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.