Day one of An Adventure in the Daddy Zone with my father

Day one of the 23-day road trip with my 85-year-old father started out innocently enough, we were just going to go to Vegas for a couple nights. After all, he had a few free nights at his favorite hotel: The El Cortez downtown.

But once we hit the road, we encountered our first little problem as we were climbing up to Cajon Pass on I-15, he could not find his sunglasses. He thought he had put them in one bag, the easily accessible one, but no. Oh well, he’d have to live without them if he had left them at home.

So, it was on to Victorville for our first stop, the traditional breakfast at Denny’s on Palmdale Road. We both had the same breakfast off the senior citizen menu, the scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, bacon and pancakes. Then it was time to pay for the meal, which was on him.

Well. we encountered our second snafu. He attempted to use one of his credit cards to pay for the meal, and tip, but the machine rejected it. So he ended up using another card. But why it wasn’t being accepted was a puzzler. More on that in a bit.

Fed and paid for, we went along on I-15 to our next stop, the newest tourist trap along the road to Vegas: Eddie World.

The owner is a big Lakers fan, and has a giant wall that shows his love of the Lakers.

One of the selling points of Eddie World is that it has the cleanest bathrooms anywhere along that route, and I have to agree. Even the handles in the toilet stalls are set up with plastic that gets replaced every time someone uses them.

They also sell a large variety of their own produced candies, wood-fired pizzas, fresh-ground hamburgers, and there’s even a section with multiple flavors of ice cream. In addition, there’s a jerky stand with a whole lot of varieties of jerky, and a Peet’s coffee counter.

After spending some time inside, Dad decided to call the people about his refused credit card. Turned out they had sent him a new one, and he had neglected to validate it. So not only was the card he was carrying invalid, they invalidated the one probably sitting at home. But no worries, he had other cards and would be able to pay his share of the trip.

So now, after some photo ops, it was on to Vegas. We got there, and after checking in at the hotel, he immediately went down to the Keno Lounge and bought his favorite numbers for 100 games, then lost at a video poker machine.

I went over to the Golden Nugget to the real poker room and played for a few hours, but never really got any good cards and after about three hours, had spent my limit for the day.

Back to the hotel, we rested for a bit in the hotel room while I did some editing on a freelance article due in a couple days, then we went out to check out the crazy sights in downtown Las Vegas and have a light supper.

Trust me, there are plenty of crazy sights in the downtown area called the Fremont Street Experience including many characters willing to pose for photo ops, for a donation of course.

We thought about eating at the Heart Attack Grill, but instead dined on chili dogs at the American hot dog stand that sells Coney Island chili dogs at “The D.” Then went inside to take a look at the girls wearing go-go boots dancing behind the blackjack tables.

Then we went outside to visit Manneken Pis, a copy of a famous statue in Brussels. And, of course, I took a photo of Dad standing by the statue.

We wandered around a bit more, taking in all the lights, sound and craziness, then we two older men decided it was time to shower and bed down for the night.

All in all, a nice start to what should be a memorable trip.