Las Vegas, Nevada (Part 1)
Raphael Rivera, Canadians & New York, New York
This story is an excerpt from A Beard Across America, read more excerpts here.
Now that Kimmi, had joined me, I wasn’t the only one excited to reach Las Vegas. In fact, ever since Kimmi visited Vegas when she was 21 yeas old, she’s been dying to go back.
To give you an idea of how excited we both were, we decided to drive straight from Denver, Colorado to Sin City. That, for those that are counting, is a 13-hour drive.
“No Sleep till Vegas!”
Even with a payoff of four-days in Vegas, I will now find it difficult to convince myself to drive more than eight hours straight again. I can say I have a whole new respect for truck drivers.
With a room booked at Luxor for the night, we purchased beer before getting to Vegas, to save a little pocket change. After we checked into our room, we cracked open a beer each and headed to the slots, so spend a little pocket change.
A few pulls later, fatigue started to set in for Kimmi. Understandably, we had just travel 750+ miles and it was 4:30 AM in the timezone we are accustomed to. It was time to get some rest in preparation for the fun-filled day we were anticipating the next day.
That night, still feeling the adrenaline from my first night in Vegas, I started flipping through TV channels. I landed on a channel covering exploring Las Vegas’ history.
This episode was covering the Spanish/Mexican scout Raphael Rivera who was the first non-Native America visitor of Las Vegas Valley. In 1829, while in search of water, Rivera veered away from his scouting party and found Las Vegas Springs, about 100 miles southeast of where his caravan was camped. Rivera told his group of the findings and the area became known as “Las Vegas”, or “the meadows” in spanish.
As interested as I was in Vegas’ past, I knew the next day would be filled with Vegas’ present history; Lights, Food and Booze.
Staying at the Luxor was a last minute reservation set on our trip into town, so the next day we headed towards The Stratosphere.
We shared the elevator with a married Canadian couple and their cousin from L.A. The three of them were extending their bender from the night before into that afternoon, only coming back to the hotel to change clothes for a pool party that afternoon.
When the elevator door opened, we all walked out of the elevator and realized we were only two rooms away form one another. We went our separate ways with a “maybe we’ll run into you later.”
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