Las Vegas

[skipj]

Has anyone visited Las Vegas by RV. Any suggestions?

[Jim W]

We were there the first week of Feb. We stayed at the KOA at the Silverton Hotel. It was a pretty nice place, but it just changed to a KOA & had raise there fee to $28. a nite witch is probably the highest priced camp gnd in the area. There are several nice CG's in the area. I would probably select another place, just because of the high price. There are alot of nice ones!

[masseyfarm]

Has anyone got some current suggestions for 2 or 3 night stays in Las Vegas for a motorhome? We will have the toad so local travel will not be a problem. Hope to take in a show or two and sightsee.

Dave

[Safari-Rick]

Ok, guys, $28 IS NOT a high price to say in Vegas. The Silverton is not exactly on the strip. If you want the strip then you want KOA Circus Circus. BUT, it's not $28. It's more like $45 a night. Here again, You're on the strip.

Traffic is back on the weekends. The Vegas economy is BACK! Hotel prices are up and crowds too. That's if you coming just for the weekend. The deal with Circus Circus is that once you park your rig you don't have to drive anywhere unless you want to.

Silverton RV park is nice, has a little store and the casino. Food's not too bad. Just make sure you try and get a back spot. They have two swimming pools also.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth. )

[Bk Yd Safari]

check-out the Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort...its located 4 miles south of Mandalay Bay Resort between I-15 and South Las Vegas Blvd.
www.oasislasvegasrvresort.com

[Schools Out]

If you don't mind a 10-15 minute drive to the strip, I would recommend Lake Mead RV Park. We were there in Feb. & paid a little more for a lake view spot....Well worth it....We watched the sun come up over the mountains right out our front window.
If you want to be closer to the action, Sam's Town was recommended to us as a good place. We drove by & checked it out, but we didn't stay there. Seemed kind of like camping in a parking lot.

[dsrtgrls]

oasis was the best that we saw out of the city campgrounds. safe,clean,and plenty of space. only a few minutes to the strip by car as first casino property you hit on dtrip is mgm grand. you can walk across the street from the park to the one with the bass fishing shop and aquarium. very dog friendly too and good laundry. we went right before christmas.

[sherrylynne]

We did the Oasis....twice...nice!

[Gene]

Dave,

The Circus Circus KOA is in what was once the middle of the Strip, but most of the new casinos are pretty far south. It is a parking lot with a very few trees. It is actually on a street that parallels I-15, about 2 blocks west of the Strip. That back street is a pretty fast way to go north and south for a while (all sorts of strip joints are on that street too).

This part of the strip now looks kind of old, but is centrally located between the new casinos to the south the old downtown to the north. They keep trying to attract people to the old downtown. There's a pedestrian mall with a nightly light show.

From that KOA you can walk to some casinos, but you'll have to take your toad or public transportation to get to other parts of town. You can park for free in the casino garages, or could when we were there a couple of years ago.

We find casinos depressing—seniors gambling nickels and quarters in the slots and looking mesmerized by the lights and sounds. The older casinos are more like that. The newer ones have a much higher proportion of other types of gambling and better dressed and younger people—it looks more like what you see in the movies about Vegas. I think for young people in Vegas, weekends mean walking up and down the Strip and flirting. The Strip (I think it is actually Las Vegas Blvd.) has a lot of traffic and is stop and go on weekends.

it used to be meals were cheap because it brought people into the casinos, but margins are now tighter on gambling and food is neither cheap nor very good in places we tried.

Read Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" for a version of Vegas that never was quite like that, but still fun to read, even after 40 years especially if you were "experimenting" in those days.

Last time I was at a show was in 1956 with my parents—dinner theater then. We have no interest in spending several hundred bucks on the shows. For that much money, we can travel to beautiful natural places for several days. We stop there because it is time to stop and we gawk at the lights, crowds, silliness and act like rubes off the farm. Those beautiful young women you see alone or with other young women on the Strip or in some casinos (they get thrown out of some) may be "entrepreneurs"—they don't quite look like tourists or girls from the suburbs checking out boys from the suburbs.

In the summer Vegas can be 100˚ or more. Make sure the A/C works well if you go then. Hoover Dam is interesting and has a variety of tours—we took the one that goes into the guts of the dam. You won't be far from the national and state parks in Utah, places that are more to our taste. Every couple of years as we visit surrounding areas, we stop in Vegas and look around—everyone should see it once and we have friends who go regularly. It borders on the surreal to me.

Gene

[Phrunes]

it used to be meals were cheap because it brought people into the casinos, but margins are now tighter on gambling and food is neither cheap nor very good in places we tried.

I think the margins are the same on gambling...the house wins the same amount of time as always....but now instead of 100,000 square feet of overhead, there is 6,000,000 square feet of overhead.

[azflycaster]

Originally Posted by Safari-Rick

Ok, guys, $28 IS NOT a high price to say in Vegas. The Silverton is not exactly on the strip. If you want the strip then you want KOA Circus Circus. BUT, it's not $28. It's more like $45 a night. Here again, You're on the strip.

Traffic is back on the weekends. The Vegas economy is BACK! Hotel prices are up and crowds too. That's if you coming just for the weekend. The deal with Circus Circus is that once you park your rig you don't have to drive anywhere unless you want to.

Silverton RV park is nice, has a little store and the casino. Food's not too bad. Just make sure you try and get a back spot. They have two swimming pools also.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth. )

The $28 per night post is 11 years old, things change...

[Phrunes]

Remember when it used to be free?

[masseyfarm]

We are just in the planning stage so thanks all for the good information and leads. We have never been there, don't really hang out in big cities, but we do like to visit as many different areas of the continent at least once if we can.


Dave

[nilesrob]

We stayed (more like overnighted) about 5 years ago at Circus Circus. It is a parking lot with power and water. The only reason we (I) stayed there was waiting for my wife and kids to fly in to Vegas so we could then travel to Death Valley. I won't comment on Vegas, but Death Valley was magnificent I suppose Circus Circus was relatively convenient.

[Towster]

We stayed at Circus Circus KOA last May as an overnighter on the way to Zion. Big parking lot, but there was electricity which helped run our air-conditioner ALL night long - a first.

Had dinner in Circus Circus - the air was overwhelmingly dank - the worst I've ever breathed. The people were sad and depressing. We left at 7AM. Drove straight home on the return trip. I'm not a Vegas fan. (Can you tell?)

Seriously, there are far better places to spend your time and money.

[timmaah]

The backside of the Paris work out well for our two nights in Vegas. Free and one block from the strip.

[Snedwid]

Not everyone has earned elgibility, but, if you have, Nellis AFB FamCamp is outstanding,,, we stayed there last year and it was everything we could want.

[Phrunes]

This thread is kinda depressing me. As a child of the 60s, our family vacations were spent "out West" escaping the humidity of the Midwest. The wide open spaces had such a profound effect on me that I moved out west in my early twenties. I spent many, many weekends in Vegas, Arizona and the deserts of California and Nevada in the eighties. What really appealed to me was the openness, and unstructured travel...if you had a trailer in tow, simply pull off anywhere and enjoy the beauty of your surroundings. Las Vegas was an Oasis, best experienced by cresting the hill on I15 late at night. Now...Vegas is another LA, sans the beaches and the entire west has been outfitted with barbed wire fencing and do not trespass signs. Even Bullhead City is losing some of its luster.