Viva Las Vegas!

Turns out I like Las Vega better than I thought I would. We took the monorail which is money-saver as well as a foot -saver for getting up and down the "strip". We went to Bally's Paris and the Bellagio. Claude Monet was "headlining " at the gallery at the Bellagio. If I ever come back I will insist on staying at this classy place.

We are staying at the Las Vegas Hilton mostly because I have a Hilton Honors card and Dan wanted to see the Elvis impersonator here. Amazingly I found I really enjoyed it. Sure glad I hadn't bought high-priced tickets to see Elton John tonight as we saw the show was cancelled.

I even enjoyed throwing away the budgeted $20 into the slots! Probably a good thing we leave in the morning.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow is going to be a thriller!
Photos: 1. Vegas Fashion Victim
2. Twisting escalator at Caesar's Palace 3.Bellagio near the art gallery
4. Bellagio pool 5. Dan's healthy breakfast

On to Las Vegas

We left the watery scenery of San Diego today and drove across the desert to a place that I have to love and hate all at once. Everything is so exaggerated and grand and disgusting at the same time. The pictures today are of the landscape on the way. The drive was easy but we were definitely not alone. There was a huge volume of cars for a pretty much uninhibited area.

The other pictures are of Las Vegas itself mostly from around the Venetian Casino and hotel (where we are not staying). We are at the Hilton.

A Day on the Water

We spent the whole day on or near the water in the San Diego harbor.
A 2 hour harbor cruise, lunch at a seafood restaurant, tour of the USS Midway aircraft carrier, and sunset on the beach on Coronado.

Palm Springs to San Diego

Couldn't come up with a catchy title today. Palm Springs is really a very attractive area surrounded by gorgeous mountains and I drove up and over them this morning and on into San Diego in time for lunch with Tom & Marian (Dan's brother & sister-in-law.)

The first picture was taken from the mountain at the only place we could pull over for many, many twisty miles.
The rest are taken in San Diego between rain drops. We hope for better weather tomorrow.

8500 Feet Up

We climbed all day on our drive from Tucson into California where we arrived in the early afternoon. The temperature was a lovely 68 degrees and we really miss the Ohio chill so we decided to take the Palm Springs aerial tramway up the mountain where in a 10 minute revolving ride we were at 29 degrees with snow at our feet.

The views of Palm Springs and beyond is incredible and the sun was intensely bright.

Mormons on the mountain

There is a mountain that rises on the west side of Tucson referred to as "A" mountain. There is an enormous letter A created on the peak by Arizona State students in 1915. You can see the whole of Tucson and meet young Mormons!

The two young ladies I surmised to be Mormons on mission really were. When they approached us we learned they were also from Ohio. One girl's parents live in Wadsworth.

The giant saguaro cactus which is the one that most symbolizes Arizona posed for plenty of photos at the Saguaro National Park.

The Mission San Xavier del Bac is also a site we visited. It was built in the early 1700's.

Everything looked stunning against the blue Arizona sky today.

I am still struggling with the pictures on this blogger app and the they will not behave and appear in the order in which I post them. Hope you can figure out which is which. I have a roadrunner who posed for me too. He is NOT Mormon. He was at the Mission so I assume he's Catholic!

A freezing start and a warm ending

When we left Carlsbad this morning it was 23 degrees and turned icy before we even made it to Rt. 10. we saw a jack-knifed truck and then we were detoured when they closed the road in front of us. Most people haven't visited Sierra Blanco, TX but we did. Today's picture is somewhere in New Mexico .
And Dan was the photographer.

When we arrived at Randy and Lorinda's we received a warm welcome. They live in Vail, AZ outside Tucson.

Caverns & Cemetaries

Today's ventures started at Carlsbad Caverns with an 1.5 hr.guided tour that took us 800 ft. below the surface of the New Mexico Gaudalupe Mts. The photos can't remotely capture the size, complexity and beauty. After self-guided trek through another part of the cavern called the BIG ROOM for another hour we were dragging but happy to have done it.

We realized when we got to New Mexico that we were not far from Artesia where Dan's mother had graduated from high school. Her family.
moved there as a cure for her sister Mary's T.B. Mary did not survive and they came back to Ohio and we wondered if she had been buried in Artesia. A visit to the public library answered our question immediately when the librarian found a funeral home record book showing her death as 6/9/1925 and that she was buried in Woodbine Cemetary just down the road. We searched nearly every headstone and marker and could not find hers. We think that there may not even be a marker since funds were probably short and they did not stay.

The pictures will show some NM landscape, the caverns, and the Woodbine Cemetary.

On the road again

Today's journey westward brought us from Georgetown to Carlsbad, New Mexico. West Texas is certainly a different terrain than we are used to.
The pictures I am posting were taken quickly from the roadside. We were told we might see exotic animals but all we saw besides cows and sheep were vultures. Maybe they will fly back to Hinckley.

Georgetown and family

Today was a day of family and food. We ate lunch at the Monument Cafe and dinner at the Catfish Parlor. I left the house without a camera so I am only posting Joan and Ross and the doggies.