relaxedWe did not come to Vegas to gamble. If we want to do that, we can do it at home and earn casino loyalty perks to boot. Vegas trips are for things we can only do in Vegas. Today, that meant the National Atomic Testing Museum.
Not too far from The Strip down Flamingo Blvd is the museum, and over the entrance is this sign.
Along with a history of atomic weapons and the reasoning behind establishing the Nevada Test Site, there are several atomic bomb mock-ups that were used for training and demonstration purposes in the museum.
A display of popular culture items shows how thoroughly The Atomic Age penetrated our psyche.
travelswithkuma reprised his role as Chair of the Tonopah Westercon Bid by setting off a simulated atomic test by pressing The Button.
This N-scale model is of the Jackass & Western Railroad, built on the Test Site as part of the nuclear rocketry program.
Kuma Bear looks very small sitting on top of this H-bomb.
The full set of photos is in a Flickr folder of our museum visit.
We spent between three and four hours at the museum. If you plan to go, give yourself more time to read the displays if you enjoy the history.
After our time in the museum, we found that we were still pretty fatigued from travel and went back to our luxury hotel room, where Lisa took a bath and I worked on processing and updating SMOFCon Fannish Inquisition videos.
In the evening, we went down to the Grand Canal Shops (more pictures later; I'm too tired to process more of them). The Palazzo-Venetian is sort of like a gigantic high-end shopping mall with huge hotels and casinos attached to each end of it. We didn't buy anything, but we did look at a couple of the shops, including a nice hat shop where the staff were very kind to Lisa (they polished up her hat for her) and where we might come back and buy a new hat for me before we leave that will be better for summer and high-wind conditions. We brought take-out lobster mac & cheese again from one of the food court shops and made more use of our hotel room.
After dinner, we felt we needed to do some walking, so we headed back to the Canal Shops, which were closing (it being 11 PM), looped down to the casino floor, dropped $20 on slots much faster than we would at any comparable Reno casino, and headed back to the room. I guess we're getting old; staying up all night partying at a noisy, smoky casino isn't, ahem, in the cards for us tonight. Instead, another night in a comfortable hotel room where we don't have a set time to get up tomorrow is a nice prospect.
