If you closely read my Death Valley post, I recently took a spontaneous trip to the Las Vegas area to meet up with an old friend. My first time in the Silver State! And I obviously had to document my trip in drawings. I got to spend about 24 hours in the city proper, and confirmed that it’s a REALLY WEIRD PLACE1. This essay is about that day, and also about all the ways I tried to resist spending money in Las Vegas: no luggage, adventures on public transit, and how I gambled a total of $1.00.
This is a long post, and is defo best read in the Substack app — or at least click “see entire message” link if this essay gets truncated by your email.
9:12 AM. SeaTac Airport
I have never packed so light for a trip! Because (spoiler) I am a tightwad, I didn’t want to pay the cheapie airline’s carryon bag fee. Everything fit in easily my small hiking backpack: 12.5 lbs of stuff.
Only a A5 (5”x8”) simple sketchbook and loose paper no larger than 5x7” made the cut for my small backpack. That was tough, but it was a good decision — I wouldn’t have time to finish anything larger anyway. And I didn’t want to be Conspicuous in a place like Las Vegas where I would already stand out.
Packing art supplies always takes as long as packing everything else. Here’s specifically what I packed for the trip:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Hand to Paper to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.