Hey Baby Let's Go To Vegas

We had a great time soaking up the sun. We left Utah on Thursday morning and packed up the car while it was hailing and snowing. After driving a few hours south, we had sunshine and went camping at "Valley of Fire" State Park in Nevada.


Some anciant characters engraved in rock.

We took a late afternoon hike climbing around some red rock--it was beautiful.




We pulled into Vegas and stayed at the Meridian Resort. I felt like a movie star. Doug is excellent at finding deals on the internet and he got 10 points for this one. We hung out by the pool and played a bit of tennis.


Doug had never seen the Bellagio fountains so he was pretty fascinated.




We went through the MGM Grand on our LONG walk back to our resort from the Tropicana (where the Bodies exhibit was) and saw these real, live lions that we could walk under them in their habitat. They were gorgeous.


We were glad to be off the strip for a moment, even if it was still smoke-filled inside the MGM. It was a wake-up call to both Doug and I. I didn't think one city could have so much evil in it and they flaunt it as "Sin City". It was pretty awful and quite sad. After having countless people try to hand us pronography as we walked, I felt so frustrated. Here Doug and I are holding hands, and we are still having photos of naked women shoved at us. There was a lot of cigarette smoke and a lot of alcohol. It took my lungs a few days to recover. It was a reality check and next time, I would rather pay for a taxi then walk along the strip.