Springs Preserve Cafe

We spent most of Sunday, June 8 at Las Vegas Springs Preserve, a nature and museum complex located northwest of the Las Vegas Strip on Valley View Boulevard.  They were celebrating the first anniversary of the Preserve with live music, all-you-can-eat ice cream, behind-the-scenes tours, and games for children.  The $6.00 admission tickets also included access to the museums that normally costs $18.95 for adults.  We arrived at around the 11 am start time and there was a long line to get in.  After waiting 15 minutes, a Preserve employee directed us and some others to another entrance that put us in a much shorter line.  We heard something about a ticket that included a buffet that cost more than $6.00 but we wanted to eat at the café and opted for the $6.00 ticket only.

The Springs Preserve Café is located on the second floor and above the gift shop in the building near the north entrance.  Its official name is Wolfgang Puck at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve and, as the name suggests, it’s a Wolfgang Puck restaurant.  It’s a very large space with both indoor and outdoor seating and with amazing views of the Preserve (including the grounds where the festival took place) and the skyline of the Las Vegas Strip.  The indoor south and east walls are all windows giving everyone access to the views.  The café relies more on the natural light from outside during the day.  The menu has the natural food theme consistent with the setting.  We placed our orders at the counter (similar to the Wolfgang Puck in Downtown L.A. near the Central Library), took a number on a stand, and found a table.

Our orders took their time in coming but they were worth the wait.  My BBQ Salmon BLT was made with a rectangular sourdough roll.  The salmon was all one piece the fit perfectly in the roll.  It had the right amount of barbecue and avocado sauce to flavor it but not get all over the place.  The bacon in it was thick, crispy, and almost enough to be included in every bite.  Through the sandwich was a toothpick with an heirloom tomato and a slice of pickle.  With it I could choose fries, pasta salad, or green salad.  I chose fries that were seasoned with salt and parsley.  My wife had the Prime Cheeseburger with pasta salad on the side.  The burger had a thick patty with cheese, lettuce, and tomato.  They made the patty with American Kobe-style beef that made it taste better than the regular hamburger.  It had a silky and juicy consistency rather than being greasy or messy.  It didn’t even cause “hamburger hands.”  Through she ordered it medium rare, it wasn’t pink or undercooked, nor was it chewy or overcooked.  Its tomato wasn’t mentioned on the menu and it also had a toothpick with an heirloom tomato and pickle slice through it.  The pasta salad consisted of orzo with olive oil, cheese, and herbs.

We spent most of the afternoon at the Springs Preserve.  We saw the water filtration, green living, and recycling exhibits in the Sustainability Gallery that also had the Garbage Truck Theater.  The plaza at Springs Preserve is a large map of California, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Utah and New Mexico with the major cities indicated.  The gardens had exhibits of design elements such as symmetry, color, line, and proportion.  The last one of these included one mirror that made us look taller and another that made us look shorter.  The gardens also included varieties of large cacti such as the Saguaro, desert plants, and the unusual Watering Can Theater.

We walked back to the north end and went inside the Origen Experience building.  They had a short historical reenactment of people in Las Vegas from 100 years ago.  A “behind-the-scenes” tour showed us firsthand the effects of a flash flood in the desert.  There are also exhibits on desert habitat and wildlife, the history of Las Vegas, and an arcade with games related to green and sustained living.  The building has interesting architecture.  Just inside the entrance is a circular rotunda that connects to all the main rooms of the museum.  The circular room has streams and images under the floor viewable through transparent tiles.  In the restrooms, rather than faucets, the water comes from pipes that extend from the ceiling.

We went outside to the grounds where much of the festival was taking place.  It was hot out, between 90-100 degrees, but a slight breeze and the fact that it was dry heat made it bearable.  My wife waited in the long line for ice cream that, surprisingly, moved rather quickly.  They also had face painting and on the outdoor stage the emcees facilitated a hula hoop contest for the children.  Too bad that boy at our cousins’ son’s birthday party wasn’t there.  He would have won easily.  Later a band playing Celtic music and some Celtic dancers took the stage.  I wonder if they would be watching the NBA finals that evening.

We walked around some of the 1.8 miles of desert trails that make up most of the eastern grounds of the Preserve.  There’s an old oil derrick that’s reminiscent of the film There Will be Blood.  There’s a community of Joshua trees behind which the future Nevada State Museum was under construction.  There’s supposedly wildlife to be seen along the trails but the closest we got was seeing a turtle’s burrow (labeled by a sign) and hearing a dog barking.  Further east the grounds include a large spring-fed wetlands known as known in Spanish as cienega.  The cienega is downhill from the other trails and contains very tall grasses and other green vegetation.  On the south end the springs have created the “Cauldron Pool,” the source of water for much of the vegetation.

After a while in the desert heat we returned to the Springs Café and got some Naked juice to cool down.  We figured we would support our hometown since Naked has its headquarters in Azusa.  I got watermelon flavor and my wife got mango flavor.  We tried both and agreed that the watermelon tasted better.  After cooling down we went to the large gift shop on the ground level below the café.  It contains myriad wares such as books, toys, jewelry, food, even apple cider from Washington (?).  We got some water bottles and stickers and then left the Preserve.  The scheduled end time for the festival of 4 pm had long past.

Until my wife had found out about Springs Preserve on MSN, I never thought I would go to Vegas to visit a nature preserve.  There’s so much more to Vegas than the bright lights and impressive hotel/casinos on the Strip.