Road Trip!

When I was a kid, we'd take vacations in the National Parks of the Southwest.  All vacations began with a nighttime trip though the desert to Vegas.  Somewhere around the Nevada border, the sky began to change with the dawn.  Adventures were to begin with the new day.

In the pursuit of recapturing the magic of that moment, we woke up at 1:30 and were on the road to Vegas.  Road Trip, Baby.  My dad was up with a cup of coffee, and we took off.  The 10 to the 210 to the 215 to the 15.  Stopped for gas, used the cruise control.  At 4:30 the sky began to brighten in the east and the mountains began to glow.  The moon was full and setting in the west and Emily acted as DJ.  My favorite songs were American Tune by Paul Simon and Old '55 by Tom Waits.  Feeling so holy....

We were still early for hotel check-in, so we went straight to Hoover Dam for the Dam Tour.  It was the best Dam Tour ever, and we saw the Dam turbines and a film about how the Dam thing was built.  The Dam Tour Guide filled the tour with Dam puns, as was appropriate.  The last time I had visited, there was a dynamic diorama that showed the impact of the Dam on the Colorado River, how it dried up just as it got to Mexico, where it used to be a fertile delta as it reached the Sea of Cortez, but for some reason, all talk about the water downstream was gone, and the emphasis was on the human achievement of the actual structure.  It is an amazing feat of civil engineering, and even the bathrooms were cool.  Terrazzo tile was everywhere, including the floor of the power plant.  Gorgeous!

Off to Vegas!  We drove through Downtown then down the Strip.  They had signs and lights from old Vegas hotels on display.  Things like the original Silver Slipper and Aladdin's Lamp.  There was a line around the block at the Silver and Gold Pawn Shop.  Yay, Pawn Stars!

Once we got to the end of the Strip, it was time to check into Paris.  Time to hit the town.  We found our way to Cesear's Palace, and practically bumped into Mesa Grill.  I was hungry and I knew Bobby Flay could cook me a great gluten free lunch. And he did.
Wandering up and down the Strip, we saw art and shops and fancy stuff, and found our way to the New York, New York piano bar.   I had fun here.  It was a neighborhood bar feeling in the middle of Vegas with sing alongs.  We jumped on the roller coaster and wandered back down the strip.  We looked at the Chihuli ceiling and suddenly realized, while looking at our hotel across the street, that although it was only around 9 pm, we had been up since 2 in the morning and were very, very, very tired.  Back to our room we went and to bed.  Welcome to Vegas!