Apr 19th to 20th - Las Vegas

Apr 19th – Tues
Another lazy morning followed by a busy afternoon and evening. Mid-morning, Claude & Val were going to WalMart so we tagged along. On the way I had to introduce Val to Big Lots where they got a couple of items and we bought a table to put between our recliners. We were using a small, “under sofa” table which was just a bit too small. After WalMart, we stopped to show them Sam’s Town and were just in time to have a beer and enjoy the water show in the courtyard right beside the bar.
We each had a late lunch and then we picked them up at 5. First we drove down and back on the strip where there were lots of people. Then we parked by Main St Station, went in there to get our parking fee refunded and went to Fremont Street. Claude & Val got players’ cards at the Four Queens which gave them 2-for-1 vouchers for the restaurant which we promptly used. We had a short wait to be seated but the long was much longer when we finished dinner.
We saw the 9 o’clock show on Fremont, gambled through the 10 o’clock show, – Claude did very well!! – watched the 11 o’clock show and headed home.

Apr 20th – Wed
Well, we ran out of superlatives again today. We picked up Billy & Lauri at their RV park at 9 and drove 55 miles to Valley of Fire State Park NE of here. It is another area of red rocks – and white rocks and striped rocks and grey rocks. It is incredible to see the nothingness of Nevada landscape change to this amazing area. We were stopping every few hundred yards to take pictures as there was a different view when you moved just a little bit. We went on one walk of ½ mile round trip to see the Mouse Hole (natural basin of water) and decided that was the only walk we needed to take as most of the trail was sand hiding treacherous rocks and it was quite hot. We found a shaded picnic table for our lunch and then wandered through the visitor’s center which is in the middle of the park.
We met a couple from Germany when we stopped in a campground and ended up giving them the name of a place to stay in Las Vegas and some information about Alaska. They shipped their small motor home from Brussels and will be touring the US & Canada for 8 months.
We made a total loop again for this trip so we came back near Lake Mead. We discussed taking a detour to walk on the new bypass bridge at Hoover Dam but we were all tired and decided to leave that for another time.
However, we weren’t too tired to have a beer when we dropped off Billy & Lauri. We had a short time to dump the sand from our shoes and I washed it from my feet before going to Claude & Val’s for a nice dinner. We came home to watch Survivor so Terry could fall asleep watching it in bed instead of at Claude & Val’s.