Tourists seek relief from heat

Eric Leake

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 | 9:49 a.m.

There was little refuge Tuesday afternoon for tourists, who ventured onto the Strip only to find themselves in a furnace.

"This is unbreathable," 44-year-old Kathy Adams of North Carolina said about the dry heat that was being absorbed and released by all the concrete like a massive convection oven.

She and her family, standing beside the fountain at New York-New York, said they expected Las Vegas to be hot, but not record-breaking.

"I've worked in farming and on trees, but I can't take this," said Ted Adams, 46, who owns a tree service in Dunn, N.C.

The Adamses said they beat the heat the way many tourists did, by always having a beverage and frequently returning to air-conditioned hotels.

Relief outside came with the splash of a fountain.

"Oh, that feels good," Kathy Adams said as the spray reached her. "Thank you. Do that again."

She joked that the heat felt like it could bake the moisture right out of a person. Her husband told a waitress the night before, she said, "that his tongue had about dried out."

The family said they were enjoying their vacation and would return, but during a different season.

"We'll never come in July again," Adams said.

Tourists walking the Strip on the hottest day of the last 50 years did their best to mitigate the heat. Some walked shirtless. Some had wet towels wrapped around their heads.

Belinda Cox, 43, from Nashville, Ark., said her family tried to avoid doing much during the hottest part of the day.

"We get up early and go to the pool. Then we do most of our walking at night," Cox said. "My husband and son are playing golf right now. They're probably about to die."

Cox, celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary on her third trip to Las Vegas, said never before had she experienced it so hot.

Mark Girdham, 25, of Leeds, England, said he actually enjoyed the heat.

"I like this weather. I like baking," he said. "Everyone tries to avoid 3 o'clock, but I like it. I like a suntan."

Girdham said he swims a lot to keep cool and traveled to Las Vegas in part for the summer weather.

"It suits me down to the ground," he said. "I came over essentially to get away from the English weather."

A man passing out handbills for Grand Canyon trips stood in shade near the Excalibur and said the heat was something he simply learned to tolerate.

"You can't make a big deal out of it. We have to work," he said.

The man, who only gave his first name of Howard, was well tanned, wore sunglasses, and said he noticed the heat affected his reception with tourists.

"A lot of times they ignore you because it's so hot, and they're trying to go fast, moving from one casino to the next."

Many people carried jugs of water as they traveled the Strip. Some bought overpriced drinks at vending machines ($2) or food courts ($2.19).

Jesse Wilder, 27, and friends from Long Beach, Calif., chose to relax with drinks at the Tropicana pool to make the best of the heat.

"Surprisingly, we're at the Jacuzzi," he said. "It's funny because right now I don't feel all that hot ... I'm having a fabulous time, actually."

Across the pool, Doug Paterson, 63, and his wife, Diana, 61, said the heat had not stopped them from seeing the sights on their vacation and traveling to Hoover Dam.

"And then we were at the Grand Canyon and it was even hotter," Doug Paterson said.

The couple from Toronto said they would probably make other arrangements on their next trip to Las Vegas.

"We'll probably come back like April or May, for moderate heat," Doug Paterson said.

Billie Haston, 35, enjoying the cool interior of the MGM Grand, said she wanted to experience the heat as little as possible.

"I haven't gone out much," she said. "To go outside takes your breath away."

Haston, from Clinton, Md., said even with the humidity she would take the weather back home. It's hard for her to imagine the life of a native Las Vegan.

"I was wondering how anybody could grow up in this heat," she said.