Rag Top Days

8:30 at night at Thrifty car Rentals its 95 degrees. I tell the guy I really need a car with a sun roof, he say he's got the ' ultimate sunroof ' for me, a spankin new Mustang convertible, yahtzee.  We've only been in Vegas 25 minutes and we're winning already.  I know a lot of you go to Vegas and everybody does it different but I'll give you bit of a primer on how we do it.

For us the car is a must, I get restless feet and driving in the desert with many different real roads to choose from is one of my favorite things....and it saves you money, lots of money. MP snapped this pic of me in the car just a smilin away. The thing that jumped out at me was those earlobes, we've got them in the family. Some families have height or a red hair gene but us Kings we've got ear lobes. With gravity hard at work the days going to come when I can tuck them babies into my shirt...or use them to keep my balance like a tight rope walker with his pole.....Ah, but about Vegas.... We stay at a place called the GrandView which is right next door to the SouthPoint Casino. The place is ultra nice. We trade a timeshare so for us its about 100 bucks a night, full kitchen, jetted oval hot tub, two tv's and free ice. HOT TIP, go to Hotels.com and get this place for 77 bucks a night, its great value.


One of the first places we took the Mustang was out to see the new Bridge over the Colorado River. Anybody that's been to Hoover Dam knows that the old way was a log jam, you drove over the two lane dam and people were every where and well....we needed another route. But I think once they started on this baby and realised the scope of the project they saw an opportunity to renew America's sense of accomplishment, a little national pride in what we can achieve, still. After all, our country has been through a lot lately. Well, it worked because this deal is spectacular and as we walked on it and viewed it and I looked around at all the folks from different cultures and nationalities I was taken with some patriotism, I felt good. We've got people who are thinking and I think we can bridge just about anything we chose to....we just gotta chose.

Being the fishin musician there were two stops that are mandatory, the Bass Pro Shops and the Guitar Center which is the best guitar shop in the universe, at least my universe. The day we were there they had a special Gibson Les Paul promotion going on and they had literally hundreds of them. Add in the Martins, vintage Fenders, high end Taylors and they had more value than many small countries. So I bought some DeAddario strings in light gauge which is new to me and some picks....but I sure liked googling over those Gibsons, it would have drove my buddy Stan Kluth nuts.

The Bass Pro shop is a fisherman's Mecca. I was really hoping that MP would find some shoes and clothes to buy so I could linger. But as it was we had to run but I was able to get 2 and 3 ounce casting metal for Mexico and some shirts for my fishing team there, team X, the most misunderstood fishing team in Mazatlan. 

I'm kind of a research guy and as one of us has some appreciation for the arts and natural history a few days later found us at the Clark County Museum out In Henderson. This is an undiscovered jewel and worth the drive, let me tell you.... try finding something really , really cool in Vegas for two bucks, when you do , let me know.  We started back 10,000 years ago when this Dire Wolf populated the valley and worked up to the recent history and development of Las Vegas. This guy was one knarly looking dud.

Before we got outside to the mini town MP and I had our horoscopes done on an old carnival type machine. It only cost a nickel. What amazed me was what it said, you know me, theres no coincidences in my life, I think its all of purpose. So , you can imagine how I felt about this....

The Clark County museum (where I got to meet Mark the expert from the reality show Pawn Stars) has collected homes from each decade of Vegas past and furnished them with all the trappings from that era. Very cool. That TV on the left, my folks had one real similar to, kinda put a lump in my throat as I remembered watching Kennicott Theatre on Friday night while my folks were at the Officers Club and my sister watching me and having boyfriends over at the same time. And oh...I always got a Pot Pie or a TV dinner on a real TV tray on that night.

The houses were just open for you to walk through so the 'honor system' is alive and well at least in one place in this old world. Some of the kitchens reminded MP of her family and for some reason in one house I flashed on my aunt Elsa who really wasn't my aunt at all but loved us like she was and used to make us tee-shirts with dinosaurs Magic Markered onto them.

The building looked like a regular street in the 50's, Mayberry USA. There was a print shop and a small campground as well as a wedding chapel where these two lovebirds were getting hitched.  Now if any of you that are anywhere near my age can't remember people who looked sooooo much just like this, you're just not trying. I got to thinkin.....mmmm......Karen and Woody,  Tom and Jan, Jeff and.....actually that guy looks just like Tom Hansen who sang Color My World at our wedding.

On our past Vegas trips we've done just about all there is to do....or so I thought. We'd been to the Grand Canyon, Red Rocks, Valley of Fire and we even drove up to Rachel Nevada home of Area 51 to look for UFO's a few years ago, we didn't see any.  So this year it was off to Death Valley. Its impressive for sure. In this pic of me and MP you can see the vastness of the Valley that must have left the pioneers wondering....how in the hell am I going to get over there? But me, I got to wondering just how they got over those mountains on the other side once they drudged over miles of salt flats.

As we drove by a place called Badwater from out of nowhere this coyote appeared. mmmmmm, somethings wrong here we decide, he just doesn't seem wild. Well, its National Park syndrome I'd say, this guy knows we're tourists and at some time somebody gave him a sandwich so his job now is begging. So much for the Wylie Coyote. Living at Mile 14 I've seen many coyotes and I'll admit that they're curious and sometimes bold....but this was out of control, he circled the car, he gave us the old sad eyes routine, that behavior in Alaska would have earned him a trip to the taxidermist. Healthy looking bugger ain't he?

Death Valley was very cool. We drove a couple one way scenic drives, one at a place called the Artists Palette and another at a Borax mining district.  Like I've said before the desert is a bit like the ocean, you can see a long ways and with a trained eye, its all different. As we left the park we came across one of my favorite things, an old worn out and leaning farm building. I've taken a lot of these picks through the years and I wonder what the attraction is.....I guess it underlines something I learned about permenance so many years ago. There was a building like this on Portage flats on the way to Anchorage that was damaged in the 64 earth quack. I watched it lean and lean and lean more as the years went on. Then one day when we drove by it was down, done....just a reminder. And yup, I'm leaning left, just trying to help out that old building.

Naturally I did some fishing, albeit in a virtual manner. Because the weather was rainy on a few days we did a bit more gambling than we probably should have, but no worries, we really didn't lose too much. This machine here was a Behive of activity at SouthPoint Casino. 8 people all fish together, kind of party boat style. When one angler gets the right fish it triggers a feeding frenzy and the bite is on, pretty exciting.

So holy moly....MP is playing the 'Fishing in Paradise' game and you know what swims by. What do I like the best?  the holy grail of surf fishing, pez Guyo, the Roosterfish. Wow, that thing is flat gorgeous, the prettiest thing in the sea.  Its gotta be a message, a prediction, a show of faith....we're going to have a Roosterfish bite this year in Mazatlan, its obvious.

We're back at Mile 14 now and it actually feels pretty good. Its really warm for October so MP's happily doing lawn work as I type the blog. In this week I learned that to an Alaskan 100 degree weather sounds better than it really is. I learned that its possible to gain a pound a day. I learned it rains everywhere, even the desert. And I'll admit something else I learned....a week with me and a convertible gets a little intense for my best friend, she needs a little 'quiet' time here at Mile 14.