Vegas Day - 2

The day commenced with a nice sleep in which was a nice catch up on all the sleep I had missed since my departure. So after a lazy start and breakfast down at the coffee shop counter at the Riviera Hotel I headed outside and grabbed a cab from outside Circus Circus across the road.

My first destination today would be the Las Vegas Gun Range. Here you can choose from a whole range of firearms to shoot at their range. They even have package deals. My choice was the 5 firearm package that included:

M-16 commando 9mm

Heckler-Koch MP-5k 9mm

Shotgun

Heckler-Koch USP.45 w/suppressor

unfortunately I can’t remember what the last weapon was.

Before my shoot I was able to watch three English guys shoot. They chose a package called the “full monty” which included using an Uzi 9mm, .50ae Desert Eagle Pistol, a "Dirty Harry" .44 magnum and more. The most entertaining aspect was the look on their faces as they fired some of the more powerful weapons.

Soon it was turn. Here I am firing the Heckler-Koch MP-5k 9mm.

I can tell you that of all the guns I used the shotgun was the most surprising, simply because of the kick it has. After a few rounds you can really feel it in your shoulder. The other thing that you learn with a shotgun is that t sure does a lot of damage. I had to change the target after using the shotgun because there wasn’t much left.

My range safety office not only helped with the weapons but also took these great shot. Talented guy.

I jumped back into a cab and head for the Atomic testing museum. Unfortunately you can’t take photos inside but I do recommend a visit, it is a very interesting and well laid out museum that covers all aspects of the U.S. nuclear testing.

From here I headed north to the Neon Museum. This is basically a ‘boneyard’ for old neon signs, given that most are destroyed when casinos are demolished.

The museum allows you to take photos for personal not commercial use and prefers not to have them posted so please don’t steal them from here or I’ll get in trouble! My camera also decided to run out of power just as the tour started so most of the shots you see are pretty rushed since I didn’t have much ‘juice’ left in the batteries.

The museum has some interesting pieces and history surrounding it and they are improving it all the time. In the long run they plan to restore many of the signs and place them on the road out from Las Vegas as you can kind of see in the last picture above, which shows a high heel shoe.

The tour ran for about and hour and I would have liked to see more signs and perhaps signs in their original configuration since, as you can see, most are simply stacked up. However, I appreciate the museum is doing what it can and doesn’t have a lot of money so I’m happy to help them along with the goals of preserving Las Vegas history.

After the tour I started to walk back south to the Riviera Hotel but since it was way too far I had to wait for a cab, which are few and far between this far away from ‘The Strip’. After finally hailing a cab and jumping in, it turns out you are not allowed to do that. The driver was particularly paranoid about getting booked as we passed some police not far from where I jumped in. Luckily, that didn’t happen and I arrive back at the Riviera Hotel where I registered for my SMB Nation conference.

There are few ‘conference parties’ taking place tonight so I might just stick my head in a see what they are like after probably grabbing something to eat again at Circus, Circus across the road. From there I haven’t really decided what to do and see but I don’t think I’ll go too far as the cost of cabs ($15 - $20) is chewing up funds pretty quickly. I needed to use them today to get to these locations but I couldn’t afford to user them all the time, so where ever I go tonight I’ll have to hoof it by foot. Good exercise so they say.

Tomorrow the conference starts here and I’ll be blogging about that over on http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog for the next few days. Stay tuned here for anything that is not directly related to business or the conference and I’ll pick up with this blog full time at the end of the conference.