Friday, Dec 29th

  A pretty casual start to the day.  We had the hotel breakfast and got on the road at about 9:00. The weather was great, clear blue sky and warm with dry roads.  We got to go through the Virgin River gorge, always a highlight of the trip.  Traffic was light until we got close to Las Vegas.  On the way, going through Mesquite we were surprised to see a new hotel opened up, a sure sign that the economy is improving here.
  Got to Las Vegas in good time, arriving here just before lunch.  The traffic was hellacious here at the turn-off.  The area around the turn-off is locally referred to as the spaghetti bowl; I assume referring to the looping overpass bridges to several routes.  We spent a well over a half hour sometimes not moving at all.  When we finally got through it was nothing other than the 3 highways merging at that point.  Within a mile after the merge we were moving like nothing happened.  This was a first for us and anytime someone complained about the traffic here, I had difficulty believing it, having driven through here a couple dozen times.  Well I am now a believer.
  We got to Sam's Town just before noon only to be reminded it was only 11 here.  We went for a nice lunch in the hotel and then went to check in.  There is a surcharge if you check in early.  When we did register we were surprised to learn that we booked through a travel wholesaler when we had gone directly to what we thought was the Sam's Town site.  We were complaining that our credit card was hacked just after we booked and paid and the hotel of course said there was nothing they could do as it was not through them.  Lesson learned here, the SOB's just led us on to believe we were dealing with the hotel.  The hotel room is nice as always, we have never had a bad experience here with the rooms they have.
  We stopped in at the local Walmart for a few things we needed, our first time in one here.  Then we spent some time in the casino and managed to play a for a while until we donated.  By then it was supper time and we went to the buffet.  Friday is always a great one in this hotel.  It seems being the New Years weekend things were a little more, but it was well worth it.  The feature on Friday is seafood and they had lots.  Alaska King crab, Dungeness crab, calamari, steamed clams, oysters on the half shell, several kinds of fish, mussels plus all the other regular stuff.  The prime rib and turkey, Italian, salad bar, Chinese, Mexican plus amazing desert bar.  It was all very good, however there was no bread pudding [usually my favourite].  After supper we played a bit more and managed to top up our earlier donation.
  Distance travelled today about 300 km's or 200 miles and the weather was in the low teens [Celsius].