It was a long, wild night on the Vegas strip

We returned to Vegas on Tuesday night, after spending half of our day in Phoenix. We had three items on our Phoenix agenda prior to departure.

Woody likes to tour state capitols, so we did that in Phoenix. The capitol has a self-guided tour of its original footprint, built more than 100 years ago. The current capitol offices, as well as the house and senate chambers, are on the capitol campus, but were built decades after the initial capitol. The current capitol offices are attached to the original footprint, but the original space has not been repurposed. Instead it is a museum of state history. It's free to tour, and worth an hour of your time.

This is the original Arizona House of Representatives chambers.

Following the capitol tour we headed back to the ballpark. Yes, we returned to the ballpark. No, there wasn't a day game. We toured the ballpark early in the afternoon. The Diamondbacks offer tours of Chase Field for $7, with the proceeds benefiting one of their charitable efforts. The tour includes the standard building history and fun facts. Some ballpark tours include a tour of the press box. Some include a clubhouse tour if it's not during a team home stand. Chase Field offered neither, but we did get to visit the Diamondbacks dugout.

I look like a member of the grounds crew, not a member of a professional baseball team. 

Beef played the part of an outraged manager in the press area of the stadium.

Our final stop in Phoenix before departure, late lunch at the downtown Tilted Kilt. It's not on my bucket list when we travel, but it has decent food and is reasonably priced, typically. Yeah, it's a breastaurant, and not a place I'd take children, but I've never felt like I've overpaid. Woody suggests it when we travel. I'm not about to say no.

We took a different route back to Vegas, traveling north out of Phoenix. This was a more scenic drive into the mountains.

So Wednesday morning rolls around and we don't do much. Beef is thinking about and researching possible tours he wants to do, Woody was up bright and early and put in more than an hour in the fitness center. I woke up, made my simple breakfast, put in 30 minutes at the fitness center and returned around lunchtime. Woody walked with me to drop off postcards at the lobby of Grandview, and showed me where the hidden fitness center is. We chatted while I began riding the exercise bike, and we both speculated that Beef would not shower before I returned from my 30-minute workout, despite the fact he could have, and knowing that we were going to lunch at some point after we both cleaned up.

Sure enough, I return to the room and Beef is working his phone, contemplating tours of the Grand Canyon. So I shower first, at his suggestion, and sometime after 1 p.m. we finally head out for lunch. We decided to go back to Ellis Island, where my Las Vegas Advisor coupon will get us a free meal in the cafe. Beef, Woody and I all ordered a giant beer before our meal, and Beef and I had the prime rib dinner for our late lunch. Woody opted for chicken-fried steak, or something like that. Our waitress was fabulous, and comped one of the more expensive prime rib dinners, despite the fact she should have comped Woody's cheaper meal. It ain't fancy, but I love Ellis Island.

Lunch at Ellis Island. Woody is on the left. 

Woody wanted to do more strip exploration, so we dropped him off on the back side of Flamingo, the hotel where we stayed in 2000 when Beef and I crashed his room while he was there for work. That was the last time these guys had been to Vegas. Me? I've been there about 25 times since that April 2000 gathering.

Beef and I returned to Grandview so I could finally put in a little time at the pool. Beef decided he wanted a massage. A real, legit massage, not one of those "happy ending" massages at the 24-hour joints. So I turned over the SUV to him and headed to the room at 4 p.m.

I headed down to one of the pools to soak up a little sun, with a beer in hand. There are several pool areas at Grandview, and our room looked down upon one. Unfortunately it was the children's play pool, not the place I wanted to hang. So I walked a couple of buildings over for a regular pool area. I parked my butt and slathered on sun screen, despite the fact it was mostly cloudy at the moment, and rather dark to the south.

I had been at the pool for about 15 minutes when a few light drops of rain started to fall. I didn't worry about it. I figured it wasn't really going to rain. The wind picked up a bit, but again, no worries. Then a security guard and lifeguard announced that the pool was closing, and that we had to vacate the pool area. I was not happy.

So by 5 p.m. I was back in our room, not sure what to do with myself. It never rained, by the way.

I toyed with the idea of going to South Point to play poker, but opted instead to use the laptop to write the previous installment of this blog. Writing is an enjoyable recreation, despite the fact I do it for a living. Since I don't usually have a computer with me, I took advantage of the fact I dragged the company laptop with and wrote a mid-trip update. I goofed around for a while before I sat down to do so, and Beef came back to prior to me sitting down to write.

He rolled in after 6 p.m. and I expected to hear he had found a local spa to get a massage. He considered going to the spa at South Point, but that ain't cheap. I figured he could find a local, non-casino place that wasn't all the way up near the strip. But I was wrong.

According to Beef he drove around looking, stopped to make calls on his phone and finally decided to book a 7 p.m. service at a Massage Envy in Henderson. So he returned to Grandview at approximately 6:15 to tell me he was getting a 60-minute massage at 7 p.m.

At that point I knew I had time to write, so I gave myself an hour to pound out all the details I could, starting at 7 p.m.

So I put a wrap on my writing about 8 p.m., expecting to receive a text from Beef that he was on his way back to pick me up. I thought we were going to have dinner at the Palms buffet, using my Las Vegas Advisor coupon, but that clearly wasn't happening on this particular evening. No big deal, I figured.

I finally received a text from Beef about 8:30 p.m., 30 minutes later than I expected. According to Beef, the woman on the phone was hard to understand, and seemed confused. Despite the fact he wanted a 60-minute massage, she penciled him in for 90 minutes. Beef, always the sucker, shows up, finds out there was a mistake and decides a 90-minute massage sounds like a nice treat. It was an amazing massage, he claims.

Woody and I have been in contact by text while I'm waiting to head back to the strip. He doesn't seem bothered that we haven't returned to fetch him. The dude covered a lot of ground. He was up at the Venetian, over at Cosmopolitan and made stops elsewhere. I thought he was nuts, but he likes pounding the pavement and seeing places he visited many years ago.

He had returned to Flamingo and sat down at a bar to have a beer. That's where he made the acquaintance of a woman from Ohio. She was friendly, our age and wanted to meet Woody's friends. I wanted nothing to do with the strip, honestly, and I didn't want to have to park on the strip, purely on principle. When Beef finally returned to Grandview I met him in the parking lot and we headed straight to the strip. Things were about to get interesting.

I interrupt my Vegas vacation for a mid-week report

Thanks to a buddy who is essentially committing four hours for a massage at a national chain commonly found in suburban strip malls, I have time on my hands.

And only because of my own idiocy, I have the capability to provide a mid-trip report here in the greater Vegas area.

Never mind the fact I haven't written one thing about my Fourth of July week visit.

This trip is essentially an annual gathering of college friends. Beef, Woody and I all know each other through college, and have all traveled very different paths since our time stomping the campus grounds of our western Wisconsin alma mater.

This wasn't intended to be an annual trip when it started humbly enough in 2012. Beef was living in Boston, Woody in Milwaukee and me in Minneapolis. Woody wanted to travel to Boston and visit Beef, and he encouraged me to join along. The itinerary was light, but the primary goal was to attend a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

Woody has been attending games at MLB parks for years, and as of last year has been to all 30 parks. I've never shared his goal, but through previous travels I've attended games with him in Seattle, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Baltimore.

Now I'm on a quest to visit all 30 ballparks, too.

Since 2012, Woody and I have taken a few trips to destinations around the country. Some of those trips were second visits by him to a ballpark he has been to before, some were to destinations on his list.

In 2013 we went to Texas for games in Arlington and Houston. In 2014 we went to Pittsburgh. In 2016 we went to Florida for games in Miami and St. Petersburg.

During that 2016 trip, we called Beef, jokingly, and asked when he was going to join us in Florida. Much to our surprise, he wished he could have done so. He's not a huge baseball fan, but he would have enjoyed touring Florida with us.

So last year he joined us for half of a road trip that included MLB games in St. Louis, Atlanta and Cincinnati. This year we were aiming for a trip to San Francisco and Oakland, but we had to postpone it. When looking at the replacement possibilities that made sense for 2018, we decided we'd visit Phoenix.

Woody and I had discussed the Phoenix trip a few years ago. We decided that when we did it, we'd go to Vegas and drive over to Phoenix. Woody hasn't been to Vegas since 2000, and is always curious about how places have changed since he last visited. He doesn't love Vegas, but liked the idea of revisiting a city he had been to a few times for work purposes.

And as a bonus to our Phoenix game, we agreed we'd have to see a minor league baseball game in Vegas.

So with plan B in motion, Beef flew into Minneapolis last Friday, spent the night at my place and flew out with me on Saturday afternoon. Woody flew in from Milwaukee a couple hours later. Well, three hours later, as his connecting flight into Vegas was delayed about an hour.

Beef and I had picked up our rental vehicle for the week and checked into our accommodations for this very atypical Vegas vacation. We're staying at a timeshare metropolis.

Beef is a government employee who happens to work for the military. He gets access to some of the deals offered to those who are serving in the military, and one of those deals is access to cheap use of timeshare units at places all over the country. (And perhaps internationally, I don't know.) For three of us, a regular hotel room might not been the best arrangement. But a timeshare unit has worked out great, even if we're five miles south of the strip.

We're staying at Grandview, an eight-building complex with a ridiculous number of units. It's across the street from South Point, where I've never been, and it was cheap. Our total bill for 7 nights is less than $400.

There are pros and cons of a timeshare unit in Vegas, and perhaps I'll detail those another week. For now, on with the trip report.

So what do three dudes do on a Saturday night in Vegas? Grandview gave us discount coupons for the Silverton buffet. No, not the South Point buffet right across the street, the buffet a couple miles up the freeway. So we went there. With coupons we all got a 50-percent discount on our meals. For Saturday night's buffet, which has a bit of a Hawaiian theme, the cost is $24. We paid $12 each.

Decent food, slightly disappointing overall variety. The place was quite busy at 8:30, and they made it clear that at 9:15 the food disappears. Service was a bit lackluster. They cleared plates, but didn't seem interested in refiling drinks.

Food was decent, and I ate too much, but I didn't love it. I wouldn't hurry back, and I'd rather have a normal meal than pay $24 on a Saturday night for their buffet. But at $12: What a bargain!

I was on fumes by Saturday night, so after our late buffet we came back to the timeshare and had a beer, purchased prior to Woody's arrival at a local Walmart. There was no wild Saturday night in our futures.

Sunday comes, we're a bit slow to get the wheels in motion, but Woody and Beef go to the fitness center for a while. I decline, as I brought the laptop with me, as there were a few work-related odds and ends nagging at me, and I didn't want to let them go unattended prior to Monday morning. So I spent an hour or so working on my first morning in Vegas.

Perhaps I could have left the computer at home if I had worked longer on Friday night back in Minnesota. I was up until 3 a.m., but Beef and I spent a couple of hours having beers and playing pinball at the ultra-hip retro arcade bar in Minneapolis. Guys have priorities.

Brunch for us was at the South Point buffet. Good, and slightly cheaper than advertised since a portion of the buffet is under renovation and therefore they don't have as many serving stations as usual. They had plenty to offer and we liked it better than Silverton.

Our Sunday afternoon began with an hour or more of pinball at the Pinball Hall of Fame, and then we headed to the strip for some old-fashioned sightseeing. We started at Tropicana, which is still a nice, old-time property devoid of any atmosphere or energy. It's sad, it wasn't that way 20 years ago.

We moved over to New York New York where we wandered around like typical tourists. I'm pretty sure neither Beef nor Woody had ever seen the inside of the place. I warned them that many of the strip casinos wouldn't be quite so ornate.

From there it was over to MGM, which I hadn't set foot inside in at least a decade. I didn't recognize anything, as it has been renovated plenty since the days when I roamed the behemoth.

We did find Level Up, the millennial-inspired gaming area that mixes arcades and gambling. As everyone else has reported, it's not very lively. Beef played a $1 game of giant Pac-Man, so I guess the concept is a success.

They did have the community gaming stations there, but weren't dealing community blackjack, or whatever they refer to the concept as. I am mildly interested in trying it, but it may not happen on this trip.

Woody, who isn't much of a gambler, decided to put a few bucks in a machine at MGM. With not much of a buy-in, he managed to trigger a bonus round that paid him $91. It was pretty entertaining to watch, and he was quite proud to be a winner.

We decided that Sunday night's dinner was going to be at Ellis Island, where we went to the BBQ restaurant, and used the reliable Las Vegas Advisor coupon for one free meal. Everybody was fat and happy, and the price was right.

We stuck around long enough to redeem the coupon for three free drinks at the bar. Woody wasn't drinking, so he tried his luck on the slots at Ellis Island. He had won another $30 or so on a machine there before we sat down for dinner, so he was convinced he was on a hot streak. That ended with the chicken and ribs, evidently.

After Ellis Island we returned to Grandview. I still had an hour or so of work to do before bed. Woody and Beef went to South Point. Beef wasn't interested in staying long, but wanted to go for a short stroll before calling it a night. More than an hour later Woody returns, without Beef. We were asleep before he returned, and I still don't know what the hell he was doing over there since he's not a gambler, either.

Monday morning arrived and we made eggs and toast in our Grandview unit. That was enough to get us started for the day. We were off to Phoenix for our baseball game. We had about five hours of driving ahead of us, and the game started at 6:40 p.m.

We had plenty of time to spare, but a major accident on Highway 93 south, along a two-lane stretch of undivided highway, ate up that spare time. Had we passed through that area 10 or 15 minutes earlier, perhaps we would have avoided it. But traffic was closed in both directions and we were stuck on the highway, along with hundreds of other cars in both directions, for about two hours. We started to doubt we'd be going to Monday night's game.

Not much to do while stuck on the highway but go for a walk in 106F heat.

But we made it to our hotel, a short walk from the ballpark, with little time to spare. We got to our seats at Chase Field just as the game was beginning. What a relief.

It was a fun game, albeit a long one. The home team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 3-2 in 14 innings. The Phillies were leading 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth, and we had no idea more than an hour of baseball was yet to be played as the bottom of the ninth began.

Since we hadn't really had lunch, and didn't eat anything at the ballpark, other than peanuts, a late meal was necessary. We drove to a nearby In-N-Out for a midnight meal.

Tuesday's itinerary concluded with a return to Vegas, and I'll detail that further when after this trip is completed. I have a busy two days ahead of me, and Beef is due to return any moment from a massage he was seeking four hours ago.

How am I going to Vegas twice this summer?

I've been going to Vegas since January 1997. Most years I've made at least one trip, but there were a few years when I never made it.

I didn't keep detailed trip reports of my visits. The Internet was barely a thing in 1997, nobody was thinking about blogging or posting trip reports. I'd love to have a list of the trips, travel companions, nights spent, hotel(s) occupied and fortunes lost over the past 21+ years.

By my calculations, I've been to Vegas more than 30 times. My first solo trip was 27 hours. I spent less than 24 hours in Sin City during a trip to Laughlin several years ago. I tend to go at least five nights when I travel these days.

I started traveling solo to Vegas circa 2004, before I knew that was a thing. I figured if I couldn't find a friend who could commit to a trip, why should I forgo a visit? I've done the solo trip at least a handful of times, including Halloween 2011. My first Halloween in Vegas. I loved it so much that I've spent five of the past seven Halloweens in Vegas.

For a few years I was averaging two trips to Vegas per year, but that is no longer the norm. My girlfriend and I started dating in early 2012. She went to Vegas with me for Halloween that year. She doesn't love it like I do, but she loves the cheap vacation, and knows it's one of the few places I want to go. So for most of the past six years we've split our vacation time between Vegas and a destination of her choosing. I won't go to Nashville with her, but in recent years we've been to San Antonio, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, New Orleans and, as of a month ago, Key West. I had been to three of those places and liked them well enough that I was willing to return, but they're not places I plan to visit annually.

I was in Vegas last Halloween, and I expected my next visit to Sin City to be this coming Halloween. That changed a few weeks ago.

For the past several years I've been getting together during the summer with one or two college friends and attending a Major League Baseball game at a ballpark I've never been to. In 2012 I was in Boston. In 2013 I was in Dallas and Houston. In 2014 I went to Pittsburgh. In 2016 I was in Tampa and Miami. Last year I went to St. Louis, Atlanta and Cincinnati.

This year the trip was supposed to be to San Francisco and Oakland. Actually, it was supposed to be to happen last year, but it was postponed. A few weeks ago it was postponed again.

That's because it's not cheap to get to San Fran when you want to go by train from Chicago, and that's part of the San Fran itinerary. One of my buddies, Woody, has been saving Amtrak points via his Amtrak credit card for about five years, but it's not cheap, or easy, to convert the points into the train ticket we want. So three or four weeks ago we postponed the train yet again and considered other destinations. Woody has been to all 30 current ballparks as of last year, so now he's doubling back to previous destinations, in part because I'm going to try to get to all 30. I've been to 18 of the current ballparks as of today.

We considered three cities as options for our 2018 trip after we aborted San Fran for the second consecutive summer. There were a few cities we ruled out this year for various reasons. Our options were San Diego and Anaheim, Kansas City or Arizona.

Kansas City is easy to visit any year I want. It's about six hours from Minnesota. And it's not far from Woody in Milwaukee. Our third friend, Roast Beef, lives in Boston and doesn't always make it on our baseball trips. He has family in Kansas City, so I thought that might have appeal to him, but he preferred to go somewhere that would feel more like vacation this year. He found great rates on weekly timeshare rentals, and soon we were booking seven night in Vegas during that same early August week we had blocked off for San Fran.

Why Vegas? Woody hasn't been there since 2000, and is curious to see how different it is. He doesn't love it, but he had been there a few times during the 1990s. I'm pretty sure he made his first trip to Sin City before I did.

Woody also knows that I have long wanted to see a minor league baseball game in Vegas. So the idea was that we'd go to Vegas for part of a trip and drive over to Phoenix for an Arizona Diamondbacks game. And that's what we're doing in two months.

Fun fact: Beef has only been to Vegas once, to the best of my knowledge, and that was with Woody and me in April 2000. So the three of us will return together more than 18 years later, and it will be the first return visit for both of these guys. I've been there at least 25 times since then, and probably 30. Needless to say I'm the driver and tour guide for this trip.

The thought of hot summer nights in Vegas never crossed my mind a month ago when I was in Key West. I was sure I'd be going to San Francisco this summer. And within days of returning from Florida: Boom, a bonus visit to Vegas.

I still intend to go to Vegas for Halloween, so this is most definitely a bonus trip.

And then a funny thing happened late last week.

My girlfriend and I have stayed at The Orleans a handful of times, although not since 2015, as we stopped getting good offers from our favorite Vegas casino. We're not high rollers, but we'd get decent offers that would entice us to stay and spend money there, as opposed to downtown.

Although I put in more time gambling at Orleans than my girlfriend does, she was the only person to get an email offer last week. She priced a five-night hotel stay over Fourth of July week and found that we could stay there for $257, resort fee included. (It's waived for this offer.)

Obviously the Fourth of July week isn't a super busy week, and reservations are light, otherwise she wouldn't be receiving a $50/night offer. Although Vegas isn't her first choice for a vacation destination, she knows how cheap it can be, and she wants an excuse to travel this summer if at all possible.

Last year we jumped through the necessary hoops to score a great deal from Southwest Airlines. She signed up for two credit cards and we used them to charge the minimum required on each within three months. We earned bonus miles for both cards, and my girlfriend earned a companion pass from Southwest for the remainder of 2017 and all of 2018. We have only used it thus far to go to Vegas last fall and Florida this spring, but my girlfriend has plenty of points left in her account and wanted to go somewhere this summer and fall. So with free airfare for both of us to Vegas and a $250 room for five nights, she offered to go to Vegas in less than four weeks.

Needless to say, she didn't have to twist my arm.

I have yet to tell my buddies I have booked a pre-Vegas trip for our August Vegas trip. I'm still in awe of the fact that five days ago I was tickled by the fact I'd get to go to Vegas once this summer. And now I'm going twice.

And yes, Halloween in Vegas remains on my to-do list this fall. Wish me luck!