While on vacation, Mike and I left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and took an overnight getaway to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is where we met and where we lived while first married. We were teachers at the same high school and met at a meeting for new teachers. We lived there for over 3 years- one year of that married.
When we left Vegas to move to Connecticut for Mike to go to graduate school, the city was BOOMING! Buildings were going up fast everywhere. There were so many new residents getting in on the boom, I was told once that they could fill an entire elementary school every 3 months with new students. In fact that was what brought Mike and I both to Vegas - teaching jobs.
We haven’t been back to Vegas in 10 years. In that time the boom continued and then there was the big bust in 2008. We were curious to see what had changed in 10 years. The first thing we did when we got to town was to have lunch at the Top of the World Restaurant in the Stratosphere. We were told that lunch prices were reasonable and that your views from the top of the tower were included with lunch. This was true as it turned out my lunch cost a dollar less than if we had just bought tickets to ride to the observation deck. We loved our lunch up there. The restaurant revolves and you can see all of Vegas in a little over an hour. Because we used to live there we loved looking out and recognizing places. Here are some photos of the views. The top picture is looking out at the east side of the Valley. Below is southeast.
Here are some photos looking down the Strip.
Do you see the enormous blue casino that makes Circus Circus look tiny? It is actually a casino that was almost completed and then abandoned. Behind Circus Circus you can see more abandoned casino projects.
Here is the southwest part of the city where we worked and lived.
And a view looking down West Sahara toward my bachelorette pad. Mike’s bachelor pad (and our first home together for 2 months after our wedding) was down West Charleston toward Red Rock Canyon. You can see Red Rock in the last photo.
Our second day in Vegas we did drive out of to where we used to live just to see it and how things have changed. There were changes but much of it was the same. What we noticed most was simply the lack of building going on anywhere. And the trees had grown more. We enjoyed the memories and nostolgia, but honestly, we couldn’t decide how much we missed it and if we would move back - if we could. I do wish I could take some of the heat back home with me to Idaho.
