a little bit you know, kind of upscale for a diner, I guess. And we really enjoyed that. We went there one time.

George
The LVM is conveniently located it is at the end of the strip on the I don’t know if it’s north, south, east or west but it’s on the

Lisa RichartHernandez
MGM

George
at Mandalay Bay Mandalay Bay side Mandalay Bay. So we Bluebird everywhere. And I think our most expensive Uber was $20, because we went to Fremont, which is on the complete opposite end of the strip, if that gives you an idea of Uber expense. Yeah. And then the casinos, let’s let’s talk about that. That was quite the experience with the COVID. I think things have opened up a little bit more. Since we’ve been there. They’ve opened up shows. So there’s some shows going on. When we were there. There were no shows.

Lisa RichartHernandez
All right. So it’s November, and we did this trip. It was the end of September. And so we’re a little behind in our podcasts updates. So I don’t know what’s really changed in in Las Vegas since then. But back in September, there was the mandatory masks. And then, for example, at the blackjack table where there would normally be six players, there was only three. So everything was at 50% capacity. So like the every other slot machine was turned off. Yeah. And how do they do roulette, same half,

George
half, three people per table. So basically, they just put three chairs and that was it. And then in roulette was the table was open. And what I mean by that is when you sat at blackjack, you sat like in your own little pod of plexiglass. It’s kind of weird. Same thing with poker. I played in a poker tournament took third plays, by the way. Thank you very much.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, we’re gonna play that poker tournament.

George
Where did I play that one? Oh, at South point casino.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, okay.

George
They ran a very nice poker tournament. So if anybody’s in Vegas, go to South point casino. They run a great,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah. Actually, let’s talk about South point casino just for a second because it’s not on the strip. And it’s a place that we found kind of by accident, when we were looking, researching foodie restaurants to go to and they have this really cool place. That’s like an old school Steakhouse. So it

George
used to be a private club for high rollers only. And their big claim to fame is that’s where the Rat Pack hung out. And they have pictures of Frank Sinatra or the whole Rat Pack inside the place. But they, whether we go there about five years ago,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t think it was that long. It’s called Michaels. gourami remodels Go on, and it’s like, Hi, red velvet.

George
It’s everything you would imagine Vegas to be when Vegas was Vegas

Lisa RichartHernandez
booths. And I mean, the waiters all wore tuxedos, and they give you this gigantic fruit platter at the end. And all these like, I don’t know what wasn’t it like olives and pickles.

George
Yeah, all of them pickled tray.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, it’s almost like a 70s throwback, kind of, but it was very good. Really like a really unique special place that you may not ever think to go to. It’s called Michaels gourmet room and it is in southpoint You know, and the service is spectacular.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So that’s how we found southpoint in the first place. And we prefer that a little bit over the, okay. So all of the casinos that we normally go to on the strip, like Caesars where we, there’s m life, and there’s total rewards. And I think we do more with the total referral rewards. So we try to stay at their properties. And Caesars for example is one of those. And when we go to Caesars, the minimum, the minimum tables were like $25 minimum hands,

George
and Blackjack and everything roulette Yeah. So looting roulette, which is a $25. You got to lay out $25 in chips,

Lisa RichartHernandez
which is we we, I mean, yeah, Surely it’s $5. No, usually it’s like $10. At night, on a Friday or Saturday. You get a $10 roulette table. So we were there with some friends that are come in from Charleston. We met them at Caesars and had a couple cocktails, and we said, oh, let’s go hit the tables and play some blackjack. And we just wandered around. We’re like, This is crazy. Like, you know, if you put 25 chips down on roulette, each on a different number, you can only win $35. So it’s not a big win. Right, right. But you can double up your right. So you would put like, two, you know,

George
yeah, I mean, there’s different ways to do it. But you still got to put out $25 every roll. Right? Which, you know, sometimes we do that if we win and we start piling up chips, then I’m pretty aggressive. And I’ll just start piling them on. But to start at 25 it’s like,

Lisa RichartHernandez
hurts a little bit. Yeah, you know, you take five $500 or something, but it just wasn’t like what we were looking for that night. So we decided to Hey, let’s go hit Fremont Street. And Fremont always has like dollar roulette tables and cheap like little barely any minimums like and so we really enjoy going down to Fremont Street. It’s normally one of our favorite places.

George
And it’s just super fun down there to walk through the street.

Lisa RichartHernandez
super cheesy. Like they usually have like all the outdoor bars with those giant gigantic ridiculous frozen drinks in the cups with that are like a giant boot. Or some giant lady.

George
Really?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. I always make towards throw away our plastic guts. I like after the like dispose of them. He’s flown them home before.

George
Oh, yeah,

George
so annoying. Like, we don’t need any more plastic junk cups. But anyways, all of that was closed for COVID. There were no outdoor bars. And they were really it was super hard to get a drink. Unless you were sitting at a table. I mean, there wasn’t a bar that you could just walk up.

George
Yeah. And even even that was pretty hard. It was it was the hardest. Time to get a drink that I’ve ever had in Vegas. Does that make sense?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. What

George
I mean, usually they’re like, yeah, you’re not even done with one and they’re bringing you another one. Right? This one was like constantly asking the Pit Boss to Hey, where’s the drink girl?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so that was that was kind of a that was kind of a bummer. But we did play for a while at Fremont. I think they had like a $5 minimum table. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So we enjoyed ourselves there for a little while. But they did card us, which was very unusual. Also for Fremont. They were they had security outside of the casino. How to be 21 to get in. They they one place was taking temperatures too. Yeah. And they had I believe they had a capacity. And then usually Fremont is like late night, like, open all the time. Just and they shut that thing down at 11 o’clock at night. I mean, it was get out, go home, get off the streets, like closing down blocks.

George
And again, this is a couple months late. So things have changed. So don’t don’t

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, I would say definitely do your research before you play Las Vegas right now because

George
or anywhere in the country. Well, I

Lisa RichartHernandez
don’t think anything is gonna have really changed that dramatically. As a matter of fact, they’re doing more lockdowns right now a lot of places. So you know, just kind of take that. Take that in mind if you’re going to plan a trip to Las Vegas. The other thing is I love about Las Vegas is all of this shows. And we’ve seen in the past we’ve seen Jayla, we’ve seen pit bull we’ve seen I mean, the Blue Man Group, absent is our absolute favorite. Have we had done a podcast on just Las Vegas before?

George
No, it’s our first one.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, because there’s so much to talk about on things that are non COVID time which is like absent is one of our favorite shows. There. It’s in a circus tent outside of Caesars and it’s just so raunchy, but hilarious. And I think we’ve seen it like four or five times,

George
right? At least. And each time it’s a little bit different. So it’s been a pleasure

Lisa RichartHernandez
every time. So as an aside, I highly recommend absent as one of the shows that you do go to when it is not Coronavirus, and I hope they don’t shut down because Cirque du Soleil did file for bankruptcy. I know. And that’s really disappointing to hear because Cirque du Soleil was kind of a part of experience that you could get when you go into Vegas. I’m hoping that it’s just the kind of bankruptcy that’s that restructuring or whatever, so that you can stay afloat and, and work their way out of it. Hopefully we’ll come back. So they do we’ll be there to support them. That’s right. That’s right. So we also did not go to any pools. While we were there.

George
We went to the pool in the resort. Las Vegas motorcoach resort, which was very nice. And they had they had the hot tub closed off and they they took away a bunch of chairs, lounge chairs, so it was very spaced out. Very well done. And there weren’t a lot of people there anyway, so but it was a beautiful pool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. It was a beautiful pool. I think we went there like three different days. But you know, it’s not like the pools of Las Vegas summer time where you’re drinking and partying at the pool. His favorite pool is little plug for Caesars, but their pool jams. It’s awesome pool plus,

George
not a lot of people know this. So don’t spread the word people. But if you go into the pool, and you go toward the back, there’s a little waterfall and underneath the waterfall. There’s 456 blackjack tables and the pool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So that’s cool. You can if you want to get a drink, go play a couple hands of blackjack, and I’ll bring them to you free all day long. That Yeah, that so we didn’t do that type of Las Vegas experience that we were looking for some different things to do. And the last time we were there, I thought, okay, I’m want to do a Food Network tour of Las Vegas, because well, especially during quarantine, we basically just watch Food Network channel during the day. That was our daytime TV. Before we could go to our nighttime shows on Netflix. Just kind of a joke, but so we very first thing I did was get reservations at Hell’s Kitchen.

George
Yes, that was so cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I mean, of course it wasn’t during the show or anything like that. But they had the red kitchen and the blue kitchen. And if you watch this show, which I did for years, the famous things that he makes is a Beef Wellington. scallops, seared scallops, and a lot of lobster zotoh. And what’s the name of the dessert?

George
toffee toffee Sticky Toffee, toffee cake. So save that for last?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. So I had to know like, first off, how could anybody go on to Hell’s Kitchen and not know how to make a perfectly seared scallop and not know how to make perfect risotto. Because that’s what like, he’s always yelling at the people in the kitchen. Like, look at this scallop. It’s wrong, or whatever, yelling at the people or look at this, you know, Wellington, but I will tell you the food was excellent. It was very expensive after all of that. But what I did our order, we got the lobster risotto, and it was delicious.

George
That was very delicious.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So the texture of the ricotta was more like it wasn’t thick. Like I would have thought or roseto normally should be it was sort of a little bit more runny. But was really really really good. But that’s

George
that’s what I liked about it, but it was a little runny, more creamy,

Lisa RichartHernandez
right. I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be right?

George
It wasn’t like there wasn’t lumpy. Yes. It didn’t feel like I was eating rice where sometimes you get risotto and you’re like, This tastes like rice.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. And then the Beef Wellington was, I don’t know how they got that giant piece of steak, like so perfectly cooked all the way through without burning the outside. That must be a special trick that they do, but it was very good. The Beef Wellington. Um, I will say that the scallops I mean, they weren’t bad, but I’ve definitely had better scallops, other places. I’m not sure if I was on this show. As a guest. I’d like to think that if I was a guest, I’d be like, I think these scouts are

George
I wanted to pick up the plate and throw it on the floor just to be like him. Not that they were terrible. I just that was the only thing that was not like what we expected. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And and you just got the flaming neon right?

George
Yes. And that was fantastic. Yeah. Perfectly cooked super tender. I don’t even think I needed a knife.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And then you got a special. So we had cocktails, and you got some sort of special bourbon drink that it is called

George
smoke on the boulevard. I remembered the name that’s how good it is. And I usually don’t remember names. But it was it was kind of a almost like an old fashion but they put it in this glass box and brought it to you with a glass box full of smoke. So they smoked the drink for you. And you know, it’s this big presentation to give you the drink and you pull it out of the box and all the smoke comes out with it. And it was fantastic. Great drank if you’re ever there. And you’d like old fashioned type drinks. Get one of those.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I just looked it up. It says it was $19 Woodford dry after all. amuro Evernote sweet Romo’s smoked with cherry wood. That’s what is in the cocktail.

George
And it was delicious.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. I think you saw the person next to us get it in the smoky thing. And you’re like, what’s that? I

George
want one of those. Oh, absolutely. I wanted one of those because it was super cool. But it actually tasted fantastic.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yep. And we also went for lunchtime, which I kind of liked that. We did that because it was a huge meal. And I was like really happy that we didn’t overdo it. You know, they do have a prefix menu there that you can get three courses for 8595 with the wine pairing, it’s 135. But you can get the paint scallops, and the Beef Wellington and then the sticky toffee pudding.

George
Okay,

Unknown Speaker
let’s talk about that. The sticky toffee pudding.

George
Oh, my God.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t know what I don’t even know what that is made out of crack,

George
because we just wanted more and more and more. It was delicious.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We got one and shared that because we were so stuffed. And I wish that we could have had to each Yeah,

George
he did say it but I couldn’t eat as many as they brought out. I would have just kept eating it. That’s how it was probably one of the best desserts I’ve ever had in my life. Yeah, I

Lisa RichartHernandez
was I was just looking. I just looked up the recipe while we were talking. And I guess sticky toffee pudding is actually like a thing that a lot of that they make in Europe. I guess that’s probably why Gordon Ramsay has it. But it’s got vanilla ice cream on it. It’s almost like it’s got dates in it. I can’t even describe it. But

George
you can’t he just got to go there and you got to order it. And you’ll thank us later. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
but that’s exactly true. Where else to do this video. While we’re while we’re talking about food that we ate our way through Las Vegas.

George
What Oh, I know where you’re going.

Lisa RichartHernandez
The dirt dog bird dog. Oh my gosh. Okay, so this was not on the strip, but I think they have several locations in Las Vegas. Looks like they have two one on Las Vegas Boulevard and one on rainbow Boulevard. And I think Snoop Dogg. Like owns them or something.

George
I don’t know. Because they had murals of Snoop Dogg. Eminem, bunch of rappers. So I don’t know if there’s any affiliation if there is wonderful if not, doesn’t matter. What I will tell you what, whoever created the menus. They were smoking a little weed because oh yeah, the combinations that went into these hotdogs or just people that had the munchies.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like, how about these DUI fries? That is pastrami carny is thought of bacon bits cheddar cheese to pull the Aeolian

George
Yeah, that that. That’s screams I’m so high. I need something to eat.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I know. I got the pastrami dog, which was a Nathan’s hot dog with bacon wrapped in bacon. With pastrami pickles. Cheese, honey mustard, bacon bits and sweet pepper. aoli It was like a heartburn and a bite. But it was so good. Then you had to. I don’t even know. Yeah,

George
my eyes are bigger than my mouth but my mouth caught up to my eyes because I pity both of them. Yeah, yeah. And there. They were so damn good. Mine was the one that was like Mexicans Street corn. Yeah, that’s broken down and put on top of a hotdog. And all the hotdogs are wrapped in bacon. All of them.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was wrapped in bacon. It had corn, lime and Manet’s Katia that’s that like that white crinkly, crumbly Trembley, cheese, chilies, laundry and bacon bits. Lime on top. And they serve them in those kinds of roles that you serve a lobster roll in.

George
Yes. Yeah. It’s not a it’s not a hotdog.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think there will marijuana’s recreational legal in Las Vegas. I’m pretty sure that we might have been the only people that weren’t high in like,

George
Austin, the two kids that were there with their parents. But besides that, I’d already pretty sure everybody was like, just ready to devour hotdogs.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. Let’s see if you have like a hangover. One day in Vegas and you want to go eat some really bad food. That’s delicious. Go to dark dog and check it out as just totally.

George
And you don’t have to be high to eat. It’s delicious. Regardless.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, but if you were high, I bet you that. Even better even

George
ate before? Not that I get high.

Lisa RichartHernandez
g. Okay. So that what else was a restaurant experiences when we were in Las Vegas? I’m trying to remember.

George
Oh, we

Lisa RichartHernandez
headed at the same time. Yeah. So we were in the pool at the resort. And we were talking to some of the owners that there that were there that were in the pool. And we were saying, Man, I’m so disappointed that you know, there’s no shows to go to so and he goes there is one show in Vegas open right now. And I was like, What is it and it’s a dinner show? And it’s called the supper club? Yeah, it’s it’s it’s brand new. It used to be? It’s in the Bellagio. Right?

George
Yes. It’s in the Bellagio where the old nightclub was which I can’t remember the name of it right now.

Lisa RichartHernandez
What the old? Yeah, it but it overlooks the fountains. So you’re like on the Bellagio side of the fountains. And there used to be like, at when it was a nightclub, it was like open like a like a deck kind of like outside. You can also sit outside there. There’s tables out there now. But if you get those seats that you’re looking at the fountains and you’d be behind the stage where the show is. Yeah, we had seats inside right in front of the stage. And in the daytime, we were we were early birds on that one, too. We were I think we have one at five o’clock. Because that was all that was available for last minute reservations. But you could see the fountains through the windows behind the performers that were on the stage. And that was also an excellent meal.

George
Yes. And the performance was a live jazz band. That was

Lisa RichartHernandez
pretty incredible. Yeah. And then they have the singing lady and like their costumes. And it was it was very Las Vegas.

George
Old Vegas. Yeah. Really cool. Vegas. Yeah, Vegas is really cool now, but it’s what I always imagined, like the Rat Pack bays.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Like, like, flappers and jazz. Yeah,

George
they have the long trench coats.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And I think you had the prime rib. Yes. I think it was this like really delicious, gigantic prime rib that you don’t normally get prime rib. But it was very, very good. And I think I may have gotten

George
Thank you got some kind of fish, didn’t you?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, I think I had salmon. There which was also very, very Yeah. king salmon. Yes, I did. And that was also very good. Not fishy. Delicious. Oh, we had caviar.

George
Yes. We haven’t had caviar in a long time now. But it was it was really good. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was it was good caviar. So it was definitely not an inexpensive evening. As far as dinners are concerned. I think the prime rib was $75. And that is just the meat without the sides. So if you’re looking but but you’re getting a show, you have to consider that into the price. Like it’s

George
exactly what the guy at the pool told us. He said, You know, it is pricey. But you got to factor in that you’re getting a show with your meal.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yep. And I feel like there was an early dinner. Oh, there is a $75.03 course meal that you can get for your money, right? Yep. Yeah. So those are some little specials that you can get. You know, I think when you do those like prefix menus and just choose like three courses for $75. That’s a pretty good bargain if you figure the food and a show.

George
Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So we definitely enjoyed that. And then I almost forgot our very fairy. favorite place in the whole world?

George
Mommy,

Lisa RichartHernandez
mommy Gabi wood. Paris across the street from

George
right underneath the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, it’s my absolute favorite place to go we go there every time we go to Las Vegas if we don’t go twice, and sometimes twice in one day,

George
several times.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So our favorite thing at mon ami Gabi is the US cargo. It’s Yes, snails, but it served in like the traditional way, with the little hole with the little round thing with the holes in it where the snails are. And this garlic butter. That is so delicious. I don’t know what the seasoning how they why there’s so much better.

George
I’m not really sure but it probably because there’s a stick of butter and every hole is

Lisa RichartHernandez
something like that. And then they serve you this whole entire long French bread, like long wrote like a whole roll like a whole loaf, a loaf of French bread

George
and which is made on site and a delicious,

Lisa RichartHernandez
warm. And I mean, just that alone is a great meal for for us to get with like a martini or something. And then

George
we’ve done that for lunch. Yeah, along with a French onion soup, which is to die for.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, we’ve sat there at the bar one day, this is pre COVID and the guy next one hobos wants to read it, and then he’s like, Oh, I have another one. Like a su you know, it’s

George
good to have friends at the bar. Yeah, he ate both.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was. That is one of our favorite places and also usually requires reservation as well. But the you know, the prices it’s funny that I felt like after we went to all the some of the other places like Hell’s Kitchen and this Mayfair supper club, that monami seems very reasonable. Episode $25 plate meal was fabulous.

George
So here’s my Vegas trip. Tip for mommy Gabby. make a reservation, because you’re going to need one. When you make your reservation request, patio seating, they may or may not take it. But when you get there, they’ll ask you if you want to sit on the patio or inside. I don’t care how long the wait is. Wait for the patio, because that makes the atmosphere or the ambience because you’re sitting across from the Bellagio fountain. So every 15 minutes, you’re getting a show from the fountain you’re sitting outside. I’ve never been to Paris, but it feels like you know you’re under the Eiffel Tower. It feels like you’re in Paris. You got the fountains going? Yeah, it’s super romantic.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, very cool. Very romantic, and great food, great service, one of our favorite places. But I guess that was one thing about Cova. We got we had a lot of luck getting in to a lot of our favorite restaurants without too much problem

George
there or wait was the shortest way we’ve ever had

Lisa RichartHernandez
for? Yeah, there wasn’t very many people where there wasn’t very many people at Paris. Not all the casinos and stuff are open when we were there either was kind of like everything was sort of 50% I would say

George
50 or zero MGM was completely closed. I was surprised how many casinos were completely closed. And how many were at 50% capacity. But again, from what I have heard, things are picking up but now with the outbreak again. Who knows what’s going to happen? Yeah, so just do your homework. If you’re heading to Vegas, made sure you ask questions and find out what’s open and what’s what’s not.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, we’d heard from a friend of ours that they were like, he’s like there’s nobody there. There’s a bunch of homeless people and a bunch of like, people on drugs and stuff just hanging around and I didn’t see a lot of that or more than that as of normal. Although, marijuana being recreational, they’re now in Las Vegas. Almost everywhere you pull up to everything smells like you can smell marijuana pretty much everywhere.

George
Pretty much I mean, yeah, you can tell there’s a ton of people smoking now.

Lisa RichartHernandez
But I don’t know. It’s not necessarily like in your face or right. It wasn’t it’s not an it’s not like annoying it’s just like obvious, I guess. I guess coming from a state that it’s not legal. It just seems so weird. It’s like oh my god, those people over there smoking marijuana like

George
yeah, it takes it takes a day or two to use paper smoking weed. Which, again, I don’t know unless things have changed. But

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think you can only smoke it in your house right

George
when we were there. They had just passed a law to me Make it recreational but the caveat to it was that you couldn’t smoke in the streets or in the hotel or in the hotel rooms he had to smoke in your

Lisa RichartHernandez
residence. Yeah, so I don’t know. Clearly the alarm is not working.

George
Yeah, either that or one guy with one joint was following us all week.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I think that was it. Um, another thing I just reminded me because we went to Aria, which is one another hotel that we like to usually stay at we’ve stayed there a few times. It’s connected to these really high on shops like the the largest Louis Vuitton stores then there. They have like every like, you name it. It’s there. Why I thought yeah, they have every every Gucci every high end store, you can find there was literally lines, you had to wait outside of the store. Oh, yeah. That was what in that was kind of annoying. So it wasn’t even really easy to stop. So I guess the big thing was, we were like, Alright, what the heck else do we do for six days in Las Vegas? You know, we don’t want to spend $25 a hand at the casino. There’s no shows to go to. There’s no pools to go to. We loved our Luxury RV Resort, which was great. There wasn’t a lot of shopping to do. So we said, hey, let’s go take a ride. Well, Hoover Dam. We thought we’ve seen that by helicopter before. And we did a helicopter tour A few years ago, which I also highly recommend. We did a sunset helicopter tour. We had a limousine pick us up from our hotel, they take you to the place where the helicopter is they fly you out into the Grand Canyon in the daytime. Right before the sun is setting, you drop you down in there, you get to look around. It’s really cool, beautiful. We had saw another couple get proposed to have a proposal down there. Well, when we were on ours, and then you fly back and the sun is studying over the rocks of the Grand Canyon. And then they fly down Las Vegas strip at nighttime when you can see all the lights. And that’s like a super cool. It was fairly expensive once in a lifetime probably.

George
Yeah, but it was worth it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was like $500 a person that didn’t cost

George
as much as our airfare to get to Vegas. Yeah. But it was it was worth it. I mean,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was really cool, romantic thing. Yeah. Just just really neat. So anyways, we did remember our pilot looked like she was 12 years. Yeah, so it was a really young girl that was our pilot was awesome. Yeah, and all of this was pre COVID. So I don’t know what they’re doing now. But we couldn’t even go to Hoover Dam on land because that was closed. So we went to Red Rock Canyon, which is just like 15 minutes 20 minutes from

George
Yeah, it was a short ride

Lisa RichartHernandez
right outside of Las Vegas. I didn’t even realize all that was there to be honest. Because normally when we’re there, we don’t have a car. This time we had our jeep. And so this was now we had been to Hawthorne and just had our first kind of jeeping experience for a couple days. And George was dying to try more with the jeep and see what we could do. So we decided to take a ride out to Red Rock Canyon and they have like a whole kind of like all the parks you’ll kind of get like they have like a scenic drive loop that you can do. And so we start going around with scenic drive loop and I can see that George’s like can’t wait to have get off the main road get off the main road. Yeah, so the scenic drive is like a one way road is 13 miles is beautiful ride. If you’re in a regular car, I highly recommend not good for an afternoon trip. If you want to add hikes in there and go hiking, there’s some beautiful hikes you can look at, you know all the different options for kind of what you want to see. Well, we decided to kind of go off the

George
well we found we found a dirt road on the map that we should have been our first alert red flag that the dirt road kind of disappeared off of the map. Okay, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
hold on, just back it up for a minute. First off, we made some rookie mistakes. We went on a trail that we didn’t know where it was right we didn’t mark our mileage for when we started the trail. So we didn’t know even how long we had been driving. And then we had no idea of the difficulty of the trail we had no water and because we were only going to do the 13 miles scenic route I didn’t even have on like hiking boots or anything I just add on like flip flops and I said we’re not going to go hiking right we’re just going to drive. Oh yeah, we’re just gonna drive.

George
So totally unprepared for the adventure we’re about to describe to you. We set off On this dirt road off the main road, and everything was marked clearly. And then we hit the proverbial fork in the road, the dirt road. And one was that the trail that we were on. And then the second, the left turn was the continuation of the trail, which then picked up a different name. I wish I could remember the name. And we were like, Okay, let’s go check it out. Looks cool. You know, how bad can this be? So off we go. And it was really nice. It was in the mountains in Nevada, and we’re going through some beautiful trails, it was really not that challenging. At first, we came across a couple of campgrounds that you can reserve, and they were really cool, because they were way out there in the middle of nowhere. And so it was nice Bureau of Land Management manages all of that land. And when we got there, we’re like, Why are there BLM signs everywhere?

Lisa RichartHernandez
And there’s like, Oh, it’s not black lives matter. It’s Bureau of Land Management. So we you can contact BLM and get a pass for the day?

George
Yes. For the campsites?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes.

George
There were several of them. We came across

Lisa RichartHernandez
like a campsite that you would camp in a tent.

George
Yes. And there’s nothing there are no facilities. So you’re out in the middle of this trail, paying to set up your tent and hang out and people love doing it. So we passed a bunch of those, the trail was fine, and then all sudden, it started getting a little gnarly. And we’re like, Alright, this is you know, I was getting excited, because this is exactly what I wanted to try some different terrain, you know, some bigger, climb some rocks, and this and that. And so we were chugging along, having a great time and then all sudden, it just started getting worse and worse and worse.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay, so let’s just say when we say worse and worse and worse

George
for our experience at that tar

Lisa RichartHernandez
variants at that time, because we got doesn’t blazes in there is like I don’t know a boulder that was maybe like, let’s say six inches. Oh,

George
river rock six inches. Is that big? No, they were big bouquets. boulders, yeah, I mean, we still had to climb or roll over them. It was, you know, I was worried about bottoming out. So that tells you that they were pretty high. And it was like an old, dried out riverbed. So it’s like windy, it’s not even a straight dirt road with obstacles. It’s a windy road with obstacles. So we’re on this trail, and all sudden, we’re like, man, we’ve been on this thing for a while. And now you know, we got no water, we got no food. And it gets really tough. Really. I mean, literally, we’re Lisa and I both had to get out of the Jeep. Walk down the trail to see if we could get past it and how are what what path we were going to take. And I’ll give Lisa credit, she did a great job. Being my trail, director, navigator navigator. And we just kept pushing forward. But at one point where we’re at now we’ve been on this trail for what, like two hours.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think we’ve been on the trail for like three hours at this point. Okay, maybe three hours. Well, now we are completely off of the map.

George
GPS isn’t working. Our phones aren’t working, we have zero clue where we are or how much further we have to go. Right? That was a bad battle little panic sets in. And then to add fuel to the panic. My low fuel light comes on.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think that was when you’re either going over or like down a big rock.

George
Yeah, that was it. Now that we think about it, and think back on it and not panicking. We were climbing down a hill. So probably the gauge was off. Because as soon as we got leveled, the gas light went off, but we’re still low and that little light came on. I’m not gonna lie. I puckered up a little bit. And then I’m thinking, we got no water, we got no food, we have no clue or we our phones don’t work, we’re running out of gas. We’re gonna have to eat each other to survive.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t think it would have ever gotten that extreme. But we really didn’t know how long we had gone and probably was only about maybe seven or eight miles. The thing is, when you’re riding in the jeep, you’re going you know really slow and so you may be driving three hours, but That might only be

George
three miles because it could be three miles an hour.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I mean, it really, really depends on, you know, the skill level of the trail. And I would say that trail that we were on was probably like a four.

George
No, I was more than that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
The one Hell’s revenge was a seven. Yeah, it was a four

George
word. Okay. All right, whatever.

Lisa RichartHernandez
All right, a four or a five, maybe there was most of it was somewhere between

George
one and 10.

Lisa RichartHernandez
One is the easiest. It was not that and it was another 10. We’ve never done it done. And we did sevens when we were in my lab. And I would say that it was very easy compared to that. Well, after we had,

George
that’s how I was gonna say it was easy once we’ve done something harder. But at that point, that was the hardest we’ve done. And we were both shitting our pants.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So the big thing was, we didn’t know where we were. And we didn’t know how much farther and that was stupid, and we didn’t have any water. And, you know, it was a beautiful, I mean, it started out like, Oh, my God, this is so beautiful. And then it was like, Oh, crap. How much farther? And I’m like, there’s no, we’re off this map now. And long story short, at that point, when the when the gas light went on, George, we kind of just got quiet. And, you know, we just sort of rode for, I think about maybe 30 minutes, without really saying much, just kind of like, I know, both of our heads were probably spinning like, what are we gonna do?

George
Well, in my mind, I’m like doing this crazy. Panic math. And I’m thinking, Okay, I know, we don’t have enough gas to go back where we came from. So we got to push forward, because I don’t know how many hundreds of gallons it’s going to take to go three miles.

Lisa RichartHernandez
While we had no idea Oh, God. Yes. So we anyways, finally I see these whole range of power lines. And I was like, there’s power lines, I was like, worst case scenario, we can follow these power lines back to civilization, like they lead to the city. And finally, I think maybe about five or 10 minutes after that, the GPS on the Jeep, started picking up a road. And we were on that road. And

George
it actually picked up the dirt road that we were on, which was just looking for a signal. Once I got the signal, we had GPS

Lisa RichartHernandez
signal the whole time, there was just no marked roads where we were. I thought we didn’t pick it up. No, that’s if you’re not, if you haven’t really ever done the jeeping thing. One thing that you’ve got to be aware of, are hiking I would imagine is the same. The GPS always works even though you don’t have phone service. So you have to download the maps ahead of time, so that your GPS can work with the map that you’ve downloaded. Because if you don’t download it, you have no Wi Fi that doesn’t know where you are. So we got by your GPS will always work on your phone unless you know you’re in a tunnel or something. Or cave, but I’m on this trail in Las Vegas. Worked. We just didn’t have any roads. There’s no marked roads and wasn’t working. Okay, whatever. Anyways, so the exciting thing is that we made it out alive. And we got onto the road and we saw the highway and then once we got the GPS back, we could put it in there. Now we have the coordinates to get back to our RV Resort. And we were about 40 minutes away from home.

George
So the funny punchline to me after this whole experiences. And I think some of you might have caught this that that trail was maybe five miles long. No, it was longer than that. But it takes forever because you’re going three miles an hour.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Now I was definitely longer than that.

George
Okay, there’s seven miles long, maybe 10. Let’s, let’s say it was 10 miles long. When we hit the paved road, my light came back on and I looked at my display. And it said 57 miles till empty. And that’s what the gas light on. So we could have gone back and forth and back and forth. four more times. But when panic sets in, you’re about to run out of gas.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I guess I guess I think that was called rocky gap road that we were on.

George
Kind of sounds familiar.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it’s a four by four road and it comes near Aloma. If you go towards the sign of la madre spring. It’s actually a really cool ride if you’re planning for it. And if you have a Jeep, I do highly recommend that you definitely want you to have at least a lift kit on your Jeep but it was aside from not being prepared for it if you weren’t prepared for it. It’s really a beautiful day. Day drive

George
the road if we would have done that after Moab. We would have Not even worried about it. Yes. Right, since we didn’t have the experience we were worried about.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m looking on the hiking map. And the upper White Rock was spring picnic area with lomandra. Spring loop is six miles and says three and a half hour walk. So I feel like it’s probably longer than six miles that we drove.

George
person, maybe, but it wasn’t. It’s not like we drove drove 50 miles to that, right. It was short as hell and my gauge said we got 57 miles das was my point. Okay. Even if it was like 25

Lisa RichartHernandez
Right, right. Okay, you’re right. All right.

George
Crazy. But So bottom line is be prepared if you’re going to do something like that. And if you can go with another Jeep, that’s even better. But if you’re going to go solo, at least be prepared plenty of water, plenty food, whatever emergency stuff you need. One of my big panics was getting a flat out there in the middle of nowhere. So as soon as I got home, I bought a big high lift jack, gigantic jack that’s on the on the hood of the car. It’s huge. I mean that our Jeep is so lifted that a regular jack won’t do anything. So you got to do what you got to do. Yeah. And it looks badass. You know, does.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hey,

George
so what else? What else happened in our Vegas? crew?

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think that’s I think we’ve really covered a lot of things about Las Vegas. I think the moral of the story here is if you’re going to go during COVID, don’t expect to have a normal experience if you’re a regular Las Vegas. If you’ve never been to Las Vegas. It is a very I don’t know, I would skip it right now. To be honest, there’s no shows there’s hardly any, like it’s tough to gamble. And there’s like, it’s nothing. It’s not your normal Vegas experience.

George
But again, just do your homework because I heard the shows are back on. So they may be open. But like Lisa was saying, if this is your first time going to Vegas, don’t judge it because it’s not at all 100% capacity. 100% fun, right? It’s it’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
just, it’s like we went to Key West and like sloppy joes wasn’t open. That’s like one of the like, you know, main places during COVID. And this is kind of like,

George
everywhere in the country. Nothing is normal right now. Mount Rushmore was not everybody kept telling us Oh my god, there’s nobody here. This is usually packed. The National Park same thing. So just, you know, don’t judge. Just go enjoy it. And then when everything’s back, up and running, go back, and you’ll see the difference again.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, definitely. So I think that’s about it. I think we’ve covered a lot. If you have any questions about Las Vegas, we are always here to answer them. We’ve got a lot of advice. And we could probably talk for hours about all the places that we’ve been to in Las Vegas things. We love restaurants that we love our favorite hotels and why we like them, or favorite casinos and why we like them. And maybe someday in the future when Vegas is opened back up. After COVID we’ll just do another podcast about all the really cool things to do. Not during COVID

George
Yes. And Vegas is not all about gambling anymore. There’s so much to do and see. And when it’s open 100% you can pretty much do whatever you can hire a limo to take you to shoot machine guns in the desert in Las Vegas. You can they actually have a company that will let you dig a hole with an excavator. Like whatever you pretty much whatever you want to do, they’ll find the way to do it for you.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that’s really, really cool. So all right, well hit us up on our website at RView podcast.com and you can just scroll down to the bottom, please subscribe and like and share our podcasts with your friends. Reviews are really important to us and it helps us with our rankings. So we would love it if you would just give us a review and share with your friends and we’ll talk to you again soon.

George
Bye Bye. Take care.

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