Las Vegas NASCAR Adventures

Even though Vegas was not on our original plan we added it once we realized we could.  We wanted to attend the NASCAR Champions Events for years now but were always working at the tree lots so we never even considered it before but were thrilled that we could check it out this year.

It was a perfect travel day, cool day with nice smooth roads.  Apparently they have done some great paving of many of the roads especially I-40.  The road was so smooth it felt as if we were gliding instead of the treacherous bumps and holes there had been there for years, wow what a fabulous difference.

We stayed at Sam’s Town RV Park, (now managed by KOA – check out our separate review) and took a shuttle to Fremont Street and to the Strip for the events.

The Red Carpet event was on Wednesday and we got to Fremont Street very early and checked out the Red Carpet where the event was going to take place, even got a photo of Jerry on it.  We were so early we could have been in the front row but we did not want to sit around for hours and crowds are not our favorite thing so instead we checked out a few of the casinos and had some lunch.  After lunch, we found an area at the beginning where the drivers get out of the Limo Bus to walk down the Red Carpet.  It was pretty cool and I got a few good photos from the many I took, check them all out at our photo gallery.  They look so different in their street clothes since we are so used to seeing them in their race gear.

On Thursday we took the shuttle to the Strip where we met a couple, Tom & Cindy from Canada.  They were on the bus the day before with us and we decided to hang out with them on the Strip to show them some of the transportation options since it had been over 20 years since their last visit.  They are a fun couple that we teased that they were our stalkers since on the first day we ran into them several times on Fremont Street and now they were going to follow us around.  There were several times we took separate avenues but always seemed to meet up again with them and even caught the same bus back to the resort…stalkers indeed!

We checked out many of the casinos on the Strip and utilized many of the modes of transportation, both free and the one that still charges $5 per ride or $12 for an all-day ride.  With all the free trams becoming more and more available, they are going to have to rethink charging so much per ride on the Las Vegas Monorail. 

We found a great spot without too much of a crowd on one of the overpasses to watch the Victory Lap.  The area was great to take photos and some of the guys even did some burnouts right in front of us.  It was really cool to see them driving down Las Vegas Boulevard in their race cars.

We are not sure if we would attend again, Race Weeks are much more exciting but we do recommend it for NASCAR fans to experience at least once.

For more photos, check out our Google + Web Albums.