#VegasHalloween (day 5): Seeing it for myself

It was back to making eggs in our Tahiti Village unit on Thursday morning, and then it was off to see a rather unusual sight.

I didn't plan it this way, but my Thursday included checking out two things that I learned about from reading the Vital Vegas blog. The first of those was our first destination of the day, the Wheel of Misfortune.

I had never heard of this odd curiosity until I read about it via Vital Vegas shortly after I completed my Halloween trip in 2016. As somebody who has an unhealthy affection for TV game shows, I had to see this odd, unauthorized art installation on the outskirts of the Vegas area, near an area known as Lake Las Vegas. It took about 25 minutes to reach it from the Tahiti Village.

I knew from doing my homework that there was convenient, nearby parking in the area, and that you could park at a bicycle rental and/or boat storage business that offered the parking spaces. It appears that some, if not most, of the people who pay $5 to park there do so in order to access bike trails in the general vicinity. I may have a reason to return to the Lake Las Vegas area in the years to come.

I went inside the store to pay my $5 parking fee. I told the guy working that I was there to see the wheel. He replied by saying "sure." I thought that was odd. I tried to confirm which way I wanted to go in order to access the wheel, and he affirmed my understanding of the directions by saying "sure."

OK, accessing the wheel means trespassing on private property that may have been sitting idle since 1961. (Vital Vegas has a little site history included in the blog entry, as well as better photos/video than I'll provide below.) But I sensed the guy was trying to avoid making any acknowledgment of the wheel, as if he feared he was being set up for some sort of law enforcement sting. That or he was just super weird.

My girlfriend and I made the short trek to the site of the wheel. There are several large, round cement areas grouped together. They all have walls about five-feet high surrounding them. Some of them have a portion of the wall missing, making for easy access inside the "thickener" pits of the manganese mining operation that once took place there. (Again, info gleaned from Vital Vegas.)

There was no opening into the wheel, however, but there was a nice mound of dirt built up outside the wall in one area, making it easy to step onto the top of the wall. I was ready to jump in, much to my girlfriend's surprise, when she asked how I planned to get out. That was a great question.

I realized there was no easy way out of the wheel, but I did see an empty five-gallon bucket inside the wheel. I figured I could use it as a step to help climb out of the wheel when I was done taking photos and videos. It turned out the bucket was cracked, and it wouldn't support my weight when I tried to step on it. So I had to use a metal rod sticking out of the wall, about six inches above the pit's surface, as my step, and grab another metal rod sticking out of the top of the wall to pull myself out of the pit.

The Vital Vegas story notes that the wheel's creation was a multi-day project of a graffiti artist or artists in 2012. If you Google photos of it, you'll see the colors were much brighter in 2012 than they are today. And plenty of visitors have added their own graffiti to the wheel in the years since it was created. As you'll see below, the wheel was carefully created (over a span of a few days) to replicate the big wheel from TV's "Wheel of Fortune." It is obvious a lot of planning and effort went into its creation.

Besides the numerous pits in the area, there's a small structure that appeared to serve as some sort of catch basin for the contents of the other pits. It looked like it was about 30 feet deep, and there was an opening that allowed access into it. Unfortunately there was no way to get down into it, or back out. There was a ladder or two inside that graffiti artists had used to access the interior, and you could see graffiti in the tunnels that led into this peculiar building. (Think of it as a large silo that extends beneath the ground.) You would obviously need more ladders or other equipment to get out of this structure if you somehow managed to lower yourself into it. And graffiti artists clearly found the interior of this structure to be too inviting to ignore. I captured images of it during a Facebook live video I streamed that morning, but I didn't take any specific pictures of the structure or its deep interior. You can see a photograph of it, however, thanks to Google.

The Wheel of Misfortune is far from a must-visit site in Vegas, but for me, I had to see it for myself.

Mother Nature, and other graffiti artists, have not been kind to the Wheel of Misfortune since its creation in 2012.

The artist or artists responsible use(s) the moniker "Aware," evidently.

After visiting the Wheel of Misfortune, it was time to head to another art installation, this one a sanctioned display.

For the second consecutive November I made an appearance at Seven Magic Mountains. South of Vegas, a few miles south of the M resort, these colorful stacked rocks are easily accessible. I wrote about them extensively last year, so I won't say a lot about them this time around. My girlfriend wasn't with me during my 2016 visit, and she was interested in seeing them for herself, so we made the trip.

I'm not sure why I realized it, but at some point I noted that my visit was exactly one year after my previous visit with friends for Halloween. So I had to send them a picture to remind them of our time, and that I missed them.

#sadface 

I won't post many pics of the mountains, there are millions online, and mine aren't anything special.

Photos like this make for great cell phone wallpaper. 

After the colorful rocks it was time for lunch. Normally my girlfriend and I have lunch at In-N-Out Burger prior to our Vegas departure. But I had spotted a restaurant near Silverton Casino two days earlier when I made my Target run. We decided that we'd have our traditional In-N-Out meal early this year.

I like their burgers, but I don't love their fries, even if they're cut fresh. I like thicker cut fries. I had read a recommendation suggesting to order them extra crispy. I did that, and it didn't make them worse.

We ran over to Silverton after lunch because my buddy Joe wanted to place one last bet for the week, assuming he lost. I had to loan him the $50 for his final bet. There was a Thursday night NFL game, and he picked the visiting Buffalo Bills, who were playing the New York Jets. The Bills were favored, and they lost. Joe didn't have a good week.

We spent a little time at the pool late in the afternoon, but with the sun going down, the temperature dipping a few degrees and the wind picking up a bit, the pool wasn't quite as pleasurable as it had been days previous. But it was still better than being in Minnesota, where it was 40 degrees, or more, colder.

Our Thursday evening included tickets to see Xavier Mortimer's Magical Dream, a show recommended by Vital Vegas. (It's one guy.)

I received VIP tickets as a birthday gift, so we headed to Planet Hollywood early and had a light dinner in the mall. We had the most unspectacular meal of our week, a shared plate from Chipotle in the adjoining Miracle Mile Shops. We didn't want a lot to eat, and we didn't need anything spectacular, so we settled for a known commodity.

The show started at 7 p.m. in a small Planet Hollywood theater. The show lasts about one hour, and it's pretty good. It's not spectacular, but it's pretty good. It features variations of your standard magic, includes an assistant, tells a story and uses a lot of choreography special effects. Xavier does a good job, although my girlfriend said that she noticed where/how he was pulling cell phones out of thin air. I didn't notice, but I wouldn't have cared if I had. Overall, his magic was quite smooth.

It also included audience participation, and I was chosen to participate in one of the tricks. I did nothing more than answer a couple of questions that were integrated into the trick, but it was fun nonetheless.

You can take pictures during the show, so long as you're not using the flash. In this trick Xavier communicates without talking. Hilarity ensued.  

The image is a bit dark, but here's Xavier floating in the air, and jumping rope. 

The show had a couple of incredible tricks. At least my untrained eye thought so. The guy doesn't truly float in the air, of course, yet the way he did, seemingly without the use of any sort of wires, was impressive.

But the show lacked a big, spectacular, mind-blowing finale. That was disappointing.

I liked it, and if you gave me free tickets I'd go see it again, but I wouldn't recommend it for magic fix while in Vegas. Back in November the show was performed once per evening, at 7 p.m. most nights of the week. I assume his schedule has not changed in the two months since I attended.

After the show we drove over to Ellis Island for cheap pizza, cocktails and gambling. I wasted time playing on the cheap at the bar and lost $20. I eventually sat down at a blackjack table and lost $30. I wasn't a profitable night, which is rare for me at Ellis Island.

We were on our way back to Tahiti Village by midnight.

#VegasHalloween (day 4): The worst day of the year

If you really love a holiday or a day of celebration, the day after can be a bit of a let down.

Yeah, the spirit of Christmas lingers on after Dec. 25, but for most Hallmark occasions, there's little happening after the fact. For some folks, that's fine. For me, there's a sense of disappointment when Halloween is over. With the exception of the years when Halloween is on a Friday, the only Halloween leftovers to be found come Nov. 1 are discounted decorations and candy, and a bunch of pumpkins left sitting on the front steps of houses in the neighborhood.

Given how anti-climatic Halloween night is for me, I'm glad that I've spend five of the past seven Halloween nights in Vegas. Vegas provides a big flourish for Halloween, bigger than I'd get on a Tuesday night in Minnesota, making it an appropriate way to end a season of silliness and scariness.

Having spent eight hours downtown and not getting to bed until 3 a.m., it was a slow morning for us at Tahiti Village. When we finally got around to cleaning up, we didn't have a simple egg and bagel breakfast. We decided that Wednesday was our day to put miles on the rental car, have a late breakfast and violate one of the Five Hundy by Midnight podcast rules. We drove to the Suncoast Hotel and Casino for breakfast at Du-Par's.

What rule did we violate? Co-host Tim, in his guidebook published a couple of years ago, explains that it doesn't matter how extraordinary a meal might be. When he's in Vegas, he's not going to spend 20 minutes traveling by car for a breakfast when he can get a good meal at his casino, or next door to his casino. I agree with the logic, to a point.

Regardless, I never experienced the glory of the Du-Par's pancakes when the California institution operated a restaurant at downtown's Golden Gate. I like pancakes, but it was never a priority. Unfortunately, when talking about the places that Vegas fanatics love, it came up in a conversation, and my girlfriend decided she had to find out what the hype was about. That was a couple of years ago. Since that time the Golden Gate location closed. So she wanted to experience Du-Par's before the Suncoast location closed, and this was the trip to do it.

We both ordered a stack of pancakes, sans meats or any other add on. They were as big and filling as advertised by everybody on the planet. And they were better than any pancake I had ever consumed at any restaurant or church fundraiser. They live up to the hype, no doubt. Would I drive 20+ minutes from Tahiti Village to Suncoast again? Nope. I tried them, I understand the hype. Unless I have another reason to travel that direction, I'm not stopping at Suncoast again.

There was a benefit to hitting up Suncoast the day after Halloween.

When I dropped my girlfriend off at a nail salon on day 2 while I went to the haunted attraction, she got long, black, fake fingernails to go with her with costume. She doesn't do long, fake fingernails, and found them to be highly difficult to live with for 36+ hours. For example, she never considered how she would take her contacts out with long fingernails. She found a Youtube video with tips on how to do it, so crisis averted, but even using her cellphone was a challenge with those nails.

While she could have gone anywhere to get the fake nails shortened to something manageable, we had to pass the exit we hit on day 2 for the salon and haunted attraction. So we hit it again and went back to the same strip mall salon.

Since we were going to be there for a while, I decided to indulge, as well. I got a pedicure. I do a terrible job of trimming my toenails. They always look mangled by the time I'm done. And they were due to be cut, so I paid to have them done.

And what a deal that was! I have had a pedicure once, about five years ago. I knew what to expect, more or less, and the woman doing my pedicure was thorough and outstanding. She did foot massaging in addition to all the work on my nails, and the chair I sat in was very relaxing. It was one of those massage chairs, so that was a nice bonus. And as I sat there in the chop shop, on a pleasant Vegas Wednesday, with the doors of the chop shop open, I looked to my left, and through the windows I could see the Stratosphere off in the distance. I loved it.

I knew to expect the service to cost about $30. The woman spent more than 30 minutes working on my nails, so $30 seemed reasonable. And as I stood at the register to pay, the cashier told me the total was $23. I was amazed. That was one hell of a deal. I paid by credit card, and tipped $7, as I expected to pay at least $30 before the tip.

The cashier asked to see my ID since I paid by credit card. She was surprised to see I was from Minnesota. This ain't a place that sees a lot of tourists, I'm sure. She asked me if it was cold back in Minnesota. I told her it snowed the past Friday, which it did for a while, even if it didn't last a day.

By mid-afternoon we were back at Tahiti Village for pool and hot tub time. As the sun started to set and the warmth went with it, we cleaned up and headed to The Cosmopolitan for dinner. We don't spend much time on the strip, and we don't dine at many buffets, but my girlfriend had wanted to try a high-end buffet. The Cosmo had a 2-for-1 coupon in the Las Vegas Advisor coupon book for its buffet, Wicked Spoon, so we gave it a try.

First off, we had to pay for parking. It was my first time paying for parking on the Vegas strip. I wasn't excited about it, but I wasn't going to spend an hour trying to circumvent the parking fee by walking a mile or riding the bus up the strip. I will say this, the red light/green light system and tabulation of available parking spaces is slick.

We went inside, signed up for player cards and headed to the buffet. It's about $45 per person for dinner on a Wednesday night.

The food is well done, overall. They had pre-split crab legs, so it was easy feast upon my second-favorite Vegas delicacy. They serve many of their entrees in single-portion dishes, which is a nice touch. I tried a variety of them and found most to be very satisfying. I had a couple of slices of their prime rib, too. It's my favorite Vegas indulgence, but I wouldn't go back to Wicked Spoon for it. The first trip to the carving station produced a satisfactory, thin slice. On my second trip the cut I had wasn't as good. If I go there again I'll certainly have a slice, but it didn't dazzle me like I expected given the Spoon's reputation.

Obligatory photo of the buffet sign.

I can't tell you what's in that little dish, perhaps it's the fancy mac and cheese, but on the right is one of my favorite Vegas delicacies, crab legs. The only drawback to buffet crab legs in Vegas, they're often served chilled. But good crab meat and hot butter is never a losing combination. 

I don't love sushi, but I don't hate it. I stick to the basics and had one serving at Wicked Spoon.

Fancy desserts are tasty at Wicked Spoon, but not to die for. 

Overall I was highly satisfied with my meal at $22.50 per person. Our server was prompt in clearing our plates, but not very proactive when it came to refilling my beverage. Oh well, he saved me a buck on my tip.

Plenty of fancy desserts available at the Spoon, as you might expect. I sampled a few. They were very good, but I didn't fall in love with any of them.

We did gamble a bit at Cosmo after dinner. I dropped $40 in a Top Dollar slot machine, and although I did get the bonus twice, my bonus offers weren't much more than $10 at best. I was not impressed by the machine.

My girlfriend had read about the Verbena, a unique drink they serve at Chandelier. So we made it a point to venture over and try it. I won't try to describe it if you don't know what it is, but it's a unique cocktail sensation I've never had anywhere else. It was $16 per drink, I think, and that's typical for cocktails at Chandelier. It was worth trying.

I'm not exactly Cosmo material, but it was fun to clean up and spend a few hours among the beautiful people, watching the parade of well-funded men and women parade to and from. Cosmo is a nice place and I like it. Perhaps one day I'll forgo the vow of poverty I took when I chose my career and will be able to afford to drop $100 or more on a few rounds of drinks without thinking twice about it.

Some day.

Which way is up? I'm not sure, but it's a photo I took at The Chandelier inside The Cosmopolitan. I won't be winning any photography awards any time soon, clearly.

Funny thing about my brief cameo at Chandelier. I looked toward the bar and saw a woman walking away. I didn't get a head-on look, but I got a profile view. I was sure it was Marci, a frequent visitor who shares a lot of pictures and stories of her Vegas travels through Facebook groups dedicated to Vegas travel. I know several names and have seen pictures of the most prolific contributors to these groups, but I wouldn't expect to see or recognize them while wandering about. I didn't chase the woman down as she was walking away from my area, but I checked on Facebook that night, and sure enough I spotted Marci, one of the frequent contributor to a group called Talk Las Vegas. It was like spotting a celebrity.

We left Cosmo before four hours had passed. I paid $7 for parking. Not the end of the world, and I likely would have been ready to leave even had parking been free, but the fact that the base rate for parking increases after four hours was all the incentive I needed to move along. Who knows how my night might have been different had I not been paying for parking. I was content with paying $7 in order to park for dinner and a cocktail, but I didn't want to pay more than that. No big deal, I'm not Cosmo material anyway.

Our next stop was Orleans, the casino I liked staying at during the past several years. Unfortunately those comped weeknights that my girlfriend and I received two years earlier have stopped coming. We spent five nights at the Orleans in September 2015, and four of those nights were comped. We paid for the fifth, ate meals on the property, drank beers at the pool and charged it all to our room. And at that point they stopped comping me weeknight rooms. I don't get it.

I was disappointed on this Wednesday night to find that all of their $5 tables were auto-shuffle machines. I swear they were. I looked, and looked again. I use to be able to count on $5 double-deck pitch games, but not that night. I was highly disappointed.

I used that as a sign that it was my night to play Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em. I had good luck over the course of a couple of hours, winning $150 on $5 play. I cashed out and used a $10 match play to win a $10 spin on roulette. After tipping a few dollars, I finished my night at Orleans up $166.

We were on the road back to Tahiti Village around midnight, early enough to close out our night with a visit to the hot tub.

It was symbolically one of the saddest days of the year for me, but it turned out to be a pretty good one. Thank you, Vegas.