Vegas, Day 3

So day3 begins. Again I was up early, and headed down to the casino to donate a few more dollars to the local economy. Nothing huge to report here, I did play a really cool Lord of the Rings game for an hour or so, 20.00 in, 60.00 0ut. Now if I could only do this more consistently.

I went back upstairs, changed into hiking gear, filled up the water bladder, and we headed north about an hour to the Valley of Fire. Cool thing of the day...the speed limit in the desert is 75mph. Our little rental car seemed to like that, and seemed to like doing 90 more. I had a really hard tme keeping the speed down on such a straight, flat highway. We made it to the Valley of Fire State Park in Overton, NV, paid our 10.00 entrance fee, picked up our map and headed down into the park. This park is one of those places that words just cannot describe. The rock, the hills, the mountains, the valleys just take your breath away. There isn't a big trail to hike here, but there are quite a few hiking trails. We stopped first at a place called the beehives. The rocks here looked liked giant beehives, very neat.

We stopped at the visitors center and looked around a bit, walked around back to see the view from there, then headed down towards some other parts of the park. We saw petrified logs that were millions of years old, a giant rock faced hill that looked like an arrowhead, more petrified logs, and a series of 7 rocks called the 7 sisters that used to be a mountian, but time and the years the area spent covered by an ocean transformed the mountain into the 7 sisters. They have turned the area into a picnic area, very cool place. We jumped back into the car and headed down to the arrowhead trail. This one was just a little under 2 miles, and took us out into the desert and into the mountains once again. Parts of the trail were covered with 8 inches of sand, which really put a strain on the lower legs, and other parts were covered with boulders. It was still fun though. The highlight of this trail was the "elephant rock" We kinda chuckled at all the tourists that parked and walked 100 yards to take pictures of the rock, while we hiked 2 miles out and around the mountains to get pictures of the same rock.

The last trail we took was called Mouse's tank. Seems back in the 1800's an outlaw nicknamed Mouse used this area as a hideout. The tank is the only place in the entire area where there was water. All along the rock walls on either side of the trail were ancient petroglyphs. I can very easily turn into a history nerd on hikes like this, and this time was no exception. We found Mouse's tank, and stopped several times on the route back to take some pics of the petroglyphs. I only wish I had taken a picture of the sign at the trailhead showing what historians "think" the petroglyphs meant. This trail was very popular with other tourists, there must have been 60 people out there.

So by now it was way past lunch time, my snacks had worn off, and I had a Thai restaurant calling my name. The last time Janet and I came out to Vegas, we found this little hole in the wall restaurant off the strip called Lotus of Siam. Well let me just say that this place has the absolute best food. Every year they come in the top 5 nationwide for Thai restaurants. We had been looking forward to this meal for 2 years. We made our way back to town, and soon were sitting at a table in the newly remodeled restaurant. They definitely upgraded the decor in the place. We chose the buffet lunch so we could try different dishes, and every single thing we tasted was delicious. My favorite this time was the red curry chicken. Spicy, and so flavorful. It was very hard not to overeat, but we didn't want to totally blow the diet so we both encouraged each other not to stuff ourselves. I still ate too much, but all in all, I ate a lot less than I would have before the new eating plan.

Back to the Rio, we showered, dressed and headed back to the strip. Our destination this time was the Luxor, and the show Menopause, the musical. The ad said the show started at 5:30, but when we got tickets we found out that instead that night, the show would start at 8:00, so we headed over to Mandalay Bay for a bit to kill some time. We mostly played penny slots, again not really winning anything, enjoyed a couple of beverages and headed back to the Luxor to see the show. Let me just say, especially for you ladies that are nearing a certain age, if you ever have the chance, go see this show. I laughed almost 90 minutes non-stop. It was hilarious. Even the husbands that had been dragged in their by their wives had a good time. They probably go through 20 songs that you will recognize the tunes, but the words have been rewritten, very, very cleverly. It was a riot.

After the show, we headed off the strip to the Orleans, a casino that caters to locals, which usually means better payouts. Well, I managed to win a small, miniscule amount here, but the amount of time you got to play was much longer than we had experienced at the strip hotels.

We finally decided after a couple of hours that we needed rest, so we headed back to our last night at the Rio, played just a little while in the casino, then went up to bed.

Another excellent day in Las Vegas.

You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through- Rosalyn Carter.