Las Vegas to Boston (May 4)

The trip home was so ho-hum that only one sentence into this post I'm already board writing it, so this might be a good time for you to stop reading it.

Really!? Okay, since you insist on reading the rest of this post, I guess I will have to write it.

After breakfast, we headed to the airport. The airport was close to the strip, so it was a short trip.  

Check-in was quick.  

There was only a short line at TSA.  

Our flight was on time. The flight was uneventful.  

The car and driver were waiting for us.  

The drive from the airport to our home was quick. 

It was good to be home.

Wow! Thank you for having me write this post. It was much more interested than I anticipated...not.

Las Vegas (May 3)

This morning we had nothing particular planned other than wandering through some more hotel casinos, so we started the day with a leisurely breakfast, then headed over to Caesar's Palace.

We returned to the Bellagio to see the Chihuly glass in the lobby ceiling and visit the conservatory. The ceiling was 'festive'.  The conservatory's exhibit was well done and enjoyable.

We decided to spend the afternoon back at the hotel.  Pam got in some pool time. I goofed off. We both packed so that it wasn't hanging over our heads when we returned from dinner.

We had a good dinner at Scarpetta in the Cosmopolitan Hotel. It was a reservation we had made before we started the trip based on its view of the Bellagio fountains.  After the preceding evening at Picasso, we had no expectation that tonight's dinner or the view of the fountains would be better, but we did not anticipate either would be less good.  The service was efficient and friendly. The food was good. The whole operation was too overtly mechanical. The view was terrible.  

There was a horizontal window panes separator right at eye level.  We noticed people at other tables also craning their necks, so it was not just our table location or our height. The cost of dinner at the two places was about the same.  

The Cosmopolitan is apparently the 'hip' hotel on the strip targeting a younger crowd. The decor was themed accordingly.

a cocktail lounge at the Cosmopolitan

a stand-up to see it view from Scarpetta of the Bellagio fountains 

Walking out onto the Strip after dinner, it was very active.  

The young lady in the background on the right-hand
side is probably not reading a bible passage.

We hung out in front of the Bellagio for a while enjoying the warm evening, watching both the fountain display and the people passing by us.

Eventually we wandered a bit further along the Strip, then returned to our hotel for the night. We'd had enough of Las Vegas.  

Las Vegas and Hoover Dam (May 2)

At 8:15, we climbed into the mini-bus for a tour to Hoover Dam and Lake Mead.

After walking around on the top of the dam, when descending inside it.  

Drying cement has an exothermic reaction. When the dam was built, a grid of water pipes was installed through which water was pumped to carry away the heat.  Having been coached by a friend of mine, I asked our guide how many years it would be before the cement poured in the 1930's would be fully dried and the exothermic reaction stop.  Answer: another 80 years.

There was a display showing how cement was delivered where needed in constructing the dam. Drying cement causes an exothermic reaction.  This necessitated a network of pipes through which cold water was passes to keep the dam from developing cracks caused by the heat. I asked our guide how many more years it would be until the cement fully dried.  She looked at me, smiled, and acknowledged that the estimated time from the time the dam was built was approximately 150 years.  A friend of mine familiar with dam construction had primed me with the question.  I was impressed that she knew the answer.   

 One tower is  Nevada (Pacific) time; the other in on Arizona (Mountain) time.

Looking upstream from the dam, it was apparent that the prolonged drought had impacted Lake Mead's water level.

Floating complexes and the ramps to them are anchored to the shoreline.  The anchors are repositioned as the lake level goes up and down.  Unfortunately, at the present time, they have a very big parking lot.

Aboard a boat for a tour of the lake, including the back side of the damp, the following tow pictures tell the story.  The first shows the high water mark for the lake.  The send shows kayaks on the lake, as a frame of reference on the height of that mark above the current level.

We saw a monitoring station (yellow - to the right of the white powerboat) upriver of the dam that was made by Yellow Spring Instruments and looked very similar to the ones the company tested in Sippican Harbor when it had a plant in Marion on Atlantis Drive.

On the way back, there was a less than fascinating stop at a chocolate candy manufacturer, complete with buying opportunity.  Pam & I opted to wander around their cactus garden.

Approaching the Strip, we asked our driver to let us out so that we could walk that section of it.

We returned to the Bellagio with the idea of finding a nice restaurant for dinner.  We were turned away from two that had no availability.  Our third try was Picasso which had an inviting prix fixe menu.  A pleasant exchange with the hostess, a short wait and we had a table on the terrace looking out at the hotel's fountains. 

The food and service lived up the menu.  Throughout the meal, every twenty minutes the fountains put on a display.

After dinner, we walked over to the High Roller and took a ride on it. It is billed as the highest observation wheel in the world.

It was a fun evening.