Mesquite Musings

We left Mesquite NV yesterday after spending 8 days there for the Mesquite Amateur Golf Tournament.  My exposure to the area was mainly limited to the RV Park and Casa Blanca Casino.  Randy of course concentrated on the golf courses.

Since we were spending so much time there I decided it deserved a blog entry.  I kept my eyes open for cool things to take pictures of and things to do that were interesting – there weren’t many.

I saw the huge Oasis Casino complex – hotel, casino, parking garage…empty for several years now.  There was the Convention Center – also huge and vacant.  Even the Visitors Center was boarded up.  I think we mainly traveled through the old part of town, so the abandoned buildings were to be expected.  

There were many abandoned recent projects also – golf courses, casinos, housing developments and RV parks.  All started and then stopped due to the economy.

We discovered an excellent Chinese Restaurant on our last night there…the Panda Garden.  The RV Park we stayed at was wonderful…nice pool, laundry room and activities.  But with temperatures averaging 100+ degrees every day, we didn’t do much exploring in town.  There’s the Wal Mart and a mall and strip malls – not much else. 

As we were packing up to leave, a friendly guy on his way to the pool stopped to chat with us.  He mentioned that he was originally from Anacortes WA.  He and his wife had traveled full-time in an RV for about 6 years – like we are doing.  They ended up buying a park model at this complex.  He told us some interesting places we shouldn’t miss in our travels.

As I started to write this blog, I wished I would’ve asked him why he chose to live in Mesquite.  He’s retired, he traveled to many places that he could’ve chosen….Why Mesquite?  I’ll never know.