Erin's Visit

We just had a wonderful visit with our daughter, Erin. She was here for a whole week! After she recovered from her 10 hour drive from Vail to Las Vegas we went to Red Rock Canyon to do some hiking. Our first trail was into Ice Box Canyon. Beautiful and not too steep for my older bones.

Ice Box Canyon

A little desert art we happened upon.

Maybe Dan was here before me!

The next day we did the Willow Spring Loop.  An easy climb.  Loved the rock colors and the ancient art work.  

I wonder what they were saying?

I hope you can see the red hand prints.

Erin went hiking for a couple of days at the nearby Arizona Hot Springs with some friends from Utah, leaving me and Taigo to make a brief visit to a local vet! Poor baby has to wear this stylish collar for a week. He's not impressed but is resolved!

Seriously! 

Our next journey took us to the Valley of Fire, Nevada's first state park.  It was a perfect blue sky day.

It was Halloween (and Nevada Day - the 36 state to enter the Union in 1864.) This was our greeter!

Petroglyphs

Arch Rock

On our way home from The Valley of Fire we went through the town of  Overton, Nevada.  Our neighbor told us about a little restaurant to try. I had to laugh because Dan said Tom hadn't told him the name of the place.  But apparently there was only one restaurant in town! We did a drive by and located Sugar's Restaurant. Yummy burgers and lots of sports memorabilia.

I love battered fries.

Glad Dan was eating all the Jalapenos, not me! 

Throwback Thursday.

Dan spied this redneck mode of transportation on our way out of Sugar's!

After a little down time we headed to Fremont Street. CRAZY! Lots of fun. Pretty much a full contact body sport event on Halloween!

Wall to wall people.

Humm?

This Kiss look-alike was not one of the usual ones posing for money.

These were guys.

Day of the Dead

We traveled a little further down to East Fremont and saw some of the spectacular floats that had been in the Nevada Day parade. They were hard to photograph in the dark but here are a few.

We needed a little break from the crowd and happened upon Container Park. Totally cool shopping area made completely from recycled shipping containers. We will have to visit there again.

On Saturday I  attended my first officail college football game, UNLV vs New Mexico at Sam Boyd Stadium.  I'm sorry to say UNLV lost and it was freezing! Typical fall day ... in Vermont.  60ish, cloudy, with a brisk north wind. (Maybe we'll try again this weekend, it should be almost 80.

We were pretending it was really warm! lol It wasn't!

Half time show was a tribute to breast cancer survivors!

Layers!

Dan and I did our civic duty on Tuesday and I will paste Dan's description of what voting was like in Las Vegas. 

Voting in Nevada, what a different process than Vermont. . . 

. . . show up with your voter registration card, you show that to a clerk who has you sign the check list (and compares your signature to the one on file), you are given a receipt from your 'check in' and that get turned over to another clerk who uses a portion of the receipt to program your electronic key card to activate the voting machine.

Here is the best part: for EACH race, you also have the choice to vote: NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Record your votes, review if you wish.

When you are finished, select print to record your votes on running paper roll (for all voters on that machine). POOF - a paper and electronic copy of your vote is captured. You remove the key card, return it a third clerk, and you receive this KOOL sticker: 

What a great time we had this week.  Can't wait for Erin to come visit again! The weather has finally warmed back up after a few fall-like days.  With the time change it is dark early and it cools down quite a bit at night. But no snow in our forecast! 

It's all about the journey! 

Nancy and Dan