Vegas trip

As promised, here are the highlights of our trip to Las Vegas last week.

We left by 11:00 Wednesday morning, even though our goal was 10:00. We did get caught up in a traffic jam in Albuquerque that was caused by two different accidents. That set us back an hour and a half, so we only got to Gallop NM Wednesday night. The second day of the road trip took us through some beautiful country in New Mexico and Arizona. I insisted on driving through the Hoover Dam, although Hubby wanted to go through Laughlin. How cool is the Hoover Dam! And I actually drove over the dam. :-)

Surprisingly, Hubby let me actually drive into Vegas, which was probably good, as I let him navigate while I steered. He neglected to download a map to get us to the Tropicana, so we weren't sure which exit to take. When we saw the road sign for Tropicana Avenue, I said we should take that one, which just happened to take us right where we needed to be!

Friday Hubby cooked in the Last Chance Red Chili cook off. They advanced the top 10 from that cook off into the finals on Sunday. Unfortunately, Hubby didn't place in the top 10, so he wasn't cooking on Sunday.

Friday night, we went to The Rio for their around the world buffet. That thing is huge! Needless to say, we rolled out of there. We then did a little gambling there. I had a bad experience while we were there. Hubby and I got separated, and I kept making circles around the area where we were playing and I couldn't find him. I started panicking, getting short of breath. Finally I sat down, gathered myself together as I had started to cry a bit, got up again and finally found him! He looked at me and asked what was wrong and I told him that I couldn't find him. I started crying again and he got up and held me. Finally after about 15 minutes, the tears dried up and I was okay, but that was scary! I have never felt like that before.

We left there and went down to watch the Fremont Experience. That was so cool! I did video tape it with my phone, and if I can upload it, then I'll post it on here.

After we got back to the hotel, Hubby put together the ingredients for our salsa. That's right, I said "our" as I got to compete too! The man who won 1st place didn't come to Vegas, so therefore I got to compete since I took 2nd! We registered Saturday morning, made the final adjustments to the salsa including adding the chopped avocado, and turned in our entries.

We then went and had lunch at their buffet. Hubby decided to gamble afterward but I wanted to hang by the pool. So I went up to our room, grabbed my jacket and a book, and sat in the "adults only" pool. Unfortunately, the weekend was very cool, so I couldn't swim (well I could have if I wanted to turn blue and show off my nipplies but decided against that!). I hung out there for about 90 minutes before I went back in to warm up.

We headed back over to the cook off to learn of the winners. While neither Hubby or I made the finals table, there was a cook from Colorado who did make it to the finals in salsa, and he won! His prize was a $1,000 plus a nice bowl trophy.

Saturday we went to the Les Folies Bergere 10 o'clock show. It was really fun to watch, but I just don't get what all the hype is over watching topless show girls. Most of them were flatter than pancakes, and not that pretty anyway, although it was hard to tell with all the layers of makeup caked on.

Sunday we went to the Xtreme Magic show starring Dirk Arthur. It was quite mesmerizing! lol However, he tried to be a comedian, and it just wasn't working. We got our pictures taken there, and I have to say, they turned out really good!

We went to the MGM that night and had dinner at their buffet. I am such a sweets person, I was in heaven! They have these tiny single portion desserts that were to die for! Again, I was rolling out of there.

We made our way home on Monday, splitting the drive up into two days again. The bed at the Hampton Inn we stayed at was soooooooo comfy! After four days of the hard box that the Tropicana called a bed, it was delightful. Too bad I couldn't take it home!

We got in late Tuesday night as we had to stop off at Hubby's folks to pick up our puppies. They missed us so much! It's good to be home.