Inspired by Wayne Newton

Bellies full of Indian grub, we stopped at Whole Foods for a bag of bulk millet (organic! hulled!) that the older hammies (Arthur, Pepper, Sherman) like so much. After that, our Valentine's Day dance card was wide open.

When in doubt and anywhere near Green Valley, one of us suggests the Ethel M chocolate factory. It's free, and they have those bio-reclamation-thingie vats, and a cactus garden, and they give you a piece of chocolate. You used to get to pick any kind you like, but now you get the piece of the day. Which is smart, really. It gives people a chance to like something new while forcing them to make a purchase if they want their favourite. (I love the almond toffee. I love it so much.)

But as we tooled along east on Sunset, I saw a white stone fence and several things slid into place in my brain, like those slidey puzzles with the numbers. Except instead of numbers, there were just two tiles: "That's Wayne Newton's House" and "Turn Right, Right Now!"

Slide-click. Slide-click!

This is one of the west-side entrances. (See it on Google Maps.)

We've driven past Wayne's place many, many, many times on Sunset, but I always assumed it was just another subdivision. Here's what scads of people, perhaps as clueless as myself, drive past every day:

And then one day, I think this past summer, I realized that, wait, Wayne Newton's house is called Shenandoah. Wayne Newton lives in Las Vegas. (Well, near it. Whatever.) And a few Google searches led to a few more slidey-clicks, and there you have it.

(I feel like I should note that the only reason I know the name of Wayne Newton's house is because of Vegas Vacation. In fact, almost all of my Newton Knowledge comes from that movie.)

Contrary to the desert scrub shown on Google Maps, if you squint inside the gate (from the respectful distance of your non-stalker-like car) and look north, you'll see horses grazing in a green pasture.

Wayne must like horses, because there were more on the east side of the property, along Pecos:

Actually, Mike reminded me that Wayne takes Ellen Griswold horseback riding in Vegas Vacation. It's such an underrated movie, clearly full of useful information!

We drove around the property, checking out the neighbours, both surprised to find this splotch of poshness amongst, well, the grime that comes with those kinds of older areas where one street is breathtaking and the next isn't safe to drive slowly along at night.

I did like this sign on Wayne's neighbour's gate:

These photos look a little bleak; my inexperience with the long lens (washing everything out) plus the wintry grey skies are at fault. This photo on Flickr shows how pretty the grounds really are. (Okay, maybe I'm wrong about it now being green close to the west side of the property, but there were definitely some happy horses there.)

It's a good thing we decided to mosey over to Ethel M, because otherwise we wouldn't have not gone to Ethel M. What I mean is, if we hadn't decided to go to Ethel M., we wouldn't have started driving down Sunset, and we wouldn't have remembered to finally get a better look at Wayne Newton's house, at which point I wouldn't suddenly remember that...

(To be continued.)

Comments

[Linda]

This information was quite interesting. Our family is going to Las Vegas Christmas week and we look forward to making a visit to Shenendoah and hopefully we will get to see Wayne Newton's Show at MGM. We just watched the movie Vegas Vacation yesterday for the 10th time. We love it and the children are so very excited about going on this vacation.