Saturday, February 16, 2013

10th Anniversary Las Vegas Trip

James and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this April, but due to April being super busy for farmers (that would be James) we decided we needed to celebrate early. We also didn't want to spend a lot of money on our trip, so that morphed into a trip to Vegas.

Logan stayed with his Grandma Idaho so he wouldn't miss school, and Grandma Ward took care of our two little girls.

This cute girl fell asleep on the way to Utah. 
 The view as we drove into Vegas.  It looked much more impressive in person. We stopped to eat at McDonalds before we checked in to our hotel.  A scary looking homeless guy walked in and filled (stole) his water bottle with coke and then left again. We saw him a few times while in Vegas. He was sleeping on the sidewalk at night and the next day we saw him walking around with a pricey looking cell phone. Maybe he took that from McDonald's too.
 The first day we were in town, we went to the temple and did a session. I was happy about it too.
 James felt a stranger emotion about it.
 We found a security guard to take our picture so we could prove we were there together.
 This picture was taken to test the flash on our camera, but I kept it to show off our hotel room hall way. We stayed at the Stratosphere.
 My family lived in Vegas about 15 years ago. It was only for two years, but I still have fond memories of our house, so we drove by to take a picture.
 This is the view from the very top of the Stratosphere. This is the strip. We forgot to take a picture at night.
 This is one of the three rides the Stratosphere has at the top of the building. We bought a buy one get one free all day pass to ride the rides. Lets just say, we got our moneys worth, and the ride operators knew who we were by the end of the night.
 The next day we drove to Red Rock National Park. We went on a couple of hikes and spent about 4 hours there. It was fun and tiring and beautiful.

 I was too chicken to stand up on this rock. James doesn't understand the feeling of vertigo, and he made fun of me.  Jerk.
 After he made fun of me, he picked up a rock and wrote this message for me/us. J+A 2/14/2013. I love him.
 One of the hikes led us to a "waterfall" which was really just a trickle of water. Upon the water trickles landing, it froze. I thought the frozen water was way cool looking, so I had James take our picture together. I was getting dripped on from the "waterfall" during this picture.

 Can you find James?
 All in all, we really liked Red Rock, and we will definitely go again if we are ever in Vegas again.

That night, we got spiffied up and hit Fremont Street. I read reviews of it online and learned that there would be lots of weirdos on Fremont Street. The reviews were accurate. Almost right off the bat, a man dressed as Austin Powers asked James if he could buy his jacket off of him.  We saw a few local people who came with their little "act" as a way of asking for money. This guy was our favorite.
 Yes, this is a guy.
He was dancing and asking for tips. Another favorite was a guy dressed as cupid, with the butt cut out on his pants.

We were on Fremont Street so we could attend a comedy magic show by a guy named Mike Hammer. It was a fun, clean show, which we really appreciated. Mike would include people in the audience to be part of his magic tricks. I got to go on the stage so he could hide my cell phone and make it reappear  Sadly, James was so entranced with the sight of his beautiful wife on stage, that he did not think to take my picture.

We managed to steer clear from any sin like activities, including gambling, and we had an AWESOME time.