Christmas in Las Vegas

I saw a rainbow from my campsite the first morning, a nice touch, a kind of welcome.

On Christmas Eve, I decided to head into the Las Vegas strip and walk around. The strip was packed with people and cars. A huge range of people, from Japanese to Europeans to overweight Americans.

Every block had people in costume, collecting tips for letting people take their photo with them. I enjoyed the showgirls, the transformers, the sexy cops and of course Elvis.

I did go down to Fremont Street, which was less crowded and less upscale, but still had people in costume. There was a stage with live music, Christmas music of course.

On Christmas Day, I decided to attend a Maronite Catholic Church, which is a church affiliated with the Vatican, but with its own rites. In many ways it was like a regular Catholic mass, but everything was a little different. The Marronite Church is essentially a Lebanese church, and includes Aramaic, the actual language of Christ. I chatted with a couple of parishioners, and learned more about the 21 different rites and churches which are part of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is in many ways a big tent, and not everyone is doing the same thing.

In the afternoon, I decided to visit the Red Rocks Conservation area, and went on a hike to a “tank”, a rain fed pond in the rock. The hike is the real attraction, wandering up the slickrock, on a loosely defined trail. There is a view of Las Vegas from the top of the hike, as you can see in the photo. Red Rocks is very beautiful.

Boulder to Las Vegas

The weather forecast called for snow in the mountains on Sunday, so I started my trip Saturday, got on the road about 10 AM. Had a bite to eat in Eagle, and then headed on to Grand Junction.

I went to the Saturday evening mass in Grand Junction, with a Nigerian priest. He told a funny story about his brother visiting, and waking up to snow. His brother thought that it was the end of the world, as he had never seen snow except in books.

I headed on to Rabbit Valley, near the Colorado-Utah border. I did not realize that the dirt roads would be snow covered, but I put the truck in 4WD and kept going. I had never been here with snow on the ground. There were tire tracks on the road, but no tire tracks in the parking lot, so I have the place to myself. The cats made themselves visible, once it was dark and the camper was parked. They do not like to travel.

It is colder than I expected, my thermometer read 5 F at 7 PM, a clear night. I was worried about the pipes freezing, so I opened up cabinet doors and kept the heat turned up.

I went to bed around 8 PM and woke up at 6:30 AM. I was on the road a little after 7 AM, just as it started to get light.

I was glad that the pipes did not freeze.

Utah is of course very scenic, and I had never driven this stretch of I-70 before.

In case you have not seen it, here is a photo of my RV and truck.

The morning cold helped motivate me to keep driving, to a warmer climate. As the day continued, it made sense to keep going to Las Vegas rather than stop at 3 PM. After gaining an hour, I arrived around 4 PM, and was able to get the camper set up before dark. Tom had recommended the Red Rocks BLM campground west of Las Vegas. I got a nice campsite, kind of away from most of the campers.

Starting Anew

My previous blog was "Richard and Marianne on the Road", with a URL of richardandmarianne.blogspot.com.    Without Marianne, this blog name did not make sense anymore, so I decided to start a new blog.