This is the third in a series of posts about my recent trip to Las Vegas. Read the second part here.
Day 5 – Nelson Ghost Town & Valley of Fire at Sunset
As the personal part of my trip came to a close I had reached transition day. Time to check out of Treasure Island, check in to Caesar’s Palace, and do a bit more sight seeing. Well, at least that’s what I thought.
I had loosely planned to visit Nelson Ghost Town during the day, which is an old mining town with a cool collection of old cars, buildings, and relics from the past. I’d follow that up with a sunset tour of the Valley of Fire from 4 – 9 PM.
Nelson is about an hour outside of Vegas, and I quickly ran into logistical challenges checking in and out of hotels, picking up my conference badge, and making my Valley of Fire tour. I started looking into this earlier in my trip and considered doing it on Day 3, but ran into a bigger issue: there’s little cell coverage out at Nelson. If I Ubered my way out, I might not have been able hail a ride back. It didn’t make sense to rent a car for one trip, so Nelson would just have to happen some other time.
After deciding to skip Nelson, I discovered that my Valley of Fire tour was canceled because I was the only one who signed up. Suddenly a very complicated day turned into a nothing day. And that turned out to be OK. I had lots of photos to process, a blog to draft, and more opportunity to wander around Caesar’s Palace and the Vegas Strip to explore.
Day 6 & 7 – The Conference I was there for
Time for business! The entire reason I went to Vegas was to attend the Gartner Business Applications Summit, which is a conference focused on organizations that develop software. I was primarily there to learn about IT architecture governance at large organizations and participated in a series of round tables, networking events, and 1:1’s to discuss it. As usual, there were a bunch of vendors there and I was able to capture some leads on a few products that might help us at scale as well as lots of snacks and swag.
The conference was held at Caesar’s Palace and I was able to stay there as well. It’s a far more upscale establishment than Treasure Island, with a lot of greek architecture throughout, beautiful materials, multiple nice pools, great restaurants, and even a high end mall. I spent a couple of my evenings basically walking around Caesar’s Palace itself and I was continuously surprised by the aura of it all. I even took some architectural pictures!
Day 8 – End of Conference & Neon Boneyard at Night
The conference ended on Thursday but I had one more treat in store for myself. Remember the Neon Boneyard and how it doesn’t allow professional cameras? Well it does, once a month, for an hour, and that hour happened to be on the last day of my conference. It also happened to be at 12 AM.
I was originally very excited about it even though it would leave me with about 4 hours sleep before leaving the next day. After feeling pretty happy with my previous experience at the Boneyard, however, I decided not to go on the photo tour. I just couldn’t think of any images I’d take with my Nikon and tripod that would be worth the lack of sleep. They don’t offer refunds so I just treated it as a $75 donation and spent my evening after the conference relaxing and doing some additional exploration.
I took my camera out for the first time inside the casino and photographed some of its architecture. I even woke up at 5 AM on Friday to get some more photos when people weren’t crowding all of the areas.
Until Next Time Vegas!
I had a really great time on my trip to Vegas. I’m glad I spent some time exploring the local(ish) landmarks while also getting to see some of Vegas itself. I’m very fortunate to work for a company that provides the opportunity to travel, and this is the first time I’ve attached personal time to a trip. Even with adjustments and unexpected changes, it all worked out very well. It’s a very different area than anywhere I’ve been and there’s still plenty to do and visit the next time I’m out here, hopefully with a touring partner.
Relatively Ambitious 