Sunday 30th October 2016. Two weeks ago, 6 of us left for Las Vegas in order to see the SEMA 2016 show. Usually Adam will go on his own, but this time it was a boys trip and everybody was looking forward to it. We had Adam, Jason, Yogi, Gary, Chris & Mart. They all play a part within Mustang Maniac either front line or behind the scenes. The first week like we say was for the guys, for the second week Jason, Gary and Mart flew home to be replaced by Adam and Yogi’s respective wives along with Adam’s Dad for a relaxing vacation. During the first trip we managed to take around three thousand five hundred photo’s. It would be madness to post all of those photos on the forth coming posts. There was scenery, attractions, guided tours, night life and anything else in between. There is an old saying “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. We intend to keep some of that saying close to our chests. We won’t mention the story of a state trooper knocking on the door! Don’t worry we still have clean rap sheets, but it was a very funny story which we shouldn’t tell on a blog.

Due to the huge number of pictures that were taken, we plan to split the posts over a number of days based on various subjects and days. Otherwise it will be sensory overload and take forever to load a post. So starting with this post as it’s the start of the trip getting on the plane, landing at Las Vegas airport, and then of course we saw Elvis. From that moment on we knew that we had arrived in Vegas.

As we had lots of cases along with the six of us we couldn’t all get in one taxi so we got two. Our driver knew where to go so we could look at the scenery as we got closer to our temporary home, However Adam’s driver was a little unsure should we say and was lucky to get there by following our taxi!

We found a local Wing Stop restaurant who looked after us very well for our little visits, but we will get to that at a later post to say thanks to the guys. We had a large meal shared between us and Yogi said he was thirsty, nobody was going to argue with that one. After we had satisfied our dietary requirements we stopped at the local store to get the next few days worth of supplies. The first thing we saw entering the store was the slot machines and then what we needed – Beer for the fridge.

weekly supplies

That night we were sitting around talking bloke stuff and Mart turned a lighter shade of white, more so than usual. He announced he had lost his wallet! We called the Uber driver we got the lift with back from the store, there was no answer. Mart had his spending money in the wallet and was set to ruin his holiday. He called the credit card company to stop the card which they did eventually, asking what the number was on the card. How do you know that if you lost it? We tried the Uber driver a few more times no answer. About half an hour later there was a knock at the door, as Mart was now pacing up and down he opened the door. There standing in front of him was the Uber driver holding his wallet with everything still in its place. All the money, credit card and other bits in there. Marts face was a picture and he promptly handed over a generous drink to the honest driver who initially didn’t want to take the money. Mart insisted and he left leaving Mart’s faith in humanity fully restored. Mart sat down and we all couldn’t believe how lucky he was. A round of beers was opened and the torrent of bloke orientated abuse followed as you would expect. All light-hearted banter of course. The standing joke from then on was “Got your wallet Mart?”

The next morning bright and early with the odd sore head, Adam went to hire the SUV for us to travel about Las Vegas in. The first stop was to Fremont Street in the old part of the Las Vegas Strip during the day time. There is not to many pics of Vegas during the day so we thought put that right.

Walking along the street we spotted Elvis again, this time on stage.

After we had a wander around the Fremont Street we got back into the car and found somewhere to park near the new strip. to take in the views during the day.

As it was starting to get dusk the city started to take on a different feel.

We found somewhere to eat and decided to take a look inside one of the larger hotels “The Venetian”. This hotel is quite a unique place as it puts the water ways and courtyards of Venice in the heart of Las Vegas, not just outside, but also inside the hotel itself. The inside of the hotel has an artificial ceiling to make it look like daylight outside if that makes sense.

The inside water ways and court-yard with the artificial ceilings.

Travelling down the escalators to the casino below you can take in the superb ceiling. Adam decided to try a large slot machine so he could see what was going on.

A lot of the hotels are all linked together under ground and you can go in one hotel and come out of a completely different hotel. This casino had fresh flowers to decorate their entrance and some unusual things to buy with your winnings should you be so lucky. The sheer scale is incredible.

As we came out it was dark and for some of us it was our first glimpse of the night life and bright lights.

The next post will take us to Scott Drake manufacturers and an exclusive behind the scenes look at their warehouse.