Viva las Vegas!

We recently took a trip to Vegas to hang out with some good comrades of ours. Rich, he was my old room mate as you might recall, and his wife, Maria. We had a most excellent time, and here's a taste of our adventures:


We started our little excursion with a flat tire. Yea - good thing Rich brought his HUGE jack.

Here we stopped in the shade for a tasty picnic - complements to Maria on the delectable sandwhiches and snacks.

This picture looks pretty cool - unfortunately, we didn't actually find anywhere to snowboard, so we pretended. Had to get something out of hauling that thing across the desert rocks.

As always, Beth shows me up by being slightly more hardcore.

This is taken at the first little cave we ofund at the Valley of Fire

Same cave - different angles - nice

Beth's mermaid pose on a random red cliff

A desert tortoise made his way slowly across the road in front of us. We went back to document. Good thing we didn't scare him - apparently, if you scare them too bad, they pee their little tortuise pants, get dehydrated and croak

That petroglyph looks familiar...

Here's the couple we hung out with for our stay in Vegas - they were kind enough to let us bunk with them - thanks guys

I'm open! (That's a blue frisbee comin at me)

Nice

Another shot of the fabulous duo - Marich - ro Richia (doesn't have quite the same ring as Breth, but still cool)

So, I thought maybe I could make an imprint in the sand of my face - you know like a Han Solo Carbonite kind of thing. In the end the sweate and very dry sand made for a nice face plaster

Remember that little blue frisbee, well I went to great lengths to retrieve it. It got stuck in a little pool. We had a time getting it out

A nice little taranchula - this thing was pretty narly - hairy, eye-looking things on its back.

Apparently this type of thing is quite tipical for Rich to encounter

Also, on our little trip through this place, which was called... we realized we left our bag somehwere. We didn't think we hadn anything super valuable in it, so we left it and decided we'd pick it up on the way out. Then we realized that we'd left my phone in it. But on our way back, it was nowhere to be seen. Later that night we also realized our keys were in there - so now we would be stranded in Vegas, and I had no phone. However, thanks to prayer, and a kindly ranger, we now have the bag, our keys and my phone, and we're safely and promptly back in Provo.

This is part of the Valley of Fire's "scenic route" - scenic indeed

And now for the Vegas pics - this is a really cool lookin ceiling in the Bellagio

If you read up close, the label says that beast is over 700 lbs. ! And a little further away, there was one over 800

Look, it's Beth's mission

That's looking down the strip from an overpass

A random large Golden Lion at the MGM Grand - reminds me of a story in the book of Exodus

Here's the infamous fountain shows at the Bellagio - they are pretty sweet

This is a very neat looking ceiling in Caesar's palace

Some other random important ancient people

Oh no Beth, a pegasus!

This is part of the Forum Shops that run through Caesar's Palace. The vaulted ceilings are painted like the sky. I think they do this in hopes to keep their customers in here forever. "We don't need a real sky, we've got one right here in the casino - sure we don't get the vitamin D we need the ultra-violet rays, but hey, you can get that from milk right?"

And finally the trip home.