A whirlwind trip

Beth attended a conference last week in Las Vegas, NV and I decided to tag along for the ride. The main reason that I wanted to go was to visit with my sister over in Los Alamos, NM, but I’ve also never been to Vegas and was more than a bit curious to see this infamous city.

Beth and I are not much into gambling, usually setting a $100 limit - which, just as usually, is gone in the first hour. I think that this time around I kept my losses to under $50 and the time with my ass in a chair at less than an hour. I spent most of my time in Vegas out walking around and checking out the various themed casinos.

New York, New York

Paris

Caesar's Palace

Luxor

You get the idea, so here is a final picture to put it all into perspective.

The Strip

As anyone who knows the slightest thing about me, you can imagine how quickly I became bored with this scene. The individual casinos were pretty well done and kind of interesting to explore, but the overall vibe was not at all for me.

So on day two I rented a car and headed into the surrounding desert for some sight seeing. It was a beautiful day and I found some great hiking in the mountains and canyons of nearby Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It was a lot different than pancake flat and grassy green Holland. On my two hour hike, I saw...

...funky plants

...funky rocks

....and funky petroglyphs

...on my way up a narrow box canyon to this spectacular payoff view.

I also did a side trip over to Hoover dam. It was worth a quick stop to see what makes all the Vegas thing possible in this barren landscape. It was impossible to capture the scale of this dam and this photo does not do it justice. Those are cars at the bottom…it was freaking enormous!

Hoover Dam

Beth had the last night in Vegas off so we caught a show over at Mandaly Bay. We have been wanting to see Mama Mia for some time now so we were glad to see that the production was in town. It was a great show!

We then headed over to New Mexico, via Los Angeles, to visit with my sister. They have been hammered with snow this year, giving the desert and mountains a beautiful blanket of white.

Los Alamos with ski hill in background.

High desert canyon.

Our hosts...Sue, Tom and Sydney

For Beth, the biggest attraction was the massage chair that Tom had. Look at that book vibrate!

Overall a great trip! But as always, it’s good to be back home in Holland.