Viva Las Vegas

We made another trip up to Vegas last month and since Brian most likely landed this contract for his company he may be going up every couple of months to check on things. I'll continue to tag along. Now that we've found a corner of Vegas we really like (mainly because we found a FABULOUS little Italian restaurant and plenty more enticing restaurants nearby we're anxious to try) I'm more excited about possible upcoming trips.

Here's highlights from our latest quickie trip:

The foot belongs to "Dumbledore." This guy is standing outside a really fun metaphysical shop in the same plaza as our new favorite Italian restaurant.

Poor Dumbledore lost his hand. Hunting horcruxes, no doubt.

But not to worry. He has a friend nearby to cheer him up.


We decided to stop and see the dam on our way home. We pulled over at the Lake Mead lookout, which is on the Nevada side just before you get to the dam.

Look how low the water level is:

This is an information board there which has an illustration of the lake as it should be:

Big difference. If you look to the left a bit, you can see where the boats dock. I drew a red line to show where the water line used to be:



While we were there a ranger was handing out goodie bags and showing people this coyote pelt:

It's not legal to hunt them, but they found this guy dead somewhere and saved his pelt. He's really soft. In fact, on our way home we saw a dead coyote on the side of the road and I was tempted to turn around and bring him home. Do you think we would've gotten in trouble for that?

This is an old train tunnel that was in use when the dam was being built:

Okay, on to the dam. This is a view of the back side. (See the new bridge they're building in the background?)

I remember coming here when I was a kid. The water used to go all the way up to the rim of the dam. You couldn't even see the turbines (are they called turbines?) because they were all under water.

From where I was standing when I took that picture, if I turn to the right a bit, this is what was across from me:

You can see where the water line used to be by looking at the color of the rock.



This is a close up of the same shot. They had to make a little road to get down to the water, then as the water continued to drop, they built stairs from the ramp to the boat. Crazy. I just could not get over how low the water was.

Backing up from that view is this spillway. This also used to be completely submerged and I thought it was really interesting to see.

Looking to the right. You can see how those silver plates can swivel up and down to control the flow of water into the spillway.

Looking to the left.

Left some more.

Standing on that bridge and looking straight down into that hole, it looks like this:



Creepy. :)

That hole leads down to the river. If I were in a movie, there's be some exciting chase scene where I end up sliding down that tunnel like a ride at Disneyland and land in the water on the other side, no worse for the wear, and my enemies cursing at my ingenious escape. Heh heh.

This was posted all along the dam on both sides. It's for the morons who can't figure that out for themselves.

Moving right along. On top of those turbines, if that's what they're called, are these little towers. One has a clock for each time zone.

This came in handy on our first trip when we had completely forgotten about the time zone change. Since Brian had a meeting to get to, that was good information to have.


Looking over the edge:

It was dizzying...

An absolute marvel:

This cool monument is on the Nevada side:

It reads, "They died to make the desert bloom."






At the base of the monument:

I only understood about half of this. There were "helpful explanations" like this all over the place. After this one I didn't even bother reading them, but I enjoyed looking at the astronomical designs anyway.

To the right of the monument:

That's me baby. Watch that stinger.

And that was our Vegas trip.


What should we do next time?

P.S. In case this long post isn't enough for you, check this out. I SO want to do this! It's almost as high on my wish list as Italy. Almost.

Ben's First Pinewood Derby

These pinewood derbys are so fun. I love looking at the different cars:

Look at that cute happy face one. Actually, I think it's Pikachu. :)

This cheese car was my favorite, and it ended up winning first place.



Here's Ben's car:

A great big thank you goes to Brother Goff for helping Ben with his car. There's no way it would've look this good if we'd done it here at home.

I love watching the boys gather in the pits as the excitement mounts. Here's Ben in the pits, waiting his turn.

I love watching the races. Ben getting ready to race:

I love the little award ceremony they have at the end. Everyone gets a certificate and a prize, and then they award prizes to the three fastest cars as well. Here's Ben getting an award for Most Futuristic Car. :)

It's been fun watching Ben take part in the Scout program. I'm grateful for all the good experiences and memories that program gives to my kids. :)

Interesting Combination

Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?

Either this is wrong or I'm an idiot...

Guess which one I'm hoping for.


Okay, so here's a puzzle from my IQ calendar:


M..A...N
O...A...L
L....Z...?

Which letter should replace the question mark?



Are you thinking? Are you trying to figure this out? Cuz I sure did. I finally gave up and looked at the solution, which reads:


W. This is determined by the position of the letters in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc). The letter from the first column is added to that of the third column to dertermine the letter in the second column. So L(12)+N(14)=Z(26)


That would be lovely if L, N and Z were on the same row, which they are not. Or if you could add W(23) to ANY letter in the above equation to get the value of any other letter, let alone limiting your choices to some first column number added to W to equal some second column number.

Did they make a mistake or am I missing something here?

Seriously. I need to know. If I hadn't already thrown the box away I'd be on the phone to this company right now. I don't mind when I can't figure out a problem because my brain still gets a work out and I learn something from the solution. (I wish I'd saved the penny one for you.) But this is just driving me batty.

B.A.T.T.Y.

Help!!!!

Big, Big, BIG Numbers

My one-a-day calendar for this year is an IQ Puzzles calendar. I decided I need to challenge my brain on a more regular basis and this seemed a good way to do it. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are a fun challenge, and some are downright impossible.

Okay, not impossible. Just hard enough that I give up and look at the answers on the back.

The January 6 puzzle is meant to be a math puzzle, but I didn't even try to solve it since it felt more like a trivia question to me. You know, an interesting fact.

For those of you who like math enough to tackle this kind of problem, I'll give you the question and let you scroll a bit for the answer:

You have someone counting a billion dollars for you and he counts a dollar per second. He works eight hours a day and takes four weeks holiday. How long will this person be counting?

(Insert Jeopary music here...)

Answer: If this person works five days a week, 48 weeks a year, he will be counting 144 years, 248 days and 1.6 hours.

That's a really, really, really long time.

It kinda gives new weight to the number "one billion" - something we hear tossed around so much that I think we get numb to it. Like gratuitous violence in movies and soft-core porn in our commercials. How many of us really grasp the implications of one billion of anything?

Especially in the following context:

As of January 15, 2010 the United States National Debt is

twelve trillion dollars.

Trillion, not billion. There are one thousand billions in one trillion. And we've got 12 trillion in debt.

If I'm doing my math correctly (feel free to check me, since it's highly likely I'm not) that little dollar counting fellow would be counting our national debt for roughly

1 million 736 thousand 160 YEARS!

That can't be good.

Old Apache Trail

We did it! We drove the Old Apache Trail on Saturday!

We grabbed some lunch for the kids and headed out about 12:30. When the kids asked me how long we'd be gone, I said a couple of hours. Brian said four. I thought he was nuts. No way was that drive going to take four hours. And I was right.

It took five.

LOL! But we had a great time.

It was a wee bit cold up here. Well, to us anyway. The fellow who so kindly took this picture for us was visiting from Wisconsin and he described the weather as "quite warm."

I loved how the rock hung over the road.

We drove all the way up to the dam.

I seem to remember driving over this dam when I was a kid. Traffic goes over the bridge now, but that was a change made before Sept 11 because they wanted to raise the height of the dam to protect against floods.

I wish I would've taken some pictures of the kids in the visitor's center. It was small but it was cool. Everyone enjoyed it.

At this point we could've gone home via Payson or Globe and we opted for Globe. Shortly after headed down that highway we passed a sign for cliff dwellings. Oh man. I love stuff like that!!

Unfortunately we got there just after the visitor's center closed and we were all too tired to go on a hike. But do you see that little white dot at the bottom of the ruins? That's a guy!

Guess what my next 2010 goal is???