Nevada - the rest of the trip - aka Casinos

We spent a day and a half in Casinos on the recent Vegas trip. Given we went with kids and one adult who downright refuses to enter places with Cigarette smoke (me), it was a tough call. 

So we played it safe and walked through the main streets within these Casino's.

First we went to the Venetian. San and me are visiting this place after 15 years. Our first observation was that the Gondola ride price went from 5 bucks to 20 which is not proportionate to the 2x every 10 years rule. The Casino's always win, even when it comes to Gondola rides. 

The interior was mind blowing for the kids. They have not seen anything like this in their lives. They were very very impressed. 

Then we went to Paris Paris and did a bunch of things. All those got overshadowed by bumping into (literally for me) actor Prabhu Deva. After that the conversation stayed with the actor for another hour or so!

Lunch was at the Rainforest Cafe in MGM! We had a reservation and we barely made it. The smoke filled air on the way to the restaurant within the Casino made me lose my appetite. Fortunately, I sat next to a blower of some kind which helped recirculate fresh air in the corner of the restaurant.

The food was simple and good! The ambience was great (except for the smell of smoke that would not go away). There were aquariums everywhere and the fish in the tank were gorgeous..

Later that afternoon we spent some time walking in the strip to get sunlight. Then there was the M&M store! It was great fun for the adults and kids! We need a store like this in the bay area. We have 4 regular potential customers lined up in our house already.. They let you make your own mix of M&M's, that too with rare colors. I was a kid again for an hour running around with the kids grabbing select colors. 

We had another 4 hours to spend before catching the Illusions Magic show! Took a tram to the Mandalay bay and saw the Shark Reef. Given that we have been to way too many zoos and aquariums where we go through a tunnel where sharks swim overhead, this one was not the best but they did have a few nice exhibits like the Piranah's and Giant sea turtles.. 

The first few exhibits were "meh".. there were crocs, lizzards, snakes and a Komodo dragon that looked like it needed CPR. We lowered our expecations and that helped for the remaining 30 minutes as we walked through the other exhibits.

Apparently it is not okay to put more than 40 of these toothy fishes in one tank. They were eating live goldfish when we were there.. This is the first time someone actually explained Piranahs to us. Apparently they are exaggerated in the movies.. they are not always that hungry!

The shark tank itself was nice. Not the largest we have seen but they had three large Sawfish and a giant turtle. (could not get pictures of them because they were in the far end of the tank and very shy)..

It was a challenge taking pictures in the dark and the 5D Mark ii still does a great job in low light!

They also had red and green florescent jelly fish and some gorgeous lionfish. 

Then there was the magic show, "The New Illusions"! Jan Rouven was amazing. The escape acts he did really make us sit on the edge of our seats and go "how the hell did he do that!" We did not realize that 90 minutes flew by. It was that entertaining. I wanted to get a picture with him after the show but the kids were hungry and we wanted to get back to the hotel for dinner. So we raced back to the parking lot. 

The next day we spent half a day at Circus Circus at the arcade area. The kids tried their hand at various games and mostly did not win anything. The adults played a game or two and won things for the kids. The circus acts in the center of the arcade were good and entertaining.. but again, the villain.. smoke! There was a gambling area right beneath the arcade. Wish they had put the arcade on a separate air system so the kids could be spared the smoke. . . 

Given the whole Casino trips were unplanned, we still had fun!

Had to come and do Yoga back to back to get the smoke out of my lungs and the smell out of my nostrils. Between Casinos and National Parks, the family now has a clear and unanimous choice!

Red Rock Canyon - Nevada

On our recent trip to Las Vegas area, we visited Red Rock Canyon on two separate days. The first time we just drove through the 13 miles of scenic loop to stop at various parking lots and take pictures. We entered the park at 3:30 and had 90 minutes to leave the park. The sun was also setting there quite early. 

The second time we went there at 9 AM and did two hikes with mixed results.

Lightroom is installed and functional now on my Macmini but have not figured out quick ways to do HDR there. Continuing to process HDR photos with Photoshop CS5 (see below). Take 3 bracketed shots with one overexposed and one underexposed shot, then merge all three to pick up details in bright and dark areas of the regular photo from the other two. Takes around 4-5 minutes to process the final photo. 

but you get to see the detail in the clouds, the hills and the ground, the way your eyes see it!

You believe in a higher being when you see creation of this scale. Have said it before and will say it again. National parks are the real temples! Anyone can go there and get a glimpse of how miniscule we are in the scheme of things.

Here are a few pictures from the Calico trail. We got lost in this trail because there are no markers and it says "be prepared to get lost unless you have a good sense of direction". So we spent an hour and a half here wandering in the canyons in a zig zag motion. Our landmark was this small pool of water and we kept coming back to it! 

BB suggested the "high road" where we can always see the rock near the parking lot.. but we decided to take the "adventure route" and ended up where we started! We did get to see some awesome rock formations on the zig zag path.

Some photos are linked to a previous post here..

This is what you see when you are in the canyons.. Red Rocks everywhere. Occasionally you see a person with a blue jacket popping up between those crevices.. Otherwise you are easily lost!

Finally we went on the Lost creek Trail. The temperature was below freezing in that trail and again there were not that many markers, but we had another group ahead of us who knew the path. We followed them and were not disappointed. The trail ends in a closed canyon where water falls from the top. It was more of a trickle than a fall. A tree that had chosen that spot to grow (given it was the only place the water fell) had become frozen with icicles.. the falling water forms icicles everywhere. 

The ground was glistening with perfect ice nodules that looked like diamonds. The path to the falls was slippery as the ground had a sheet of hidden ice below it.

We spent a good 30 minutes there taking pictures and made our way back to the hotel for lunch.

It was a good morning spent hiking. If you are in the Vegas area and want to spend a good half day or day hiking through some amazing scenery, strongly recommend the Red Rock Scenic loop. It is one hour away from Vegas and it offers a perfect contrast to the smoke filled casinos!

Talk of getting your lungs back to normal again!

Something tells me that we might visit this place again in a few years...

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead Recreation area

We spent a good 6 hours on our first day of the trip to Las Vegas area at Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead recreation area. Our original plan was to go see Bryce canyon or Grand canyon. A blizzard ruled out those plans. The decision was to see what we could within a two hour radius of our hotel. 

San and me have seen the dam and lake as well as west Grand Canyon on a mini plane tour from Henderson when we were newly married! That was ages ago and we don't even have a way to replay those mini VHS tapes these days!  This was our chance to see the dam, up close and personal.

So we went on the "dam" tour!

This tour takes more than an hour and is twice as expensive as the regular tour but totally worth it. 

Lake Mead is behind this 750 foot tall 600+ foot wide monstrosity! If you see the larger version of the pic by clicking it you will see four shield shaped markings on the concrete.. 

You can see one of them on the center of the picture above. It is actually one of four air vents that balances the air inside the dam so that the concrete cures. Concrete takes years to cure. This one is to cure in 125 years. So they keep monitoring the moisture content and curing rate of the concrete from inside the dam. 

Concrete sets in an exothermic reaction. The designers of the dam used special steel tubes to vent the heat from the setting concrete to cool it down while building the dam. Otherwise there was no way it was built that fast. They had a refridgeration plant cool down the concrete through these tubes while pouring blocks of concrete 5-6 foot tall at one time.. 

You go through these nicely finished tunnels to reach one of the four air vents on the tunnel.

This is the view of the end of the air vent from the inside.

and that is what you see when you look out of the vent. A mighty Colorado river that runs in a very controlled way out of the dam!

After seeing the view from the vent, we also got to see the staircase that runs up and down the dam as an emergency exit in those days. 

We also saw the turbine room. There are these LARGE turbines each weighing more than 600 tons that generate electricity. 

There is also a smaller generator that is on the ground that supplies power to the dam itself. The scale of this building and everything in it is simply mind blowing. 

Once the water comes out of the turbines, it exits down through the gates. You can see that in picture below.

 The dam's mid point is the state border between Nevada and Arizona. So the kids had fun magically moving through two time zones and being in two timezones at the same time.. The older kids understood my idea of trying to a collage showing them in two zones and posed for me, but my execution was flawed.. Should have taken more wider angle shots to merge.. 

We spent another hour wandering around the exhibits and the statues of the two angels and drove on to the Lake Mead Recreation area to have lunch. 

It was very scenic spot (stitched shot below)

Will definitely recommend this as a day trip activity for the entire family. If you have really small kids under 3 would not recommend it. The Dam tour can be pretty claustrophobic. 

The parking lot, restrooms, exhibits etc. were world class! Everyone enjoyed it. The kids learned a thing or two about of hydro electric power is generated using stators and rotors and that was really cool. 

We did not know what to expect when we hit the parking lot, but we came out after having a great time!

Wrapping up 2014

2014 has been the year of travel!

Have travelled 190000 miles in the last year but mostly for work. Someday I will travel that for the sake of visiting places, experiencing things and getting to write about the experience.

To wrap things up, we visited Las Vegas over the Christmas break for three days with the cousins.

As usual, we crammed a lot of activities in that short a time. 

Saw wonders.. that were Natural

and Man made ...

While the Red Rock Canyon looked like a prime candidate for another Interstellar shoot and showed us millions of years of work done by nature, the Hoover dam puts things in perspective of how man can indeed move mountains in a few years! 

The last picture is kind of a cross between a man made and natural thing. It is Lake Mead. The largest man made lake created by the Hoover dam blocking the Colorado river. The colors in the rocks above the lake are natural and local to the area!

If the USA could do something like this 80 years ago, it is definitely possible to do a project of this size even today! We need another Hoover to get something like this done!

We also saw another type of man made wonder.. The casinos! The kids were wide eyed after walking into the Venetian and it just kept getting better after that.

Then there was some nice food, an unforgettable Magic Show called the Illusions, a visit to see some exotic marine animals in the Shark Reef, etc. etc.

In the middle of all this I managed to watch my High schools 25th reunion on a live feed late at night from the hotel room. 

We just came back from a looooong all day drive! Time to catch some sleep and start editing pictures tomorrow.. 

2014... so far, so good!