The Trip Home - You Won't Even Believe This

I swear this is not a lie. We were really worried about getting back to Portland on time - since ODOT doesn't seem to have a lot of sense. We watched the weather and the highway reports. We left Eugene at 11:00am to make our 3:30 flight. Hwy 5 was clear our way, but going south it started backing up in Woodword and was backed up past Hwy 205, our exit. We got to the airport, turned in the car, checked our bags, all with no problems - smooth sailing right? Wrong!! Our plane came in and they didn't board us, we stood in line and waited and waited ...
Finally they told us there was a maintenance problem on the plane and they would get back to us. We waited.
The next time they came on they said they were waiting for contract maintenance to get there. Some door had to be resealed before we could take off.
We left about one and a half hours late. Since so many people were meeting connecting flights, they told us the planes would be held and they would fly faster with the tail wind.
We landed in Las Vegas 45 minutes after our plane took off. Southwest tried to tell us we should have known our plane left and made other arrangements. That statement didn't go over well with Jim. In the end, they paid for a room and our dinner and booked us on the 7:30 am flight the next morning (they wanted to just put us on standby).
The hotel shuttle came and picked us - we were in an old place that in its hayday was a pretty nice place.
We could see the MGM Grand from our hotel, so we decided to walk there. We didn't want to pass up a chance to see at least one place, since neither of us have ever been to Las Vegas before.
The MGM Grand was packed and a high rolling place - wow! We spent time walking around and then settled down to play some slots. I wasn't doing well on the slots and Jim wasn't too interested, so he wondered over to this other game and played on it. I finally gave up and went to sit by him. The machine I sat at had a lot of games on it. So I played Double Double Bonus poker, then when I got bored with that I played some other game. Jim started watching me and together we couldn't figure out way I wasn't winning anything, since it would come 7s all the way across screen.
I finally read the very, very small print and it said to win you had to bet the max.
So I did, the third roll 100,000 started flashing - yep 100,000. That 100,000 was pennies, but still that was $1000.00. Oh boy! I played it down some and we left.
I bought myself a sweat shirt and some chocolate. That is the most I have ever won.



The next morning we went to the airport (in the same clothes). We got some breakfast and then I went off and found a poker machine to play. I did well on that, then it quit hitting and I went off to find something else. I found a Double Diamond Deluxe machine. I won back all I lost that morning plus $20.00. It was a good day, so far.

We got to St. Louis and no bags. Turns out they sent our bags on the 6am flight and it hadn't arrived. We found out Southwest has no tracking system for bags. They were delivered later that day to our house.

We had a really good visit with Allison and Geoff - it was just getting there and getting home that was the problem. Of course, I wouldn't say that having to spend the night in Las Vegas was a complete bust.