Our Non-Vacation: Mesquite, Nevada

There is a town about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas called Mesquite. The hotel/casino conglomerate in Mesquite is offering a FREE 2 night stay to all Clark County School District employees through the end of August. We have a hard time passing up anything that is free, so we decided to take Bruce and Keola and Ella and go up Sunday through Tuesday. We stayed at the Casablanca Hotel. When we checked in at around 2 PM on Sunday, the pool was closed, but we could use the pool at the Oasis across the street. No problem -- we ate lunch and then headed over to scope out the pool at the Oasis. Well, the pool at the Oasis is about the size of my thumbnail and since EVERYONE from the 2 hotels were now at 1 pool.... Yeah. The Oasis also had a lame Go Kart track and mini-golf, but it was 4 PM in the desert which is not pleasant anytime after mid-April. So we went back to our room, gave the boys $20 and sent them to the arcade for a few hours. We had dinner that evening at a local Chinese restaurant that was lovely. Excellent service, the wait staff doted on Ella and good food.

The next morning we're up and at the buffet by 9 AM. After filling up on greasy food, we headed to the pool. It's a large pool with a waterfall and a water slide. Ella loves to swim, it wasn't too hot, the boys had new swim trunks -- we are all set for a day in the sun! Now, I grew up about 10 minutes from Lake Michigan and I spent many, many summer swimming in 60-some degree water. I am not a wimp when it comes to water temperature. The temperature of this pool took me back to those days in the lake. Poor Ella was shivering within 10 minutes and had to get out. Keola only got in to go down the slide a couple of times. Bruce managed to hang out for a while, but even he got chilly. We spent about 20 minutes total in the pool.

After Ella's nap and lunch we walked around Wal-Mart and then headed to the Go Karts at the Oasis. They were closed. Closed Monday and Tuesday. We decided to check out early and after dinner at a fine dining establishment (our treat to the boys), we headed back to Vegas.

Needless to say that our trip to Mesquite was quite disappointing. I didn't expect there to be much to do, but I figured the pool and arcade would keep us busy for a day or two. No such luck. And pictures? Seriously, the place is so lame, these are the only pictures I took. I'm really glad we didn't pay for our hotel and it'll be a good pit stop next year on the way to Zion National Park. But other than that, we have no plans to EVER go back to Mesquite....except maybe for the Chinese food.