Vegas Geocaches 2020

While in Vegas, I did some geocaching. My wife and I visited years ago for the wedding of my dance partner. We found some caches on the strip. New ones have come up in the fifteen or so years that have gone by, leaving me some new opportunities. Also, I was able to get in an Arizona cache!

My first cache was Diamonds Are Forever just behind the Westgate Casino. The hotel was in the Bond movie. The casino has plenty of hotel rooms and convention space. The Dice Tower West board game convention was there, so it was only natural for me to find a cache there.

View to a kill from the cache

On Sunday, I walked to the Guardian Angel Cathedral for 8 a.m. Mass. Behind the cathedral is A Kiwi Connection - Las Vegas #2, an easy find with no muggles around so early in the morning.

The back of the church

After Mass, I walked over to the Strip where another geocache, Convention Center Dr., is hidden less than 0.2 miles away! It was an easy find as the muggle count was still very low for the area. Early Sunday morning is a great time to geocache.

It's in there somewhere

After the convention was over, I went to see Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The structure was very impressive. The dam doesn't have a normal cache, but there is a virtual cache. During construction, the site had a stray dog show up. The dog wandered all over, becoming beloved by the workers. The dog died when it fell asleep under a truck and the driver unknowingly ran him over. The hardened construction workers wept openly at the dog's death and they jackhammered out a grave for the poor pooch. A Virtual Reward for a Dam Cool Dog doesn't have a log to sign. Instead, I posted a picture of me with the memorial as proof that I found the right spot.

At the spot for a dog not named Spot

The Colorado River is the border between Nevada and Arizona, so I decided to find a cache on the other side and add Arizona to our list of "cached in" states. A few miles down the road is The White Rock Canyon Bridge, which is indeed a bridge. It was part of a road between Kingman and the dam. A new route was built later, putting this bridge out of service. Now it's part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The bridge

Cacher in the picture

The road has gone out of use

The trail leads to the Arizona Hot Spring and Liberty Bell Arch. The hike was two miles and the sign recommended bringing food and a gallon or two of water which I didn't have with me. Also, the hike is closed from May to September because of it is a desert and far too hot for hiking.

Another hiking destination

Back in Vegas, I found a trickily-hidden cache called Beware of lights and sirens. As the name indicates, it's located by a fire department (and sponsored by that crew). I had to use the cache's hint to try what I thought might be the hiding spot.

The fire department

I tried to find Pearl Harbor Day! but the spot had some homeless guys sacked out. I didn't want to disturb them, so I left it unfound.

The geocache is somewhere in there

The nearby wash

Caching in Vegas is a lot of fun!

Other Vegas Stuff

Here's some random bits from Vegas that didn't make their own post...

I laughed out loud at the airport when I saw this sign:

Coming to an airport near you

I guess the local government wants to cash in on the "let's go to Vegas and get married" crowd! Why should the wedding chapels get all the revenue?

My brother and I did an escape room. It was at the Escapology in Vegas (the chain to which I have gone before). Since I was there, we did the Vegas Hangover room. We were locked in an apartment after a rough night. In the story recap, we found out that we lost the wedding rings for our best friend. The night before we had gambled them away to a woman who never loses. Being a good sport (of sorts), she let us have an hour to get through several puzzles to find the rings hidden in the apartment. We didn't succeed but we made it pretty far through the puzzles. One particularly difficult puzzle involved clocks and cards with some more challenging mathematical variables than we were ready for. We had a good time even so.

After the fact

The Westgate Casino has some random interesting things, including a statue of Elvis, a display of dry-aging beef for one of their restaurants, and the last remnant of Star Trek: The Experience.

Elvis has not left the building!

Only thing more boring than watching paint dry

They never replaced this Star Trek doorway

The strip has all sorts of fun architecture and displays along it. Treasure Island used to have a pirate show out front with full-size ships from which the pirates performed.

Pirate ship by Treasure Island

Venice is represented by the Venetian with a canal bridge and the clock tower from Saint Mark's Square.

Putting the Venice in the Venetian

Caesars Palace has a lot of Italian and specifically Roman remakes. Here's the Trevi Fountain. I guess if you toss a coin in here, you'll come back to Vegas.

Trevi Fountain, now an entrance to the Forum

Circus Circus has a fun if old-school look to it. It must have a million light bulbs for its various signs.

Circus Circus

This attempt to hide a cell tower is creative.

Which are real palm trees?

One night we went to the Rio to see a show at the Comedy Cellar. Afterward, we had a steak up on the fifty-first floor. The restaurant has an outdoor bar with a view of the city that's impressive.

South end of the Strip

Casinos-a-million

The Rio also has mini-golf. But not just any mini-golf. The course was Kiss-themed. Black-light was the only light and the eighteenth hole was what you would expect.

Rockin' mini-golf

The course

Eighteenth hole

Grandpa gave me four lucky quarters to play in a quarter slot machine. We couldn't find any machines that would take quarters, so I put a dollar in this machine and played four times. My dollar wasn't lucky like the quarters.

No payout here

I bet Grandpa would have liked this one

We took in a show while we were there. Discount tickets are available at Fashion Show (that's the mall with a flying saucer overhead) for day-of or next-few-days performances. In tribute to the blog, we went to see Zombie Burlesque, which was cheesy but fun.

A theater with a lot of shows

Elevator to the show

We had a good Mexican meal at a restaurant not far from the Strip. The Original Lindo Michoacan has the typical decor and fabulous frozen margaritas. I had the carne a la coca-cola which was very tasty, along with a coconut margarita. Yum!

Other Lindo Michoacans are available, but why bother?

Guardian Angel Cathedral, Las Vegas

Guardian Angel Cathedral is located just off the Strip in the heart of Las Vegas. The church was built in 1963 as Guardian Angel Shrine to serve the tourists and casino workers. In 1995 the Diocese of Las Vegas was split off from the Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas. This church became the cathedral for the diocese, which means it is the "home" church of the diocese's bishop. The name changed to Guardian Angel Cathedral.

I was surprised to see on their website that the church has a 2:30 Saturday Vigil Mass. I've seen 4 and 4:30 Vigil Masses that I thought were pushing the limit. The bulletin from the cathedral explains that they have a special Indult from Rome to allow the 2:30 Mass to be a Vigil Mass. With people from all over the world visiting (and the weird hours that people keep in Vegas), it's nice to have even more flexibility with fulfilling the Sunday obligation. I went to the 8 a.m. Sunday morning Mass.

The early morning sun was just behind the cathedral, giving it an interesting look.

Guardian Angel Cathedral

At the base of the outside tower is a statue of the Holy Family with a plaque at the base: "May the Holy Family bless our visitors and protect them on their journey homeward." I like the ambiguity of "homeward" which refers to both an earthly address and our heavenly abode.

Holy Family

Inside, the altar is a typical modern style.

Main altar

The cathedra, or bishop's chair, is directly behind the altar with his coat of arms right above.

The mosaic above the main altar depicts guardian angels in action. It's a bit gaudy but also joyful.

Mosaic

The crucifix is nice. The processional cross is the same (though smaller). I liked how they matched.

Crucifix

The stained glass windows follow the triangular motif throughout the cathedral. And the colorfulness too.

One of the stained glass windows

The baptismal font can do both immersion or regular baptism. The holy oils are in a triangular box at the far end.

Baptismal font

A side altar to Our Lady follows the colorfulness without the triangularity.

Chapel of Our Lady

The coats of arms of previous bishops are in the back.

Bishop's coat of arms

Bishop's coat of arms

Another side chapel has a burial area for bishops.

Grave

Marvel S.T.A.T.I.O.N., Las Vegas

Marvel S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is the Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network located at Treasure Island in Las Vegas. It's basically a showcase for props and costumes from the Marvel movies. It's given a storyline and some interactive elements to make it more fun. The entrance has posters, cutouts, and wall art all over the place.

Enter the S.T.A.T.I.O.N.

Captain America stands ready to take care of any shop lifters in the gift shop area.

Guardian of the Swag-you-see

We bought half-price tickets at the kiosk in Fashion Show Mall and went into the exhibit. First, we saw a training video featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). She explained that we were training to become part of the Avengers Initiative. Then we went into the exhibits/training area.

The first items on exhibit are from the first Avenger, Captain America.

Vita-ray machine from the first Cap movie

The first Cap uniform

Cap's bike from the first movie

The next room covers information about the Hulk, including a strength test to see where you fit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Okay, this was in the gift shop, but it fits with the Hulk stuff.

My hand and the Hulk's hand

Bio-info on the Hulk and the Abomination (you know, the bad guy from the Hulk solo film)

Where I rank, just above a Hydra agent, not as good as Black Widow

The Tesseract machine from the first Avengers movie is also on display. Visitors, I mean Agents, can push some buttons to activate it, though without the Cosmic Cube it only lights up and makes screens blink.

I can't even remember what this gizmo was supposed to do

The next room is about Vision, the A.I. and Mind Stone-enhanced android whose body was a mix of adamantium and other bio- and synthetic products. The body was supposed to be the ultimate receptacle for Ultron but the Avengers managed to stop that plan.

Vision

Where Vision was born, sort of

The next room has a bunch of lockers with uniforms for the other Avengers.

Black Widow's outfit

Hawkeye's outfit

Nick Fury's typical duds

Yes, there's a bullet hole in Nick's jacket!

Scarlet Witch's clothes (come on, not really a uniform)

Ant-Man's suit

Falcon's vest without the wings

Some captured weapons and villain stuff are on display.

Chitauri weapon

Hydra guns

Red Skull's uniform

Dark elf in suspended animation

The penultimate room is dedicated to the Asgardian Thor. In addition to his outfit, a lot of information about Asgard is on display. And visitors can try to lift his hammer.

Out from Ragnarok

I'm just putting this back after lifting it, really

My brother gives it a try

The final display room has a lot of the Iron Man suits, from the original to the most recent, including the Hulkbuster suit.

Recent versions of Iron Man

Mark I suit

Hulkbuster

The other guard in the shop

The very last room is an interactive battle with Ultron and some of his drones. To be honest, it was a little underwhelming. The attendant handed out cell phones which we used to fire whichever weapon was assigned to our character. We aimed a little bit with the phones and fired as fast as we could, basically a button-masher.

In classic Disney tradition, the exit was through the gift shop. We didn't buy anything. The most interesting items were matched luggage with color schemes based on Captain America or Iron Man. I might have been tempted if I needed luggage.

I enjoyed it since I am a big Marvel fan but I definitely think it is over-priced at its regular rates. Seek out bargain tickets if you want to go.