A day of nature near Vegas and a night of adventures in nonrevving

We spent our morning at the glass show again and spent more money on things that we probably didn't need, but you know how when you're on vacation all rationale goes out the window, but soon we'll be able to cut glass circles! Crazy right? That one is coming in the mail, the rest was all stuff we picked up and brought home.  We made a fairly quick exit when we decided everything was way too tempting, and we found a great bar b que restaurant on tripadvisor.  It was definately off the beaten path, but aren't those usually the best places?  We asked one of the kids who worked there what there was to see in the area, and he sent us to Calico Canyon.  I'm not sure if we made it there or not, but we found a place in the same general direction that was beautiful.  It was a half mile walk to an ancient spring.  There was a puddle there, and we were in the desert, so maybe it wasn't an ancient one, but it was a great walk around wooden boardwalks. We even saw some petroglyphs, or maybe that was just graffiti, you can never be too sure.  The only bad thing was that Bubba talked me out of bringing my camera, I know, me without a camera, crazy. I reminded him frequently as I took photos with my phone.  They are ok, but in my opinion nothing beats a Canon.
When we left there, we went in search of a road where we could drive around and see the red rocks, again sans a decent camera, but I'm getting over that.  Not far up the road was the entrance to the Red Rock Canyon National Park.  What a great find. It's about a 15 mile loop road that drives along the red rocks.  It has about 10 stops that all have parking and bathrooms and walking/ hiking trails if you are so inclined. We even drove by some people repelling down the rock face.  It was a beautiful spot and probably about a half hour drive from the Vegas strip.
Well the adventure really began when we went to the airport to try to get home. Notice I said try? We decided before we went that we would split up to try to get home if need be.  So on the fourth flight, they had one seat and Bubba made his way to MSP. I stayed behind to try the first flights in the morning. Almost everything was overbooked. I decided to go to LAX.  Wrong direction I know, but Delta has more flights from there than SLC, which looked to be my only other option.  In LAX every gate I walked by was looking for volunteers to give up their seats for up to $1000 a person!  Bubba was having the same luck in MSP.  I talked to an agent who let me jump on a computer and there was a flight to Tampa with seats, and low and behold there was one from MSP too, so off we both flew and met up again about an hour apart in Florida.  We rented a car and drove to Orlando.  Again Delta has more flights there.  We overnighted on I Drive and off to the airport again.  We made it on a 12:30 flight! So it only took about 36 hours to get home from Vegas. Oh the trials and tribulations of flying standby! We're almost home, one more flight to go.  I just have to remind myself that we do have fun when we get to these places, and just forget about the nonrevving parts!




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