Friday, January 4, 2013

Get off the strip in Las Vegas

To a lot of people, Las Vegas is one road with a bunch of casinos and show girls surrounded by desert. Personally, my love for Las Vegas has very little to do with casinos and the strip. There is so much else to do that gets overlooked way too often.

I wanted to go skydiving for a long time, but I figured there had to be a better place to go skydiving than over a bean field outside of Fargo, North Dakota. I ended up going to Las Vegas for work and thought that made a pretty good option to cross this line off of my bucket list. Skydiving in Las Vegas lets you free-all over the desert with views of Red Rock Canyon, Las Vegas, Lake Mead, and Hoover Dam. To me this is a way better option! Take a minute to watch the video of my experience below.


When I signed up to go skydiving, I was 10 pounds over their weight limit, and it was only 2 weeks away from jump time. I obviously made weight being I'm in the video above, but I had to stop lifting weights at the gym for a couple weeks, limit my calorie intake, and spend all of my gym time on the treadmill. But, it was worth it!

Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane a little too crazy for you? Vegas has other options too, Like indoor skydiving, or maybe even a leap off the side of the Stratosphere on their SkyJump thrill ride. I haven't done either of those yet, but I plan to next time I'm in Vegas!

Las Vegas is surrounded by desert, and you can rent dirt bikes, ATVs, or sand rails to make that desert your playground. You can even get guides to take you on multi-day rides when you sign up for their tours! I'm hesitant to do the tours after taking an ATV jungle tour in Mexico. The pace of the tour was just too slow for my taste and would rather go out on my own and put the hammer down. But, to each their own. These tours might be faster paced too, I don't know. If you like motorized stuff, you can also drive an Indy car, Nascar, Lamborghini, Ferrari, or even a bulldozer.

If you want to get out of Vegas and in touch with nature, there are a bunch of different trails in the surrounding canyons you can hike or mountain bike on. You can go rock climbing 0r rent a kayak or canoe and head out onto Lake Mead.

Area 51 is pretty close to Vegas too. I don't know how close you could actually get, but wouldn't it be fun to find out?

 
One other thing I did manage to squeeze in the last time I went to Vegas was shooting a fully automatic machine gun at the gun store. This is something that you can't do very many places in the country, or even the world. I shot a M249 SAW, but they have a whole wall of different guns you can shoot in their indoor firing range... if you have some extra money to spend.
 
OK. I did gamble a little the last time I was in Vegas. I gambled a total of $20, which bought me a couple of hours at a blackjack table drinking for free. Other than that, I didn't gamble at all. I had a great time off of the strip, and look forward to some more wild adventures on my next trip.
 


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