Leaving Las Vegas

After our less than stellar experience in the Neon Boneyard, we needed to do something else to make this day more worthwhile.

Immediately following the boneyard, we walked down Las Vegas Boulevard in the really shady part of town that the museum is in because Isa saw a cool looking building.

We went home for dinner with the family and then headed out to the Mirage to watch the volcano show.

It scared MJ so bad though, from the very first eruption. She cried and asked Christy to make it stop for the rest of the 10-minute show. :(

After the Bellagio's water show, it's the best free show on the Strip (now that the Siren's show is closed at Treasure Island next door).

And we finally got a brothers pic! That's me (Brian), Jason, and then Christopher. Crazy how we all look alike, huh? /jk

We're all pink because it's across the street from a giant red Walgreens sign.

From the Strip, we drove back up to Fremont Street so Chris and Maryellen could do the zipline/zoomline. When we were here on Saturday, the first opening was at 1:40am, so they reserved spots for 8pm tonight.

Although their ticket said 8pm, there was an hour-long wait to ride still. Not sure how that works. So Isa and I wandered Fremont Street while we waited.

And when we had seen it all (it's only a few blocks long), we went in and played the slots. We each chose a machine and put in a dollar. Isa lost the entire thing straight away without ever winning any of it back. This is how she feels about gambling in Vegas.

I won 20 cents.

But then lost it all a few seconds later.

Finally, Chris and Maryellen flew overhead.


On the way home, we stopped at the iconic Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

And the we got our stuff, said goodbye to Jason and his family, and headed to the airport. Such a fun Vegas trip. Somehow I wasn't tired when we left at 1:30am, so I played around in Final Cut Pro and put this to music.

Las Vegas Neon Boneyard Review and Pictures

After work today, we went out to the Neon Graveyard. It's been on our bucket list and it was the only touristy thing we wanted to accomplish on this trip. I also found out it's actually called the Neon Boneyard.

Our experience was not great. Which is very disappointing. This place has so much potential! Here's how it plays out.

They treat it like a museum. The tickets actually call it the "Neon Museum." But you're not allowed to wander or explore like a normal museum. You're required to go with a tour guide...

...and you're not allowed to stray from the group or even lag behind to take pictures. Right. Like I'm going to allow a ton of people to be every one of my pictures. Needless to say, I lagged behind as much as I could.

I wasn't alone though. Isa stayed back with me too. :) Oh, did I mention it was crazy hot and sunny? It was.

Sadly, absolutely no video. :(

The tour guide's cadence was jarring, so it wasn't pleasant to listen to. She would ask questions, but not really play off the answers very well. It was like a recording that asks questions and then keeps going regardless of what you said. It was extremely informative though. We learned a lot.

Like that when the government was doing atomic bomb testing in the Mojave desert, a lot of casinos would sell "Atomic Vacation Packages" and they'd bus people up to the top of a mountain to watch the bombs explode in the distance.

We also learned about the different "periods" of Las Vegas. First there was the "sawdust on the floor" old-western casinos. Then there was a big push to clean up Vegas and bring more families out, so hotels and casinos started doing "themes." The Mirage was the first one to have a loose theme - Polynesian. But Caesar's Palace was the first to make the theme the central part of everything they did.

The Stardust was "outer-space" themed. Eventually they ran into financial troubles and changed their font to Helvetica and it's said that was the nail in the coffin because they strayed from their theme.

Obviously, we took the daytime tour. It's less expensive than at night, but they told us that only 7 of the signs actually work. The rest are lit up by strobes along the path.

And there are so many smaller signs and random letters strewn about that I feel like you'd miss a lot if you came at night, since they would be in the shadows of the larger signs.

They also don't let you bring tripods or monopods or even different lenses if you have an SLR. You get one camera. Not even a phone and a camera. One.

So unless you have a REALLY good camera that can pretty much see in the dark or has really good image stabilization, I'd say go in the daytime. Because look at this scene, with only one light to light up this entire section, I doubt it'd be very easy to shoot at night.

They arranged the letters in "Moulin Rouge" to spell "in love." Except it's actually "in loue." She made it sound like it was a coincidence. Right. I'm pretty sure those are bolted in place. That was on purpose.

The only sign in the entire park to actually say Las Vegas is the Las Vegas Club sign.

Overall, it was definitely worth seeing, but not quite worth $18. We wish they would have given options, like $10 to just walk around and take pictures. Then $6 for an audio guide. Put a placard by the major signs with a little blurb (like paintings in a museum) and a number to enter on the audio guide to learn more about the history. Then they don't have to pay for a tour guide and if they're really worried about people touching stuff, just put a few guards around the park like a real museum.

And then you can allow video because you won't have to stress about people recording the tour guide. I'm seriously really bummed that I couldn't make a YouTube video out of this. :(

This day's not over yet! Keep reading here: Leaving Las Vegas

Vegas with the Family Part 2

We had a full day of fun on Saturday. Jason took the kids to Home Depot for a kid's building class. They made mailboxes to hold all their Valentines. While they were gone, Isa and Christy went to the gym and I went for a run. Not even a quarter mile from the house, I found an open gate.

So I went in to explore.

Not sure of just how illegal it would be to run in the flood channel, I opted to run along the street instead. Also because all the other gates were locked so I figured I wouldn't be able to get out as easily as I was able to get in.


I saw the park on the map and thought that'd be nice to jog through. A little green respite in the middle of the desert of Las Vegas.

I was wrong.

It's not quite Central Park.

I really think Google Maps oughta show desert parks as brown instead of green.

It did have a fake lake though.

After a quick lunch, we all went out for a hike in Red Rock Canyon.

There was a lot of exploring.

A little off-trailing...

Lots of climbing on rocks.

And surveying and finding the tallest trees.

We also got a family pic, which is probably our first in about 10 years.

The Lost Creek trail that we took ended at a waterfall. As crazy as this sounds, the whole area around the waterfall was frozen. Ice in the Las Vegas desert?! Shocking, right?!

Everyone got pics around the frozen tree.

And I took lots of pics of the tree because I thought it was soo cool. Look at how much ice is around these little twigs!

And one from behind the waterfall, which I didn't like how it turned out but I rested in some dirt and got my jacket dirty for this pic so I'll be darned if I don't post it.

We hiked back out to the car and drove over to another spot - Calico Basin. The drive between the two parks was definitely scenic.

This one started with a boardwalk and then ended on an overlook.

This whole area, from Red Rock Canyon to Calico Basin, is a rock climber's paradise. There are climbers everywhere. And they're amazing.

Our reward for hiking was shaved ice at Bahama Bucks. There are too many flavors and I didn't want to keep asking for samples, so I caved and just ordered Dreamsicle. And it wasn't good. So I asked them to add a bunch of pineapple and it made it better. If you ask MJ if she liked her sour raspberry shaved ice though, she loved it.

Then we went over to the Silverton Hotel and Casino. They have a giant aquarium right in the main lobby as soon as you walk in.  The tank has tons of tropical fish...

...a few sharks...

...and a bunch of stingrays.

At 4:30, a diver came and fed the fish and the stingrays.

And then a mermaid came to say hello.

She did a lot of back flips and played with bubbles.

We dropped the kids off at home (with their parents) and then Chris, Maryellen, Isa, and I went out to Fremont Street.

Chris and Maryellen were going to do the Slotzilla zipline but all the time slots were sold out until 1:40am. Which is about 4 hours past our bedtime.

So we wandered around the street and checked out the neon signs and the street performers for a bit.

Then we headed over to the Strip again. We parked at the Bellagio and walked through the hotel. The gardens were decorated beautifully for Chinese New Year.

If you can't tell, 2016 is the year of the monkey.

The lobby is still amazing. 2000 hand blown glass flowers. And a horse now.

As we walked out, we found a patio that I'd never been on. This is between the hotel and the water.

We walked around to the Boulevard side to watch the next water show. All that Jazz. Soo good.

After a quick stop in Hexx for some peanut butter cookies, we walked over to the Venetian, which was much further than we had anticipated. But so worth it.

We caught the tail end of one more water show (Uptown Funk) before heading back home around midnight, which was WAY past our bedtime.

Such a fun, full day in Las Vegas!

Keep reading about tomorrow! Las Vegas Neon Boneyard Experience