Viva Las Vegas

I have been a bad blogger lately, but I'm finally posting some photos from our Las Vegas trip. We stayed at the Venetian...check out the tack-a-riffic hall:
And the view of the mountains from our hotel room:

And the massive bathroom in our room--our hotel room was so swanky and nice, there were fresh orchids in the bathroom every day. It was pretty tough to leave and return to my orchid-free home!

This is a small section of the Vegas strip. We visited New York New York and rode on the insane roller coaster--seriously, the scariest roller coaster I have ever been on. The lights of the Vegas strip are even more dazzling when seen from 203 feet in the air and upside down!

We also visited the older section of Las Vegas on Fremont Street. The casinos were a little sketchy and the food was downright terrifying:

We wandered from casino to casino, winning some money at the blackjack tables, then losing some money at the blackjack tables. I loved the crazy acrobat shows at Circus Circus:

Since we were enjoying our tour of all things cheesy and cliche in Las Vegas, we stopped by the Mirage to check out Sigfried and Roy's white tigers. How cute is this little tiger cub?

In addition to tigers, the gardens at the Mirage had leopards:

and lions:

and dolphins:

We had such a fantastic, carefree time in Las Vegas, but the highlight was definitely the Cirque du Soleil show "Love" which was set to Beatles music. It was incredible (the 32 oz. margaritas we bought at the concession stand made it even better!) and we left the show in awe of the choreography, the artistry and the athleticism of the performers.

It's nice to be back to reality, but I would love to go back to Las Vegas for another dose of fantasy in the near future!

My Morning Began with a Bat, I Mean Bang

I woke up this morning, went to the kitchen to have some cereal, looked up and saw a little bat hanging in the doorway to the dining room. All the cats were standing underneath it, looking up, licking their lips and making their "I want flesh!" chattering noises. I'm very proud of myself, because I was cool, calm and collected, baby! I grabbed a bag of cat treats, lured the cats into the utility room and shut the door, then I grabbed a step stool and a couple of potholders, opened the front door, gently scooped the bat up and set it outside. I think the poor little thing was in shock, because instead of swooping away to freedom, it just sat there spitting at me. I know a photo op when it hisses in my face, so here is the photographic evidence of my crazy morning:

And no, I will not put this particular potholder back in my kitchen...based on the number of bats we see flying out of our eaves every night, I'm guessing I'll need it again for bat duty!

Finally, Some Grand Canyon Pictures

Kevin and I set out last Saturday at 5:30 AM from Las Vegas to see the Grand Canyon. Here we are at an overlook in Hurricane, Utah. (Late that night, on our long drive back to Las Vegas, we were pulled over in Hurricane, Utah for speeding, so we have all kinds of memories from that town!)
And here is a long horned steer--too cute!

We stopped by Zion National Park in Utah to see the incredible sandstone formations.

How amazing are these rocks? I have never seen anything like this before!

While we stopped to marvel at the sandstone, this adorable little lizared scurried by:

I love vintage 1960's signs so I always take pictures of them. (I have a bunch of cool sign pictures from Santa Cruz too.) I snapped this photo quickly, and it wasn't until I got home and was going through my pictures that I actually read what the sign said...um, is the economy really so stagnant that the ladies of the night have to bake pies in the morning just to make ends meet?

We were driving along towards the Grand Canyon when I spotted this sign and begged Kevin to pull over so we could take a tour. What an amazing place--I could have spent the rest of our vacation there! If you haven't heard of Best Friends, here's their website: http://www.bestfriends.org/

After our tour, we got back on the road and drove into Arizona. (I was able to add 3 new states to my list of states I have visited: Nevada, Utah and Arizona. I still have Mississippi, Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii to visit. I definitely think Hawaii should be my top priority!) It was quite overcast by the time we reached the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We paid our $25, drove into the park, and it started pouring rain, thundering and lightening. We debated turning back, but since we had already paid (and driven more than 300 miles to get there) we decided to make the best of it. This was my first impression of the Grand Canyon, as I was shivering out on a ledge, being pelted with icy rain and trying to avoid being struck by lightening!

We hid in the car until the rain let up a little, then we ventured out again. We walked along this path to a couple of different vistas and absolutely fell in love with the fragrance. It was a blend of cedar, sage, juniper and cliff roses mixed with that fresh rain smell--I wish my blog was scratch-n-sniff, it was such an incredible scent! I'm kind of obsessed with finding a candle or potpourri or linen spray or something that smells like that now--I want to wake up to that fragrance every morning! (It wasn't just me going nuts over the scent, Kevin wouldn't shut up about it either!)

I got a few more shots of the Grand Canyon, but it was still very foggy and overcast, so I'm not very happy with any of my photos:

Anyway, despite the inclement weather and the speeding ticket, we had a wonderful road trip. I would definitely love to go back to the Grand Canyon and see the south rim (and the north rim in the sunshine). I'll write a bit about Las Vegas later...

An Alien Landscape

I returned from my first trip to the southwest on Tuesday night...it was so beautiful, but so different from any landscape I have ever seen. I have tons of pictures to sort through, but right now I'm just trying to catch up on laundry, vacuuming and grocery shopping. More pictures will follow, but for now, behold the crazy, twisty tree!

Culture Schmulture

Some of Kevin's Norwegian coworkers have been in town the last couple of days, and we went to a musical with them last night--"Les Miserables." I saw the musical in 2000 in London, and I found that 8 years later, I had the same observation: If Javert didn't keep stopping and bursting into song, he probably could have caught Jean Valjean! I used to be in drama club in high school--I was obsessed with plays and musicals, and I even used to think that "Cats" was kind of awesome. At some point I must have lost my ability to suspend my disbelief (and any and all appreciation for overwrought songs and jazz hands!) When I go to musicals now, I sit quietly and politely applaud whenever appropriate, but in my head I'm composing goofy little songs like "I want coffee and donuts, coffee and donuts from Dunkin Do-o-nuts, Do-o-nuts," to the tune of that "Barber of Seville, Figaro" song.
Kevin and I are flying to Las Vegas on Friday. We have plans to drive to the Grand Canyon, to see the Beatles-themed Cirque Du Soleil show and of course to play a little blackjack. I think this might be the kind of culture even I can appreciate!

The Boonies

We live in the middle of nowhere...I knew this before, but yesterday, the point was really driven home. There is a 25 mile stretch of highway between the animal shelter and my house and I guess I was a bit more observant than usual as I drove along. I passed about 15 vehicles parked in front yards which were for sale by owner, including a huge pontoon boat and not one, but two old hearses. (The hearses weren't even for sale by the same person, they were a few miles apart...what are the odds?) I also drove past a couple of "Deer Processing" signs, and a very perplexing "Meat Madness" sign--I probably don't want to find out what that means! I passed a few 4 wheelers racing through the ditches on the side of the road, but most disturbing was the guy on a dirtbike...he was wearing protective safety gear and a helmet as he sped through the fields, but the chubby, bald baby who was balanced on his lap was not! I arrived home just in time to see the neighbors trussing a whole dead pig to a spit in preperation for today's pig roast. I'm really not one of those preachy, judgmental vegetarians, but seeing a whole animal like that, ears and snout and all, was too much for me--the sight of it made me cry a bit. It's a lot easier to watch someone eat a hamburger, with its total lack of facial features!
There are some benefits to living in such a remote area, though. At night there are no city lights competing with the starlight, so the sky is all twinkly and beautiful. We routinely see deer, rabbits, ducks, geese, squirrels and tons of songbirds in our yard. There is almost no traffic on our road (although I fear that the ratio of drunk drivers to sober drivers may be disproportionately high in this area!) And there are lots of gorgeous things growing in our yard, like pears:
And roses:

And these pretty red things:

And apples:

And these beautiful blue things:

And these lovely yellow things:

And these attractive pink things:

Hmm, when I lived in Norway, I used to blame my ignorance of the flora on the fact that I had never seen these strange Arctic plants before...now I don't have an excuse. Beyond the basic roses, tulips and dandelions, I really don't know what anything is. But they're beautiful to see, and all the flowers and the stars and the wildlife and the amazing lake views more than make up for the, ahem, quirks of rural life!

Adventures in Boating

Kevin turned the big 3-6 yesterday. He had been talking about getting a little 2 person sailboard for months, but I know he would never buy it for himself. Kevin never wants to spend money on himself--he has to be coaxed into buying socks when his old socks develop holes! (I don't quite understand this--I'm not a huge shopper, but if something is getting threadbare, I suffer no guilt when I replace it, and oh my, shoes, I never suffer guilt when it comes to buying shoes!) Anyway, I found a cute little blue and white used Dolphin sailboard at a local boat shop and had arranged for it to be delivered on Friday while Kevin was at work. I had planned to set it up in the driveway and adorn it with a huge red bow so he would be surprised when he returned from work on Friday night. Unfortunately, there was a mixup with the delivery van, so the boat ended up being delivered on Thursday evening when Kevin was already home. In the end, it was probably a good thing...that boat was HEAVY and Kevin was very helpful about unloading his own birthday gift! Also, I have never been around any kind of sailboard/sailboat thing in the past, and they are complicated! I would never have been able to figure out how to put it all together anyway....Kevin would have arrived home to a jumble of sail and mast parts in the driveway, and me shouting "Surprise, I got you a sailboard puzzle for your birthday!"
After rain and thunderstorms on Saturday, we were thrilled that Sunday was bright, sunny and breezy. Kevin rigged up the sail, and after slapping on some sunscreen, we headed out onto the lake. The wind was perfect, and we made it all the way out to a distant island in about 30 minutes. We capsized once, but it wasn't a big deal. We had our lifejackets on and it wasn't too hard to flip the boat up again. At that point, we were feeling very self congratulatory about our mad sailing skills...and then the wind just stopped blowing. I have horrible motion sickness, but when the sailboat was zipping along, I had no issues. Once we just started bobbing around with no forward motion, I became violently ill. Not once, not twice, but three times. I ended up sliding off of the boat into the water, grabbing onto a rope and directing Kevin to just tow me, because the pitching of the boat was too unbearable. We made quite a lovely picture, I'm sure...Kevin desperately whipping the sail around, trying to catch a breeze, and me miserably trailing along behind the boat! After about 3 hours, we finally drifted close enough to our house that we both swam the sailboard back to shore, much to the amusement of our neighbors. Oh, and remember how I nonchalantly mentioned that we had slapped some sunscreen on? That was a bit of foreshadowing...my application of sunscreen was patchy at best, so between that, the 4 hours out in the midday sun and my natural deathly pallor, I am a freaky, streaky, red and white zebra of a mess right now! Kevin's skin is naturally darker than mine, so although he got a little burned yesterday, today he is all brown and healthy looking, damn him! Not that you can tell from my rehashing of our sailing story, but we did actually have a lot of fun out on the water too. Now I know that in the future, I must take Dramamine and slather on the sunscreen, and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to check the forecast before we decide to sail too far from shore!
Kevin's birthday was capped off with a veggie burger, watermelon and corn on the cob picnic on the patio. We also went to see "Get Smart" that evening--we laughed so hard, it was insanely funny! And nothing could make a stinging sunburn feel better than sitting in an aggressively air conditioned theater with a big bucket of icy cold Diet Coke! Now I have 4 days to recover before the insanity of the 4th of July weekend. I'm sure there will be more sailing and the neighbors have threatened us with, I mean invited us to their annual pig roast...yikes, I gotta go take a nap now!