Las Vegas (NADA)
This week Alison traveled to Las Vegas for work. She was helping out at the Cox Automotive booth at NADA (the National Automobile Dealers Association). This is a huge event for the automotive industry. It was a good career opportunity for her. I decided to tag along to hang out in Las Vegas.
Alison flew to Vegas on Thursday morning. I worked at home on Thursday. I wrapped up work a little early and then drove to Las Vegas in the afternoon. The drive was uneventful. I made a great time. I pulled into town early enough that Alison and I grabbed a late dinner together. We are staying at Caesar’s Palace. We stayed close and ate at True Foods Kitchen in the forum shops. It was pretty good. By the time we finished eating we were tired and called it a night.
Alison woke up early and headed to the conference. I set up my computer and worked in the hotel room. That is the beauty of being remote. I can temporarily work from almost anywhere. Today I worked from Caesars Palace. We are staying here because this is where everyone from Alison’s company is staying for the convention. It is a nice hotel. I don’t think we would ever stay here on our own dime. It is quite expensive and while the rooms are nice they nickel and dime you for everything. For example, you can only connect two devices to Wi-Fi. Each additional device costs $15. They also charged $40 for early check-in. These policies seem quite antiquated. But I digress. I spent the day working.
When I wrapped up work, Alison was still at the convention. So I walked over to the Bellagio. I wanted to see the indoor gardens, but they were transitioning the gardens to a new spring look and the area was closed. I still enjoyed my jaunt through the Bellagio.
Alison attended a client dinner on Friday night. It popped up at the last minute, which was fine. This was first and foremost a work trip and I knew there was a possibility Alison would have client commitments. While Alison was at her client dinner I wandered around the Las Vegas strip. Las Vegas as a city is extra. It is bright, gaudy, and full of excess. There are many things I don’t love about it, but I do really love the neon-soaked Las Vegas boulevard. I love seeing beautiful and unique lighting and the strip at night looks phenomenal. I spent Friday night soaking it in.
On Saturday Alison was working at NADA. She really enjoyed working the show. Cox automotive had an impressively large booth – Alison wished she could have had me come to the convention center to see it, but there was no way I was getting in there. It sounded like a really successful show. My favorite part was that all of the Cox automotive brands were giving away sweet-looking branded socks and Alison was able to snag me a few pairs.
After Alison left in the morning I packed our bags and checked out of Caesars Palace. Not my favorite hotel, but not a bad place to stay. I did enjoy the theming. They are inspired by the art and iconography of the Roman empire - every day I would walk by a replica of the David, which makes you do a little double-take. It is a bit gaudy, but as far as casino hotels go, it is pretty nice and the location at the center of the Las Vegas strip is exceptional.
While Alison was at the show I had to find a way to keep myself entertained. I decided to visit Red Rock Canyon. Red Rock Canyon is a national conservation area that features desert cliffs, buttes, and rock formations. It is only ~30-minute drive from the Las Vegas strip. A visit to Red Rock Canyon requires a timed reservation. I booked mine on Friday afternoon and there were plenty of reservations available. However, by the time I arrived the reservations must have sold out because they were turning people away.
My first stop was the visitors center. Other than booking the timed reservation I had not planned my visit. I picked up a map and chatted with a ranger before heading out to explore the conservation area. Red Rock Canyon consists of a 13-mile one-way scenic road. Along the way, there are numerous parking lots at viewpoints and hiking trails. I started along the road and stopped at the first parking lot – Calico I.
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| View from the visitors center |
Calico I is the first overlook along the scenic drive. It is located next to the calico hills which are vibrant red-orange sandstone hills. It appeared to be one of the more beautiful areas in Red Rock Canyon. I got out and hiked down to the sandstone. I hiked around and climbed on the rocks for a while before getting out my drone and getting an ariel view of the area. I had only been at Red Rock Canyon for a couple of hours and already I was impressed.
I continued a little further up the road and came to the Sandstone Quarry. This parking lot was small and it was already full. I considered continuing on my way, but I had time so I slowly circled the parking lot a few times until someone returned to their vehicle and claimed their parking spot.
Sandstone Quarry operated in the early 1900s, there are still some blocks of sandstone that were cut and left in this area. It was ultimately too expensive to operate this quarry and it was abandoned. From this area, there were two trailheads. One was to Turtlehead Peak, which was ~5 miles roundtrip and looked challenging. The other trail was named Calico Tanks. It was around 2.25 miles roundtrip and was rated as a moderate hike. I didn’t know anything about it, but I had time. I chose to hike the Calico Tanks trail.
The trail cut through a sandy desert area. There weren’t many other people on the trail so I spent much of the hike in quiet solitude. It was nice to have some time alone with my thoughts. The sand turned to rock and I found myself scrambling up sandstone and climbing over boulders. Fortunately, the trail was well marked so I didn't lose my way. The trail ended at a large outcropping of jagged sandstone. From this sandstone, you could see the Las Vegas skyline in the distance. It was a much more interesting destination than I expected.
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| I met a couple with an Australian Shepard at the end of the hike. She wanted to be my friend. |
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| I like spooky old trees it reminds me of that childhood book with the Berenstain Bears |
After my hike, I returned to my car and continued along the scenic drive. I stopped a few more places, but nothing really stood out until I reached the Willow Springs Picnic Area. In this area, I noted on the map that there were some nearby petroglyphs. I wanted to check them out, but I didn’t read the map closely enough and I ended up heading down a different trail. After about a half mile I realized I was probably in the wrong place. I didn’t have cell service so I had to backtrack to my car and look at the map. Sure enough, I was on the wrong trail. I found the correct trail and I did see the petroglyphs. They weren’t the most impressive petroglyphs, but it was still a worthwhile stop.
After that stop, I finished the drive and headed back to Las Vegas. It was already mid-afternoon and I expected Alison would be done before too long. While I was waiting, I checked us into our next hotel. We are spending the rest of our trip at the Elara. This is a Hilton Grand Vacations property. The reason we are staying here is that back in 2019 I bought a promotional package from Hilton Grand Vacations. The package cost around ~$200 for three nights at one of their properties. The only catch is that we would have to attend a time-share presentation. We have attended many of these timeshare presentations over the years and we knew how it would go. When we originally booked the package we were planning a trip to Orlando with some of our friends in 2020, that obviously did not happen. Hilton Grand Vacations kept extending the package and there were a couple of times we thought we might use it, but both times Covid-19 dashed our plans. The package was set to expire at the end of March 2022, so this allowed me to tag along with Alison to NADA with no out-of-pocket hotel cost and take advantage of the package before it expired.
We like staying at the Elara. It is centrally located on the strip and most of the rooms have great views. Once I got checked in I took a little nap before getting cleaned up and picking up Alison at the convention center. We stopped by our room briefly so she could change her clothes and then we headed out.
We had dinner reservations tonight at STACK. It is an American restaurant and bar located in the Mirage. This was our first time eating here and we were impressed. The ambiance was nice – even though it was just outside of the casino, it was tucked away so that you would have no idea there was a casino right around the corner. The service was great and the food was tasty. We shared a charcuterie to start and then I had a steak and frites and Alison went with the seafood risotto. All in all a good dining experience.
After dinner, we had tickets to see The Beatles LOVE. I have wanted to see this show ever since Alison and I saw O in 2011. We saw O on our honeymoon. Funny story about our honeymoon and O. In 2011, neither Alison nor myself had a smartphone. Internet through the hotel was also fairly expensive and we had limited means. So we were quite disconnected, which didn't really bother us. We had booked tickets to O before arriving in Las Vegas. We thought we knew what day we booked the tickets for and we just had to pick them up from will call. We happened to be near the Bellagio the day before we thought we were scheduled to see O and we decided to pick up our tickets so that we would have them. Good thing we did because it turned out we had tickets for the show that had just started. They were able to quickly get us to our seats and we only missed the start of the show. We were quite fortunate that it worked out. We loved O and afterward, I thought The Beatles LOVE looked like another fun Cirque du Soleil show. I have kept my eye on tickets to LOVE, but the timing hasn't worked out on previous Las Vegas trips. This time there was no real reason not to go.
We went to see the late show at 9:30pm because of NADA and our dinner reservations. This wasn’t the wisest move because Alison had been up since 5am so she was quite tired. She may have slept through a portion of the show, but she did enjoy some of the ariel maneuvers and other stunts she saw. I enjoyed the show – the music was fun and there were some real standout performances. They do this roller skating bit with a few ramps and 4 roller skaters that was quite impressive. There were also a lot of nice ariel performances. Overall, it was a good show, but not as good as O.
Sunday morning we slept in. Between the late-night, the busy end of the week for Alison, and daylight saving time we were tired. It felt nice to sleep in. When we finally woke up, we met Jake and Meg for brunch at Hash House A Go Go, probably our favorite brunch place. Jake and Meg also spent the weekend in Vegas, but they were driving home right after brunch. We were glad to spend a little bit of time with them. I tried something new at Hash House. I got a banana and brown sugar pancake. To say this thing is huge is an understatement. It is gigantic. They advertise the pancakes are the steering-wheel-of-a-tractor sized big and it is! It was so good.
We headed back to the Elara for the time-share presentation. We have done many of these presentations and so we know how they go. We also own a Hilton Grand Vacations time-share. Time-share ownership is not for everyone. Alison and I were lucky. Alison’s parents also own a Hilton Grand Vacations time-share and they put all of their kids on the title. This meant we were able to stay at quite a few of the resorts and learn about the program before buying in. We also bought our time-share on the resell market. Alison did a lot of research and we knew what we were buying before we made the purchase and we bought it at a price where we feel we it was a great value. Today our assigned sales guy was named Frank. Frank was a hell of a guy. He was from New Jersey and has been selling time-shares for 10+ years. He looked at all of our information he nailed his assessment of us. He saw we bought on the secondary market and knew we were looking for value. He pitched some additional value that he could help us build, but ultimately when he priced it out it made no sense and he came back and told us that the pricing he could get us he wouldn't sell to his own kids, so there was no way he would try to sell it to us, that wrapped the presentation and we went on our way. This was easily the best Hilton Grand Vacations presentation we have ever done.
After the presentation, we were still kind of tired so we lounged the afternoon away.
Tonight we had dinner reservations at another of one of our favorites – Din Tai Fung. This place never disappoints. I am always down to eat their Xiao Long Bao and dumplings. They hit the spot. For dessert, we walked one casino over and hit up another one of our favorite spots – Milkbar. Alison got some cereal milk ice cream (which I still contend tastes nothing like the cereal milk of my youth) and we got two packs of truffles to share. I think truffles are the best item on the menu. We had quite a culinary experience today.
After our Milkbar treats we walked out to the Bellagio fountains, but they didn’t go at 7:45. It was odd and disappointing. We probably could have stayed to watch the 8pm show, but we had places to be so we headed off. We went to the Rio hotel to see Penn & Teller. I have been wanting to see a good magic show for a while now and since they were in town this weekend I thought it would be the perfect opportunity.
Penn & Teller were great. They are witty and perform some incredible magic tricks. I was mystified by their performance, even Alison who wasn’t as excited to go to a magic show as me, came away impressed. One outstanding moment is when Teller turns water into coins and then pulls a school of goldfish out of thin air – it was bewildering. I also really enjoyed the final fire-eating trick where Penn told us about his inspiration from going to visit a 10 in one show and seeing a fire-eater as a youth. One thing that impressed Alison and me is that Penn and Teller would often tell you what they were about to do and the illusions they performed still blew our minds. I loved it and would 100% see this show again.
We stayed in Las Vegas and Sunday night and worked from the Elara on Monday morning. We technically had the room on Monday night too, which worked out nicely since we could work all day out of the room. Once we both wrapped up work in the afternoon we drove home.
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| Monday work views |
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