Charlie and I took a three-day trip up to Sin City last week to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary.
We stayed for two nights at Caesar’s Palace. Gee, that place has sure changed over the years; I recall when Evel Knievel kinda “jumped” his motorcycle over the fountain out front…and broke his body up pretty bad. (It seems that guy was famous for not succeeding…like his Snake River rocket launch failure. What a doofus!”
I’ve been coming to Vegas since the late Fifties. My parents used to go up there from time to time, back when visitors actually got dressed up for shows and such. (Nowadays, people walk into casinos in their bathing suits or with baggy pants hanging half-way to their knees. Bright and gaudy, but not as classy.)
My parents would stay at an off-Strip motel (with pool!), which my brother Terry and I liked a lot. They would leave us to babysit ourselves while they enjoyed an evening show and gambled a bit. Occasionally, they would take us to dinner at the El Cortez, and (as juveniles) we’d be frog-marched from the casino front door right to the restaurant…no wandering allowed…because the casinos were quite anal about non-21 individuals roaming the gambling floor. It was fun, anyway. That downtown neon was cool.
That was back in (probably) 1958, way before Caesar’s was built. The original casinos were on the Strip: Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Frontier, etc., and there was also the “Downtown” area, with the old, seedy gambling joints. Back in those days, the headliner acts were folks like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, etc.
My parents liked comedians like Shecky Greene and Shelly Berman (who later found fame as a chronically-confused Superior Court judge on “Boston Legal”).
Anyway, Caesar’s didn’t open until 1966. The day it opened, it was better than any other casino/hotel.
And, in my opinion, it has remained atop the heap for the past 52 years. Every time some new upstart comes up with a splashy new idea, Caesar’s will one-up them, and then some. The place seems to be ever-expanding, like the universe, and always has top-notch entertainment like Celine Dion, Elton John, etc. The headline act at the Forum this week was “Reba McEntire/Brooks and Dunn”.
When we checked-out last week, a nice black gentleman named “Isaiah” or “Israel” took our bags from our room, and we walked with him through the massive complex to the Valet parking area. On the way, he told us that he’d worked there for 42 years! And, that he’d met all sorts of famous folks like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Cher, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Tiger Woods…you name it, he met them. And, of course, he’d seen all of the changes to Caesar’s and to the Strip…”mind-boggling”. When we got to the Valet, and our car was delivered, our new friend introduced us to our car-jockey (I forget his name), and we found out that this senior citizen had been parking cars for Caesar’s since it opened…52 years!!! Without a promotion, ha ha.
We had a nice time at Caesar’s. We ate at the Trevi Fountain restaurant (in the Forum Shops) on our first night…the food was mediocre, the drinks were crappy, and the bill was pricey, but it was nice to rest our buns after a long ride in from So Cal.
We wandered around the Forum Shops, I bought Charlie a doggie purse at Brighton…
…and ogled the fancy merchandise and artsy stuff. Gee, I wish I was rich like the folks who could actually purchase some of this stuff!
Here’s what every woman needs…a dress made out of maple wood.
Guess what? Charlie didn’t get the dress.
But, I did buy her a house.
Yep, our main purpose of the visit to Vegas was to surveill the Del Webb community up in Mesquite, which is about 70 miles north. It’s a small community of about 20,000 people with a few old casinos and a lot of developeable land up on Flat Top Mesa. Del Webb (aka, Pulte Development) has been building homes up there since 2007. The master-planned community surrounds the Conestoga Golf Club, and is designed and zoned for adults 55+ in age.
We found a nice corner lot on a street called Buggy Whip. The lot is deep and has a 12′ lava rock retaining wall to the rear, which means that the folks behind us will be looking over the top of our roof…so, there will be great privacy in our large backyard. And, our front view looks across the valley toward some mountains.
We looked at six home models, the cheapest “starting at” $211K, with the most expensive at $349K. They all looked nice, but we wanted about the same square footage as our previous home (without the stairs, of course!!!), so we ended up selecting the Serenity model. (It measures out at 2,337 s.f.)
Our consultant “Danelle” worked with us to select the basic structural options that we wanted: a “suite” for guests; a bay window at the kitchen cafe; a cart garage; a storage room within the 2-car garage; a den in lieu of a 3rd bedroom (which we will use as an office); a courtyard wall in the front entryway; French doors at the den and between the “gathering room” and the outdoor patio; pavers for the driveway, walkway, and outdoor patio; etc.
The “starting at” price of the Serenity model was $329K. With our selected structural options, we’re now at around $400K…and counting. That’s because the next phase is the interior “finishes” design, which we will do on April 6th. This will be Charlie’s day, where she decides how she wants her new home to look inside. Hopefully, we can do that within a $50K budget, so that our finished price will be about $450K.
Between mortgage payments, H.O.A. dues, and State income taxes (Nevada has none!), we should save at least $1,500 per month from what we are paying now in So Cal.
(BTW, we probably would not have purchased this home if it weren’t for the funds that my parents left me in their Living Trust. My Mom, who recently passed, was SO PROUD that she could pass on a legacy to her kids…the fruits of 50 years of hard work and persistence by two lovers and great parents. I wish she could see our Mesquite home.)
This is the beginning of Charlie and I’s last great adventure. We are going to create a “nest” where we (and the doggies) can retreat to after our annual RV road trip. The idea is that we will spend the super-hot Nevada summer months in cooler climes, and utilize the Mesquite digs in the Fall, Winter and Spring.
I’m anticipating that this adventure will be “Bear Creek, Version 2”; i.e. new life, new friends, something for “retired” Charlie to get excited about. We anticipate meeting a lot of folks in Sun City who share our interests. Charlie is a very social animal, so I’m sure that we’ll hook-up with some very nice people to do things with there in Mesquite and, maybe, to RV with on our journeys. In addition, we will only be a stone’s throw from the Virgin River Gorge (beautiful!), and 1-1/2 hours drive to Zion National Park, my favorite hiking place.
The plan (per Pulte) is for the home to be completed by November. This means that we may be modifying our Fall RV schedule a bit so that we can be in Mesquite for the walk-thrus and such. We anticipate selling our home here in Murrieta early in the Summer. Depending upon the closing of that sale, we also may have to modify our early season RV schedule a bit, so that we can put all of our household stuff into storage.
It’s going to be an interesting and stressful year.