I know this is over a year old, but I wanted to document this since I drove to Poston, AZ, where my mother's family was interned in World War II.
September 28, 2019
I got a decent fare from DCA to LAS, $214.50 r/t. It departed from DCA at 2:55 PM, connected in STL at 5:05 PM, and arriving in LAS at 6:35 PM. As I recall, I was originally departing from IAD, but with the 737-MAX issue, I was able to rebook at no cost or increased fare to depart from DCA around the same time, but arrive a few hours earlier. I was also able to connect in STL, and meet my friend Kip, who was flying out of PHL.
My wife dropped me off at the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro Station around noon, and I arrived at DCA around 12:40 PM. It’s a good ¼ mile walk from the Metro stop to Terminal A, where Southwest gates are. I wanted to eat before leaving. With the limited selection, I got a pepperoni, sausage, and bacon Stromboli. I had to wait for it to be made, since they didn’t have any ready.
No issues going from DCA to STL, apparently, I arrived around 4:00 PM. I met up with Kip, and by 4:50 PM, we were waiting for departure.
During the flight, Kip splurged and bought drinks for us. She paid with her Spirit credit card, and we had a laugh with the attendant. I guess he was so amused, he brought us both two drinks, so it was our first comp of the trip! We were sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, and we were playing some Pai-Gow Poker, when the guy sitting next to me asks me to deal him in. I do, and we’re playing for a bit, and then he gives me his business card. Apparently, he is a floor supervisor at Aria. I told him we’ll be staying there on Sunday, but he says that is his day off. Unfortunately, we never did catch up with him during our trip.
We arrived in LAS around 6:40 PM and after getting my bag, we head to the rental car facility shuttle, arriving there around 7:40 PM. We picked up the car and head to Mandalay Bay, we were planning on meeting Bob at the 1923 Bourbon Bar to check it out.
We get there around 8:30 PM, the place is pretty empty. It’s a nice place, but the drinks are pricey. There is a nice smoking room though, so if I were looking for a nice place to smoke a cigar, this would be one of those places.
Kip and I were staying at Fiesta Henderson this night, so we still have to drive down there, which we get there around 11:00 PM. We were planning on eating and doing some play, but we were pretty tired, so we just decided to eat and head to bed.
Our dining options are limited, so we head to the Café Fiesta. It wasn’t that crowded, and I ordered a French Dip, and I believe Kip ordered eggs.
Shocker that we didn’t gamble on our first night in Las Vegas!
September 29, 2019
Making up for not playing the previous night (and having an early night), we get up around 7:00 AM to get our play in before checking out at noon. We played some NSUD with really no luck. We were pushing to get our play in before heading to Silverton for the Bellini Brunch. I hit eight dirty royals, but we didn’t hit anything better, and took a net loss of $120 each. I earned 382 points.
We run into an issue when we alternate getting ready to go, it was after check-out time, and the key deactivated. The reservation was in Kip’s name, so she has to go to the front desk to get it straightened out.
We get situated and head up to Silverton, arriving there around 1:00 PM. The buffet is decent, not great, but I’d say above average, but the unlimited bellinis is what keeps me coming back. Plus, we were using a 2-1 coupon, so that makes it even better. Since they cut my offers, I decided to use $9 in comps for part of the meal, and then cashed out $35 in points for free play, which I ended up with $5 cash (!).
This night, we are staying at Aria. Somehow, MGM still sends me comped room offers, even though I barely play at the properties. I guess eventually they will stop.
We were planning on seeing the Bellagio Fountain show with the “O” performers at 3:30 PM, but that was cancelled due to the high winds.
We get to Aria around 3:30 PM, and are able to check in. We are planning on having an MPT this evening, so I ask about an upgrade. The clerk says he can give me a Tower Suite upgrade for $125, but I decline. I mention that I had previously gotten a Tower Suite upgrade at The Mirage for $75, and he gets on the phone and says he can do that.
The Tower Suite give you access to a lounge, which was nice, the have limited food options, but plenty of free soft drinks, bottled water, and coffee. We grab a snack and some drinks and head up to the room. The room is one of the nicer rooms I’ve stayed at in Las Vegas. And plenty of room for the MPT.
Kip gets cleaned up while I get the room ready for the tournament. I let everyone know what room we are in. The MPT was “scheduled” to start at 5:30 PM, and we actually got going around 5:35 PM, so yay me. We also got plenty of extra bottled water from the lounge (the front desk clerk told me I could pay $20 for the bottled water in the room, or come down to the lounge and get the water for free. Well, people do pay for convenience, but we weren’t paying that much!).
I didn’t play too well, I let Sionow bluff me off of a pot and I never recovered. Things went well for Kip, though, and she eliminated everyone en route to her first Las Vegas tournament victory!
The tournament ended around 8:00, and we still had to eat dinner. I had a $50 F&B credit (along with $50 in FP), but our food options at Aria at that time seemed limited, so we headed to Bellagio and had dinner at Sadelle’s, getting there around 10:30.
I also added a $10 myVEGAS comp, so we had $60 to spend. I got mushroom barley soup and the garlic chicken and mashed potatoes; both were very good. We had a nice table with a view of the Conservatory, although it was a view of the backside of an elephant.
We headed back to Cosmopolitan, because we were going to put in some play at the Chandelier Bar. It was my first experience with drink tickets. We ordered perfect Manhattans to start, and I also wanted a sparkling water, but the bartender told me that it would cost me a drink ticket. Ugh, I’ll just have plain water.
Our play didn’t go well here either, I took a $140 loss. We did accumulate plenty of drink tickets, and by the time we were ready to go, I believe we had nine. They are good up to $16, and you can combine them, so we asked the bartender for two premium tequila shots. I forget the brands he gave us, but I think he said one was a $300 bottle, and the other was a $100 bottle (I could probably remember the bottle designs, and we should have written down exactly what he gave us. My notes say 1942 and Clase Azul). In any event, they were really good, but we weren’t able to finish them. We put them in plastic cups and walked back to Aria.
I still had to use my $50 FP, so I tried to load it, but it wouldn’t work. I went to the slot club and they said it was there. I tried again and it still didn’t work. I was in the high limit room, and an attendant came up and asked if I needed any help. I told her my free play wasn’t working, so she took my card and came back and said it would work. Whatever she did, it worked. I turned my $50 FP into $55 cash, so that was good. I thought I’d put in more points on some slots so Kip and I went around trying a few slot machines with no luck. After another night of losing, we finally called it a night.
September 30, 2019
I wanted to use the pool, since I didn’t have time to use it yesterday. I went down around 8:30 AM while Kip enjoyed the jetted tub. Unfortunately, the pool didn’t open until 9:00 AM. That wasn’t going to work with our 11:00 AM departure.
We were scheduled to have breakfast at 10:00 AM at The D Grill, but I guess we changed that. Kip and I were able to get a little breakfast snacks and coffee in the lounge. I was also able to avoid the long line at the front deck to check-out. There was a $75 charge because I picked up the bottle of Patron. I explained that I didn’t drink it, and even showed her a photo of the unopened bottle (as if that mattered, now that I think about it). She did take my word and removed the charge (I should have asked about getting my resort fee removed!).
We got to The D around noon, and apparently our breakfast was now lunch. I ordered the chicken parmesan, which was just okay. Kip had to wait to check-in at The D, but Scott was already there, and he let us keep our bags in his room until we could check in.
We headed over to Golden Gate, where we were opening a play day, we got there around 1:15 PM. Things still weren’t going well for me gambling-wise, but I soldiered though. Two of my friends hit royals during this session. We had 6:00 PM reservations back at Andiamo, so we headed back over there.
Andiamo is always great, especially when the meal is comped! We must have had a lot of comps, since I ordered a drink, which I usually don’t do (I save the money for steak!). I ordered a sidecar, the lobster bisque, and the New York Strip with scallops scampi. The meal was excellent.
We got our room, got our bags, and were in our room around 9:00 PM. We went back to Golden Gate to finish up some play, and then headed back to The D to start play at Vue Bar. We put in around 3 hours of play before we finally called it a night.
October 1, 2019
So, run back over to finish our Golden Gate play, come back to The D for lunch around 2:00 PM, I got the French Dip. Then more video poker at Vue Bar until dinner at Andiamo again at 8:00 PM. This time I got the porterhouse with bbq shrimp.
Then more video poker play at Vue Bar and that was it!
October 2, 2019
We wanted to get an early start to go to Mount Charleston, but being up late usually means sleeping late. That being said, we did get to Market Street Café at California for breakfast at around 10:00 AM. The place was crowded, but you can usually get a seat at the counter quickly, which we were able to do.
They have a little breakfast buffet, with has things like scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, corned beef hash, biscuits and gravy, rice, fruit, and a few other things. That, and a cup of coffee is around $8.00, and with a 2-1 coupon, it’s a pretty good deal.
We get on the road, and get to Mount Charleston around 12:30 PM. There was road construction on the mountain, so it took us a while to get up. They also closed the road further up, so we first parked at a place where there were cabins and a restaurant. We checked out the restaurant, but there weren’t many people around. We were able to park up near paths to Cathedral Rock. We were unprepared for the change in elevation, it was quite cooler and the air was a bit thinner. It took us a while to get acclimated to the difference, when we first tried to hike up some, we were winded quite quickly. By the time we decided we should head back, though, we felt better.
We were planning on having lunch at Suncoast before golfing at Angel Park, but we were running late, plus we had the late breakfast, so we just headed to Angel Park, getting there around 2:30 PM.
We went to Golden Tiki for Happy Hour, getting there around 6:15 PM. A Blue Lagoon was waiting for me, that is my favorite HH drink. We also added a boozy Dole whip.
We then had a late dim sum dinner at Orchids Garden. It wasn’t as good as the lunch we had there before, but I think we got here close to closing, we were pretty much the only customers in the restaurant.
We headed back to The D and called it a night.
October 3, 2019
We wanted to get an early start, since Kip and I were planning on driving down to Poston, Arizona, where my mother and her family were interned during World War II. I knew from research that there wouldn’t be much standing, but there was a memorial, and the ruins of an old barracks.
We were up around 7:00 AM and when we were ready to go, when I turned on the car, a warning message appeared, saying to visit our dealer. Since we didn’t feel safe driving the car on such a long trip, I called the rental car company, and we arranged to exchange the car, getting back to Hertz around 9:30.
Once we got the new car, we hit the road. It’s good that I had a travelling companion, since the drive is pretty uneventful. We talked, we had the radio on when we could, and I was able to plug my iPod into the sound system, so we had that.
We stopped for lunch in Needles, CA around noonish, the “home” of Spike, Snoopy’s brother. I researched that the Subway there has a statue of Spike and some stories, so we stopped there. We were going to stop at a local sit-down restaurant there, but due to the delay with the car, we really didn’t have time.
We arrived in Poston around 1:30 PM. We got to the memorial and I took a lot of pictures. There isn’t much around, and it was very quiet there, only disturbed by the occasional vehicle going down the two-lane road. It was hard to imagine that between 1942 and 1945, the place had a peak population over 17,000 (at the time, the third largest “city” in Arizona). The camp was built by Del Webb.
We drove around the town, looking for any remnants of the camp. The water tower still stands near the entrance to Poston I. A dilapidated barracks (which was moved from its original location) currently sits behind a church. There were supposed to be the remains of the school, but it looked like it was behind a fence, and in the process of being bulldozed over.
We drove down to where Poston III was, where my mother’s family lived, nothing there but farmland. I had the map to see where her unit was, but I didn’t want to trespass to get there. I was able to drive to where the water processing plant was, one of the last remaining structures.
I know there are other camps that have more of the structures preserved, but I felt I had to visit this one, as this was where my mother’s family was interned. It was truly a moving experience.
We had to head back to Las Vegas, as I was leaving the next day (Kip was staying a few more nights). We stopped at Railroad Pass Casino around 5:45 PM, I forget why. We tried a Loose Deuces machine, but lost $20 between the two of us. We got back to Golden Gate around 7:15 PM.
8:50 PM we had dinner at The D Grill. I had the vegetable beef soup and the rib eye steak. I’m fairly certain we used comps. We took one last shot on the Golden Gate video poker progressives with no luck, yet another $140 loss.
October 4, 2019
I had a 7:20 AM flight, so that meant an early wake up! I also apparently forgot to check-in to my flight the morning before, so when I did, I was C26 for boarding. I had a short connection in DEN, so I was hopeful to make it. I gassed up the car and dropped it off around 6:00 AM, and got to the airport around 6:15 AM. I have TSA Pre, and there was pretty much no line. Our flight was delayed until 7:50 AM, so I was more worried about missing my connection, and I wouldn’t be able to pick up lunch in DEN (and I didn’t have breakfast before I left), so I was certainly going to be hungry when I got back to IAD at 4:10 PM.
Fortunately, I made my connection and there weren’t any issues getting home. Although I didn’t get home, as I had to head up to Hershey, PA with my family, since it was Girl Scout Day the next day!
Airfare:
Purchased points for $214.50, plus $11.20
Hotels:
Fiesta Henderson – 1 night
Aria (Tower Suite) – 1 night
The D – 3 nights
Golden Gate – 1 night (but Kip used the room for another two nights)
Rental Car:
Hertz – 7 days, $169.82
