Las Vegas November 2015

We went to Vegas to meet some family. That didn’t quit work out; still we had a good time. We left on a Saturday, arriving in time to have dinner with some family.

Sunday we spent most of the time on the Strip. We walking at least 10 miles every day. This with Cathy’s bad knee and my Achilles, but, we held up ok.

Monday morning we went on the tour of Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah. It just opened for tours in October. This is really a must do in Vegas. They do a great 3-hour tour. His memorabilia museum gives you an appreciation for how great a performer he is and on top of that, how much he has done for our troops. He is a great American. The plane and the classic cars, he still drives, are very impressive.

 

 He has raised over 7000 Arabian horses and we were able to watch two of them.

The house is not as big as we expected, but was very nicely furnished.

 

Tuesday was our climb Mt Charleston day. Things did not go as planned. We were going to take the South Trail. It was closed due to heavy icing. Then, we drove to the North Trail. It had ice and snow and was passable, but, slow going. The closer we got to the first ridge line the worse the winds. It was so bad we didn’t want to go anywhere near the edge. At 1pm, with the slow pace, we realized we would have to make a lot of the descent in the dark. We also knew that a lot of that would be icy. Unusually, using our better judgment, we turned around. Although conditions were not favorable for climbing, we still had a good day of hiking.

The next day we went to the Valley of Fire with Mike and Nancy and had a good day of hiking and seeing the sights.

That night we went to see Chris Angel at the Luxor. The show was ok. We were not as impressed as we thought we would be. We had seen everything from the show on television before.

On our last day we were going to hike Anniversary Narrows by Lake Mead. When we arrived at the Park Service gate, we found out this property was privately owned and had been recently closed to the public by the owner. We had to find an alternate hike. We decided on the Historic Railroad Trail to Hoover Dam. The trail passes through 5 tunnels that were built to build the railroad to get the equipment to the right location to build Hoover dam.

That night we went to Cirque Zumanity. It was a somewhat R rated show. The acrobatics and comedy were pretty dang good.