Vegas, part 2

On Wednesday, we walked a lot. ;) We started with walking past the BattleBots arena and continuing on to the Atomic Museum (about another mile east of The Strip). We spent a good bit of time taking in the impressive exhibits and information there. If you have the time, we recommend it for sure. Because we'd not timed things well and were pretty hungry when we finished at the museum, we caught a quick Uber back to The Strip (fascinating driver...wouldn't have minded having a drink with him as we're sure he's led a very interesting life and has stories aplenty). We walked through the Paris hotel and settled on having a late lunch at Mon Ami Gabi. It was seriously delicious and our patio table had a great view of the Bellagio fountains. 

(We were glad to have watched the fountain show on Monday night, as they didn't run at all on Tuesday. Apparently a yellow-billed loon found its way into the fountain lake...and, as one of the 10 rarest birds that regularly breed on the mainland US...the Bellagio had shut down operations in consideration of the bird's safety. They think it got blown off course by the high winds just before...decided the fountain show wasn't hurting the bird so started back up during the day on Wednesday for a period...and then shut things down again while they wait for the bird to move on.)

After our fabulous late lunch, we walked across The Strip to explore the Bellagio and the Cosmopolitan a bit...saw the world's largest chocolate fountain but weren't able to see the conservatory as they were in the process of switching things out from their Lunar New Year display to a more Easter themed display. 

From there, we stopped briefly to make sure to check in for our flight the next day then continued on down The Strip to the south. We went to the giant M&M store, saw the Big Apple Coaster across from there, found a fun Stranger Things store, took a picture with the Statue of Liberty, and walked through the Excaliber and the Luxor before turning around and walking back to our hotel.

We had a nice dinner at the Tilted Kilt on the Linq Promenade (just outside The Flamingo) then went back to our room to chill for a bit and change before our 9:30 Cirque du Soleil "O" show across the street at The Bellagio. (Another reason we picked The Flamingo hotel was knowing that it was just across from where our show would be. It was nice being able to just walk back after the show let out.)

Photos weren't allowed once the show started but we managed to get these...

The show was soooo amazing! "O" is a water show so there was plenty of flipping and diving and just overall impressive feats. Wow.

On Thursday, we checked out and took our bags down to the hotel's baggage hold then continued in our walking tour of The Strip. We ventured thru The Venetian (with their indoor canals and interesting displays), Treasure Island, The Mirage, the Forum Shoppes, and Caesar's Palace. We ended up having our last Vegas meal at Caesar's at Gordon Ramsay's Pub & Grill, and it didn't disappoint. (Plus, our waiter was great and had wonderful recommendations.)

The last photo is of me in one of the many "sugar" stores around Vegas...because I just thought it was fun. We didn't buy any candy. :) 

After that, we collected our bags, caught an Uber and got to the airport. Our flight was slightly delayed due to a shift in the winds or something but made it to Denver just fine. We grabbed some food at the airport before shuttling back to our car and driving home. Fortunately, the forecast snow wasn't too bad and was only just starting during our drive. 

And that was Wednesday and Thursday. Whew. I'll be back with one last wrap up post...

Vegas, part 1

So, Nathan and I took a trip to Las Vegas earlier this week to celebrate our 27th/32nd anniversary (belated, in that our wedding anniversary was at the end of December, and early, in that the anniversary of us meeting is next week). We'd not spent any significant time there before (have driven through but nothing more) so decided to see what all the hype was about. :)

We arrived Monday evening and made our way to our hotel. (We stayed at The Flamingo for its lower price and central location on The Strip. Thankfully, I saw someplace that the smart thing to do was to join the Caesar Rewards program and get the app so you could check yourself in and was so glad we did! The line for checking in was crazy long.) After finding our room and dropping off our bags, we wandered down to the Linq Promenade for dinner then walked The Strip to the north and took in the free volcano show at the Mirage and the fountain show at the Bellagio. We also enjoyed the view from our room...of the Sphere and the High Roller wheel.  

On Tuesday, we said hello to the resident flamingos at our hotel then rode the Deuce bus to the Arts District and did more wandering and walking. We found lovely murals and ate lunch in the Arts District...walked to and through the Fremont Street Experience...found a fun Container Park with cute little shops...chilled at a local coffee shop that was amazing (Public Us, highly recommend!!)...and walked across the street to Fergusons Downtown (billed as a kind of in-person Etsy mall) and enjoyed the quiet (actually just relaxed in the courtyard area for a good bit, soaking up the beautiful weather). 

From there, we walked a bit to the Neon Museum for our 4:30 admission. We wandered through their "boneyard" of old neon signs. It was really cool and we took a lot of pictures while enjoying the signs posted with cool information about the signs and about individual women of Las Vegas (since March is Women's History Month). We'd timed our admission tickets so that we were able to appreciate the signs both in the daylight and after dark...which was awesome.

We then Uber'd back to The Strip (after dark, it wasn't recommended to walk the area). We ended up sharing the famous Trash Can Nachos at Guy Fieri's Vegas Kitchen & Bar. They were fabulous! (I've watched enough Food Network that it was kinda cool to be there, so I also got a photo with a cutout of Guy, lol.) 

After that, we rode the High Roller (it's a 30 minute ride) and enjoyed the views over The Strip. Nathan also got this shot (bottom right) of the BattleBots arena. It was actually just down the block from our hotel, but sadly they didn't have any tickets for the nights we were there. (We've enjoyed BattleBots for years after being introduced to it during our Mythbusters days and had become reacquainted recently after adding the Discovery+ add-on to our Prime streaming services.) 

And that was Monday and Tuesday. Back in a minute with the rest of our trip...

Breckenridge

So, we've lived in Colorado more than 21 years now and had never been to Breckenridge. We fixed that yesterday. :) 

Nathan took the day off from work and we drove the 2+ hours down to Breckenridge. Our main goal was to find the troll, Isak Heartstone...and we did!

He was pretty impressive. :) We also did a short hike from the same trailhead and enjoyed the gorgeous fall day and sunshine. (The hike is how we got the picture of the troll from the back.)

Beyond Isak, we enjoyed a great lunch at Ollie's, appreciated the railroad park for kids (and reminisced about when Noah and Asher were once enamoured with trains), wandered a number of shops in town, took in some of the random art around town, had yummy chocolate orange gelato, and had a fabulous dinner at the Blue Stag.

No offense to Montrose, but the food in Breckenridge (and Fort Collins and a lot of other places, lol) is way better. :) 

After all that, we got back on the road. We hit some unexpected fog for a bit but finally descended the mountains enough to enjoy the rest of the drive home. So thankful that we live in such a fabulous state and have the ability to take in its many wonders together. 

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Over the weekend, Nathan and I took a road trip to visit the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Colorado has four National Parks and this was the only one we hadn't made it to yet. 

We headed out Friday morning, enjoyed the beautiful drive and fall colors, made it to Montrose and dropped our stuff off at our AirBNB tiny house...

It was a perfect little spot for us...a fun new(ish) tiny house with a porch and a gorgeous view. There were also resident chickens and eggs that we were welcome to. (We didn't end up doing any cooking so didn't take advantage of the eggs but loved the idea.)

From our tiny house, we headed to the park and drove the South Rim road, stopping at about half of the viewpoints. The pictures don't do it justice, really. Here are some random ones from Friday evening...

Do you see Nathan standing on the post in that bottom left photo? And more from Friday's sunset at Painted Wall viewpoint...

We then headed into town for dinner before calling it a night at our cozy little tiny house. Saturday morning, we stopped in town for some provisions and then drove the East Portal Road down to the river at the base of the canyon. We ate a picnic lunch there and wandered a bit, enjoying the fall colors and learning interesting things about the history of the area. (And we were thankful for our new tires and brakes on the van, as the road had a 16% grade in places.)

We then drove back up to the South Rim road and visited the Visitor Center before tackling the Oak Flat Trail, which was listed as a strenuous 1.5 mile loop but wasn't bad at all. The hike took us down into the canyon a bit and offered some different views. We then drove to the end of the road again and stopped at Dragon Point on the way back. We took so many pictures over the two days! Here are a few more from Saturday afternoon...

We had an earlier dinner Saturday night at the local steakhouse then enjoyed some Netflix and called it a night, listening to the wind. 

Sunday, we got checked out and on the road. We decided to take the scenic route on the way back (we'd taken I-70 on the way there). It should only have taken about half an hour longer...about 6.5 hours of driving. We stopped for lunch and afternoon coffee/tea and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. And then we got stuck in traffic. For hours. And hours. It was a little bit crazy. At one point, our phone navigation told us the road ahead was completely closed, but we pressed on, as we saw everyone else was doing. As best we can tell, there may have been some big horn sheep blocking the road at the top of one of the passes, combined with a ridiculous number of people stopping to take pictures of leaves. (It was a nice spot, but not the best of the spots we'd seen all day plus there was actually plenty of parking so we can't figure out why that caused such a back up.) In any case, we finally made it home about 11 hours after leaving. Long day.

Traffic aside, we had a lovely weekend...were quite impressed with the Black Canyon of the Gunnison...and enjoyed the time and conversation. 

Thankful Thursday

So, apparently there wasn't much to share during February and now it's March, lol. 

Let's do some catching up with a list of things I'm thankful for today...

1. Micah's interview. Last weekend, Micah had his Leeds Scholar Program interview at CU Boulder that I mentioned before. He won't hear back on that for another week or so but felt good about the experience and looked good...

(Thankful, too, that Men's Warehouse was able to get his suit tailored in time...which they finished early just for us. Their posted alteration timeline would have been later than his interview. His alterations were simple, though, so the tailor assured us she could finish sooner.)

Yes, he took off the sunglasses for the actual interview. :) Fortunately, he's really comfortable with interviews and does well with talking. While we were there for the afternoon, we also attended some informational sessions and got a tour of the business school, so it was time well spent. 

2. The medical community. Thankful lately, too, for our medical community. Micah's arthritis appears to be spreading unfortunately. Toward the start of February, he started having swelling and pain in areas he hadn't before (not in a joint). He resisted for a week and a half or so before we finally made him get an x-ray to be sure there wasn't an injury. Darn kid was right that he didn't have any injury. We then took advantage of telehealth opportunities and communicated with his rheumatologist a good bit. Given all of that (and some additional swelling and pain in new spots during that), Micah will be getting an MRI tomorrow. We'll take that information, then, the next time we see his rheumatologist in person and hopefully come up with a new plan. Thankful that all of these resources are so readily available to us. (Hopefully, too, we'll eventually get some warmer weather that will help.)

3. Throwback Thursday. I love when Facebook reminds me of memories from years past. Lately, most of my memories have been from last year's trip to Greece...

This was from one year ago today. We were back in Athens, wrapping up a fabulous trip. SO thankful to have these photos and memories to look back on!

4. Watching shows together. We've still been doing our weekly family movie nights mostly. Lately, though, we've also been binging some show series during movie night. In particular, we watched the show Physical 100 on Netflix and rewatched seasons 1 and 2 of Ted Lasso in preparation for season 3 starting on March 15. Fun times! Sometimes I enjoy watching series together more than movies because they often lead to more discussion and debate. :)

5. Spring cleaning. While we continue to wait to hear back from the California colleges (and thus can't really start planning Micah's next steps), we've been tackling a number of small projects around the house...like replacing some door knobs and light fixtures, hanging pictures from our Curacao trip, and purging various hot spots around the house. It's nice to get these things done and works as a bit of a distraction. (But it would be lovely to hear back and be able to start figuring things out...)

And that's what I'm thankful for today. Happy March, everyone!