Las Vegas Adventure: A Virtual's Paradise

Where do you go if you're an adult and love Roadside Americana? Why, the Las Vegas Strip!

TaGeez and I spent a glorious week in September exploring Las Vegas and its environs. Our main focus was a fun environment, lots of photo ops, and people watching! As geocachers, however, you have to get the caches in! We spent the first few days exploring the Strip and grabbing some Virtuals!

Can you believe our first stop our first morning was the iconic sign? Go early! Luckily we found some really nice Aussies who were willing to snap a few pics! Don't forget to grab the traditional nearby.

Welcome to Las Vegas GC729A

Almost immediately we spotted our first benchmark. The sidewalks of the strips are lined with them! 

According to AtlastObscura.com: 

The Las Vegas strip is also known as the busiest street in the world with over 40 million visitors each year. So, it’s very important that its location is clear on maps and GPS. This is typically achieved by surveyors who measure the exact location of several hundred points on the strip, each of them marked with a brass medallion. Besides serving as an absolute position marker, these benchmarks also help surveyors determine if the ground under the strip is stable with the weight of all the casinos surrounding it. 

The weather was perfect for exploring! Shocking to discover Las Vegas was having a "cold spell" - it was cooler in Las Vegas than back in Detroit!

Sphinx in Las Vegas GCAJHYC

Ain't he grand at MGM Grand!

In the Belly of the Beast GC4E94

We spent our first day walking up one side of the strip to the other- clocking almost 30,000 steps! We were fortified by the M&M Store, Hershey Store, and lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. 

MM MM Good GC4CE1

Can you believe we were earning smileys for taking these pictures? Consider yourself lucky that we're only sharing a handful - I took over 2,200 photos!

Eiffel Tower GC9D67

Ooh, time to head in for dinner! This was across the street from our hotel at Cesar's Forum. We met a friend and had a delicious dinner at Carmine's. 

Toga Party GCB0EB

Surprise! Surprise! This turned out to be my favorite virtual. Many of the others were placed in 2002 and have hundreds of Favorite points, but the Sphere fascinated me! You can see it as you land at the airport, from many of the hotels & walkways, and even up close!

💙The Amazing Las Vegas Sphere 💙 GCAJJJJ

Even with shaking legs from exhaustion, we made our way over here to the West Entrance to watch the show. This is a concert and entertainment venue, but the show outside was just as remarkable. We watched as the images danced and changed. 

The Las Vegas Sphere is a music and entertainment arena located east of the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. Designed by Populous, it features a revolutionary 16K LED wrap-around screen and spatial sound system. The electrified ball measures 516 feet wide and 366 feet tall, making it the world’s largest spherical structure

Here's the view from our hotel on the second morning. Admittedly, after all the walking the day before we were a little tired so we took a few minutes to write-out our postcards.

I believe I shared this before, but my family sends postcards when we travel. However, what do you write? Instead, we travel with our little Sprocket printer (so compact!) and print pictures of ourselves at the various spots! As the cliche goes... pictures really are worth a thousand words!

 

We are out and about again. Here's another unique trait regarding these virtuals: many of the CO's have very specific logging requirements involving signs with dates. There were so many on the Strip that we laminated these little cards and took pictures with them at each virtual. There's a circle around our names because that was the requirement at the Sphere.

Hell Yeah! GCAJGZ1

After Hell's Kitchen, we moseyed over to the Bellagio, which SHOULD have a Virtual inside! Oh, the stunning Dale Chihuly ceiling! 

The Bellagio lobby ceiling features a huge hand-blown glass sculpture piece named “Fiori Di Como,” made by famed artist Dale Chihuly. The piece is vibrant and hard to miss because it is made of over 2,000 brightly-colored glass flowers and weighs over 40,000 pounds. [FeelingVegas.com]

Then you walk past the lobby in the Conservatory to walk amongst that season's display! They just changed this over to an Enchanted Fall exhibit! 

Either of these would make phenomenal Virtuals!

Back outside, we visited "Lake Vegas" (the Bellagio Fountain), knowing that we would be back for the fountain and light show the next night.

Lake-Vegas GC4E95

After our afternoon Marvel movie and a cooling siesta, we headed to the Fremont Street Experience! This place was WILD! This was "old Las Vegas" brought into the 21st century! 4 music stages, neon-lighted casinos, side show acts, outdoor eateries, and PEOPLE everywhere!

Make sure the look up!

Viva Vision is the largest LED Canopy screen in the world, and recently got a $32 million upgrade! The renovated screen boasts 16.4 million brilliant pixels, is 1,375 feet long, 90 feet wide and suspended 90 feet above Fremont Street’s renowned pedestrian mall, lined by iconic casinos and hotels. [VegasExperience.com]

So, it was surprising to me that the Fremont Street Experience had so few Virtuals - both a little quirky and off the beaten path.

Manneken Pis GC9P55P

This one was so vague (to me) that we just took pictures of ourselves in front of every piece of neon in the area and sent them to the CO.

Ne-On on the Strip GC4E96

With all the craziness of the strip and the experience, it was wonderful to find such a peaceful reprieve as the Neon Museum. Just north of Fremont, make sure you pre-order your tickets and spend an hour wondering around the classics from the golden neon era. 

Signs of the Times GCHYED

We stayed out late, listened to the bands, did some people watching, and dined at Coney Island. We enjoyed winning a few dollars at the "D" and topping our evening off walking around Fremont Street Experience, Fremont East, and doing a few adventure labs.

Warning if you go to the Fremont Experience. We took an Uber there, which was relatively affordable. However, we learned to late about "surge pricing" and were gouged for the ride back to our hotel. The fare was 5x what we paid going to Fremont. 

All for now! Next, we go from the glittery facades of Las Vegas to the Natural Wonders surrounding it!