Dave’s Midlife Blog

Today was the last baseball game of our trip. We’ve had kind of a bummer experience watching the Nationals play so far. They lost to the Dodgers on Saturday, the day we arrived. Then on Sunday, while we were exploring the American space program at Kennedy Space Center, the Nats were in Ft. Lauderdale losing egregiously to the Orioles 11-3. (Alas, yes, it was 11-3, not 8-2 as I reported on Sunday.) Then yesterday they lost rather decisively to the NY Mets, 7-3.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that we drove across the Florida peninsula today to Lakeland to watch the Nationals take on the Detroit Tigers–a formidable team, the American League champions of 2006–in the Tigers’ spring training camp in Lakeland.

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Day #2 of our Florida trip was devoted to driving to the Kennedy Space Center. The Washington Nationals, our real reason for being here on the coast of central Florida, were playing the Baltimore Orioles in Ft. Lauderdale. (They lost the game 8-2.) Ft. Lauderdale is many hours down the coast from here, just north of Miami, and so we decided to skip that game. When I looked at a map of the Grapefruit League teams, I noticed that Ft. Lauderdale is the spring training location farthest removed from any of the others.

Instead, we got up relatively early for being on vacation, and prepared to drive up the coast. (more…)

About a year and a half ago, my wife suggested it would be a fantastic vacation if we could travel to Florida for spring training for our beloved Washington Nationals.

This year, Easter is early enough that my spring break from schoolteaching coincides with spring training. So here we are in Melbourne Beach, Florida, about a half hour away from the Nats’ spring training camp in Viera. (more…)

While Red Rock Canyon is a marvelous example of how the Southwest changed over millenia, the Hoover Dam is a Wonder of the World that was built in less than five years.

The dam is on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona, about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. (We like to tell our friends that we walked to Arizona–across the dam.) It created Lake Mead, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, and it provides irrigation water and electric power to a good portion of the southwestern United States.

The dam is reached by one road and one road only: U.S. Highway 93, which runs through Boulder City, Nevada to the river.

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Okay, strictly speaking what I’m about to share with you is not in Las Vegas, per se, but it is just outside of town and is generally considered a “must-see” destination for folks who can tear themselves away from the casinos.

Red Rock Canyon is just on the western edge of Las Vegas. It is reached by driving straight out Charleston Boulevard to the west, until there is no more Charleston Boulevard. As the road continues into the hills, one enters the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Just a few minutes after the straight road began to curve, we realized that we were in real, live desert.

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Here are pictures of the rest of the “heritage” hotels we visited on our trip. I meant to blog these from the hotel, but of course, the hotel WiFi would not handle the pictures. Now, two days after arriving home, I’m putting them up.

We’ll continue our pilgrimage of endangered hotels by going down Las Vegas Boulevard South. The one hotel that seems in most imminent danger of implosion is the Saraha, on the north end of what’s considered the Strip.

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I’m typing this in the waiting area of gate D-10 in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. I wanted to blog our whole trip this week, but the WiFi in the Hyatt Grand Vacation Club on the Las Vegas Strip is so weak and worthless that I could not even upload my pictures.

I have just accomplished more in 10 minutes of frantic blogging in the airport than I could in a whole week of trying to use the frustratingly slow and bandwidth-limited hotel WiFi.

Thanks, McCarran Airport!

We resolved to see as many of the (apparently) doomed old casinos in Las Vegas as we can. Yesterday (Tuesday) we concentrated on the north- to mid-Strip area.

According to the Las Vegas Casino Death Watch, re-development will probably doom most of these hotels at some point in the near future. I already mentioned the recent demise of the Stardust, whose rubble I can see directly from my hotel window while typing this.

Here is the defunct sign of the Stardust, still standing behind the barrier that separates the curious public from the continuing work of hauling away debris.

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My wife and I are spending my spring break week in Las Vegas, to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. This was her idea, really, but I’m glad she pushed it. I don’t know what every would have gotten me out here, and this is a place I should see. Since I’m a part-time pro magician, and since Vegas is the town where magicians come to “make it,” I should have had the Vegas experience long ago.

We’ve been overwhelmed in our first 18 hours here. Too much to see and experience. (more…)