My wife and I set forth this past Friday, October 27th for our seemingly annual Halloween Week Las Vegas Vacation. Starting Halloween '05, we flew into sin city to attend the 3 day
Vegoose music festival which featured acts such as Beck, The Flaming Lips, Primus, Ween, Widespread Panic, Phil Lesh & Friends, Trey Anastasio, The String Cheese Incident, Dave Matthews and more. This years festival highlighted many of the same artists like Phil Lesh (performing with Trey Anastasio), The String Cheese Incident (featuring Keller Williams) and Widespread Panic again but added new talent such as The Killers, The Raconteurs & The Mars Volta. Though we decided the daily festival line-up wasn't anything urging us to leave the casinos, we did decide to catch a few late night shows this year including Keller Williams House of Blues performance in the Mandalay Bay which started a bit late around 1:30am Saturday morning along with Phil Lesh & Trey Anastasio who were joined by special guest John Medeski at the Orleans Arena early Sunday morning which went until nearly 5am. It's Vegas though so you never realize it’s the morning until you start to see the sun coming up.
Early Sunday afternoon, after grabbing a few hours of sleep following the 
previous mornings concert, 
we packed our bags and jumped in our rented convertible to drive through the desert in route to California in order to visit with some of our best friends Ben & Marisa who have been house sitting a wealthy relatives million dollar mansion in the incredible mountain views of Rancho Cucamonga. The house had the most amazing pool I've ever swam in for a private property. The hot tub, which overflowed directly into the pool, stayed at a warm 99 degrees while the pool remained a comfortable 80 degrees throughout the sunny day. Directly behind the pool, bordering the property line, sat a private trail used by residents to ride their horses through 
the beautiful mountain wilderness. At night a gas fire pit could be 
lit as you enjoy a BBQ on a built-in island watching the changing lights inside the pool and hot tub as fountains danced nearby under the stars of the mild California night sky. Inside the house you could enjoy the amenities of a home movie theatre complete with 107" projection screen and leather theater style chairs or escape to the game room and play shuffle board, darts or Las Vegas style card games. Speaking of Vegas though, we had only 2 days remaining of this vacation so we had to get heading back the next morning if we wanted to see the sites and still have time to strike it rich!
Tuesday morning, rested and ready to topple the town, we began hitting attractions & casinos, 
rolling the dice and hoping the day would last forever. 
After battling the Borg Invasion and riding the Klingon Encounter at the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton Hotel & Casino we stopped by the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino to ride the three highest thrill rides in the world, the Big Shot, X-Scream & Insanity. First the Big Shot catapults 16 riders from a 921-foot high platform up the tower's mast to a height of 1,081 feet. Traveling at 45 miles per hour, riders experience 4G's as they reach the very top. Next was Insanity - the Ride which lets thrill seekers experience a centrifugal force of three 'G's' while being spun out 64 feet past the 
edge of the 
Stratosphere Tower overlooking the city of Las Vegas more than 900 feet below. Finally there’s X-Scream which is an open coaster vehicle that propels riders head first, 27 feet over the edge of the Stratosphere Tower and dangles them weightlessly above the Strip before pulling it's riders back and over again for more. I am not too proud to say, I skipped this one though my wife Deb rode as I managed to get some incredible pictures from the safety of the viewing deck.
The evening was concluded by dinner at the Paris Hotel & Casino along with a few final rounds of Craps back at our hotel where we managed to come out right about even after winning several hundred, losing several hundred and finally gaining back all of our losses. We went home the big winners in the respect that we paid for our visit though losers when you take into account how much sleep we lost.
It was great visiting with some many old friends while in Vegas including Al & Heather, Matt & Alexis and Ben & Marissa. Though there were many other friends who’d flown into town too for the concerts and other events, the odds weren’t in our favor for getting together this time but hopefully next year when we come back for our annual Halloween extravaganza we’ll all have an opportunity to see everyone.
Finished Uncut Poster
