Image by Wouter Kiel via Flickr

Dear Readers, I am just returned from a five day jaunt to the city of Las Vegas. A very dry city weather-wise, and windy. I stayed at a resort hotel on the south end of the strip that had a Mexican theme, named the Cancun.

Thanks to a fortunate coincidence I was able to see much MUCH more of the area around Las Vegas than ONLY the glitzy splashes of neon in the city itself. My driver, past co-worker and friend Klaus shared his wealth of knowledge and I ventured into the desert on his “horse with no name” and it did indeed feel good to get out of the rain. (who else remembers that song?)

I saw the Red Rock  canyon from the Red Rock overlook east of Las Vegas, the red boulder, and red rocks, Joshua trees and yucca plants. I saw the artificial Lake Mead which seemed a distant relative to Okanagan Lake but looked like a brilliant blue jewel in that dry, rocky arid countryside.

I got a laugh when I checked out a library in Las Vegas, at the entrance was a prominent sign _ No Firearms Allowed!  Quite a telling indication that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!

In addition to Nevada, in my brief trip I was enabled also (thanks Klaus!) to see Boulder City, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and even pop across the Colorado River into Arizona for lunch when we ventured to Laughlin, Nevada.

I will include another post soon with some personal pictures! Thanks everyone for bringing this blog past 1000 visits! Awesome!

If you are wondering how the gambling went, I canoodled with the slot machines and lost, but not a lot of money. In the casinos there was cheap buffets, and way too much good food, I took advantage of that also. So now I have seen Las Vegas, and it was much as I expected ~ not bad,and not expensive if you are careful gambling.