Thoughts 15 Mar 2007 07:22 am
Laughlin Part 1
Laughlin is 90 miles out of Vegas, across the river from Bullhead City, see “nowhere,” middle of.
I am, perhaps unkind, in my comparisons, but if you’re from Vegas, you tend to be rather jaded.
Going down from Las Vegas, we chose to go through Searchlight, It’s the shortest and probably still the fastest, but, since they’re not allowed on the dam, all the big trucks have to go that way. The road narrows from two lanes to one just outside Searchlite, prepare to be passed by joggers, and when we went through they had the road torn up with steel plates covering both lanes and some sort of crew, with a backhoe working on one side.
Coming into Laughlin from the Searchlite / Needles side there are a number of steep grades, both uphill and downhill, with some fairly serious curves, but the road is well maintained.
My first impression was, that, at 55, I was always going to be the youngest person in the room by 10 years at the very least. This is not far from the truth.
On the upside, this time of year, you get winter rates, $29 a night at the Edgewater gets you a clean comfortable room, with two queen sized beds, a bathroom that’s larger than some bedrooms and a shower with instant hot water and enough room for a man who’s stands 6′4″ and weighs 300 pounds.
My only complaint about the bathroom is the height of the toilet, it’s much too low. If you’re 4′6″ this will present only one problem, and that’s that your arms may not be long enough to comfortably reach the toiletpaper, on the other hand, if you’re my size or larger with bad knees, it’s a bitch getting back up.
Actually, I have one other complaint, the towels are not only too small, they’re rough enough to make world class back scratchers.
The beds were much softer than I like, but they were comfortable enough.
If you decide to go to Laughlin, this is the right time of year, the temperature was in the mid to high 90’s.
Laughlin is always several degrees warmer than Las Vegas, in fact one year they reported a high of 129F and then said there was no weather report available the next day. Either they lied, or their equipment spontaneously burst into flame. ….welcome to Laughlin in August.
It was cool enough at 7am to make the walk along the river from the Edgewater to the Riverside or up to the Golden Nugget and back quite pleasant.
You should plan on standing in line everywhere that has food specials.
In the Edgewater, the Hickory Pit has excellent food, with prices that are better than a lot of Las Vegas joints, there were five of us and we ate for around a hundred dollars. They were training at least one new food server, but they were taking him along in fairly small steps, so things flowed nicely. They also understood things like char medium without have to ask what it meant.