We’ve had a quiet few days, and we’re dreading going back to work tomorrow. Lisa has recovered from the cold, but there’s no doubt about it – I’ve come down with it. I was hoping to avoid it but really, I’m not prepared to pay the price that would be required. As it is, I seem to have got off lightly, but then again, Lisa is predicting I’ll feel worse over the next few days. We’ll see.

Anyway, it’s nearly 2002. There are fireworks planned for the Strip right about now (midnight), but I don’t think ‘m not sure if we are going to be anywhere suitable to view them. Maybe we’ll catch them on TV. [rushes outside]

…OK, turns out we could see the fireworks on the Strip from next door’s back yard. If we only talk to our neighbours but once a year, I guess the first few minutes of the new year are a good enough time to do so.

Happy New Year everyone.

Due to careful research & planning, Lisa had come up with a really good schedule of flights for D&T, with the only drawback that the flight out of Vegas left at 6:00am. Given the strict nature of airline security these days, we figured if we got up at 4:00am and left before 4:30, this would allow enough time to drive to the airport, check in, and not be worried about security delays.

As we drove up to the terminal, we remembered that one of the drawbacks of the new security measures is that we couldn’t go with them to the gate. Only ticketed passengers are now allowed to go through to the gates. So we ended up dropping Derek & Teresa off at the curb instead of going in with them.

After an uneventful drive back home, we went straight back to bed and slept until 10. We heard later that all went well for Derek & Teresa and so that was all right.

Stan and Jeanne came around, Lisa made a fantastic salad, and I pulled the jars from the fridge and cooked up the pasta & sauce.

Once again, the meatballs were a hit. There’s something about my mother’s recipe… anyway, we had a great evening.

Everything was cool until I had to get up in the middle of the night and throw up everything I’d eaten the previous day. This happened four times, at roughly 2 hour intervals.

There’s just no good way to put that.

I spent the day in bed, feverish. Nothing would stay down. Not even water.

I was very afraid that I’d poisoned everyone with my meatballs, but as it turned out, everyone else was feeling fine. The next possible suspect was something I’d eaten at the Paris buffet? I didn’t recall eating anything distinctively different from the others, but it seemed possible at least.

By the next day I was feeling a bit better, and beginning to eat and drink a little, although still being a little cautious.

Lisa, however, was by now thoroughly under the weather with the cold virus introduced to us courtesy of Derek & Teresa. I feel this was probably inevitable, despite the best efforts to avoid this.

The others decided to stick to the planned schedule, and Lisa drove the others into town to spend some time at the Hilton at the Star Trek Experience (see above). This was something I wouldn’t miss out on, seeing as I had done it earlier in the month with James & Sue.

The original plan was that they would eat out at a Teppanyaki restaurant at the Hilton, but at some point in the late afternoon Lisa rang, informing me that they’d be coming home for dinner as the restaurant was booked out until 10:00pm.

We’ve been promising Derek a teppanyaki meal for some time now, but it looks as though it will have to wait a little longer. In a way, I’m happy about this, because I kinda like teppanyaki style and I would have been a little sad to have missed out.

Instead, Lisa cooked a tri-tip I think. I didn’t have any, I was still feeling a little delicate.

Monday night, by special request, was Grill. This was fine by me, I was almost feeling back to normal, and had half a steak.

I want this documented: Derek ate one (1) steak, two (2) chicken breasts, and five (5) hot dogs. He was heard later, complaining that he’d eaten too much. I have no sympathy for him.

A week later, we’re back at McCarran picking up Derek & Teresa. They spent a week with us before spending Christmas with Teresa’s folks, and then heading back to the East coast.

Again, we did our homework, and sketched out a bunch of fun things to do while they’re here and we’re on holiday. One of these things we crossed off our list immediately: on the way home from the airport, we stopped in at Leo’s Celebrity Deli and had dinner.

Basically, it was a very relaxing week: We watched lots of TV, read a lot, ate a lot… and played a lot of Pool.

Derek and Teresa also tried their best not to pass on the nasty cold they were suffering from.

After a day or so we discovered that this was Teresa’s first visit to Las Vegas, so we quickly added a casino tour to the schedule.

We arranged for Stan and Jeanne to come for dinner later in the week. A request: I must make the spaghetti and meatball recipe that was much appreciated the last time I made it. Okay, but to save time I made the meatballs a few days early, sautéing them and putting them back in the sauce and into the fridge in jars.

We’ll always have Paris

So one afternoon we jumped into the car and drove to Paris… at least, the parking building of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. Despite having replicas of the Arc de Triomphe & Eiffel Tower on the premises, Paris is actually one of the smaller casinos on the Strip. 

It was too early for dinner, so we walked next door – that is, next city block: these hotels are deceptively big – to The Aladdin, which is – you guessed it – another casino. It has suffered financially (i.e., not made a *big enough* profit) from being architecturally gambler-unfriendly.  For a start, the main entrance is raised up so that you have to walk up some stairs to get in. It’s actually a very pleasant bunch of stairs, given that the clusters of date palm trees give the whole area this wonderful sweet smell… When you get to the top, there are three “main entrances”, only one of which leads to the casino proper. The other two lead you into a wonderful indoor mall called the  Desert Passage. It’s similar to the Forum Shops in that it has an artificial sky, but different in that the sky effect is rather better done. Also the shops in the mall have facades designed evoke a middle-eastern merchant street. If you stop in a corner and listen, you’ll hear atmospheric background loops – birds twittering, goats bleating, carpenters working, water lapping… beats typical mall muzak hands down. It’s all really rather well done.

If you walk through it at just the right time, you can experience an indoor thunderstorm. Yeah, it’s tacky, but it’s pretty cool. And free.

If there was one shop we wanted to be sure of introducing Derek & Teresa to, it was “Build Your Own Bear“. This is a shop where you can get on to the production line, choosing a “skin”, then stuffing it, dressing it, etc. It looks like a lot of fun.

After walking through the Dessert Passage – we weren’t in time for the indoor thunderstorm, unfortunately – we found ourselves back on the Strip. And there’s one of the problems – you can enjoy the Aladdin without ever stepping foot in the casino area. Nice for us, not so nice for the Aladdin. The Aladdin has recently gone bankrupt and changed owners, so I expect the nice aspects of the architecture to be changed to be less attractive to the non-gambler.

We walked back to Paris and got in line for the buffet – sorry, that’s “Le Village Buffet”. It was 5:00 and in fact there was no line, and we got in at the Lunch rate.

At the risk of turning this dispatch into a non-stop food review, let me just say that the Paris buffet is pretty dam’ good. Pricey, yeah, a little, but here’s the strategy: go at 5:00 and pay the lunch rate, then at 5:30 they start putting out some additional “dinner” items. By which time you’re ready to go up for a third main course…

Derek discovered another cool thing about the Paris buffet – it has bathrooms. This is unusual, because the norm for these all-you-can-eat places is that you have to leave to find a bathroom and then they don’t let you back in.

After dinner, we walked across the road and wandered around Caesar’s Palace, the Forum Shops, and the Bellagio. It would have been good if while we were walking around the Bellagio’s artificial lake, the fountain would have done it’s thing.

On the way out of the parking building we saw the Bellagio fountain display kick into life.  Oh well.

The Las Vegas Strip can be pretty overwhelming, but there are some fun things to do there, if you know where to look. It helps if you have a native guide. I’ve been lucky in that the first few times I encountered the ‘Strip was under the reassuring guidance of Lisa’s Dad, Stan. Following his example, we discussed options and figured out a strategy in advance:

We’d go off-strip to the Hilton and check out the Star Trek Experience installation there, then park at the Mirage and hit it along with Caesar’s Palace and Treasure Island. At one of those places we’d grab dinner at a buffet.

Embarrassingly I succeeded in getting lost on my way to the Hilton – there are some roads which just don’t go where you expect them to. So much for pretending to be the “old hand” at navigating around the city. So James & Sue saw a little more of the town on either side of the Strip. No big deal.

Eventually we found the Hilton, parked, and found the right place to get tickets for the Star Trek Experience. Discount for Nevada residents, ha ha. (Have I mentioned recently how great it is to have a Nevada Driving License?)

There are many, many “entertainment rides” and such like associated with the major hotels in Vegas. Rollercoasters, 3D motion rides, etc. All basically designed to appeal to the younger tourists and get you in the front door of the casino.

The Star Trek Experience at the Hilton is a little different. For a start, it’s not just a “ride”. There’s a museum with exhibits like real props and costumes from all the different TV series and movies; a timeline showing how the different threads and plots from the various episodes mesh together; and a restaurant called “Quarks” where you can order pretty normal food but with intriguing names such as “Tribble Nibbles” “James T-bone”, Frozen Gagh, Romulan Ale, or my personal favorite: the Wrap of Khan.

There is also a motion ride, but it is actually kind of enjoyable, well integrated into the whole Vegas thing, and it is preceded by a live-action scripted segment that is *very* well done, quite unlike the usual “sit down, belt up, and put on your 3D goggles now” kind of thing. Spoiler: (swipe with mouse to read):You actually get to stand on the command deck of the Enterprise! It’s kind of a Mecca for serious Trekkies.

After all that, it was a bit later than we’d planned, so after several attempts at parking at the Mirage (one day, Stan, I must ask you for the secret of how to park there without getting lost) we headed straight for the buffet for an early dinner.

The Buffet at the Mirage is a good one – it’s mid-priced, and does have crab legs, but best of all, it has absolutely the best mini creme-brulee’s ever. I have never managed to have just one.

After dinner we walked down the Strip towards Treasure Island to see if the Pirate Show was operating. As luck would have it, it wasn’t. The pirates were “on holiday” until Christmas Eve. Normally there’s a live-action show with actors, with a pirate ship and a British galleon that sails around into a bay and then gets sunk. It’s actually really cool. But this evening it was not happening, and we had to make do with seeing what the artificial bay looks like when the water is drained out of it. Bonus: we did see a little mouse sitting on a floodlight. Very cute! I guess he was keeping warm. He was pretty fearless.

We took the tram back from Treasure Island to the Mirage, then popped North to the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace.

The Forum Shops are basically an indoor mall, but there are some nice aspects to it, such as the two animatronic shows. They’re designed to entice you to go on the 3D-motion simulator ride, but hey – it’s free entertainment. And some of the shops are pretty good: the Virgin Records Megastore for example. The F.A.O. Schwartz toyshop for another.

After that, we were all feeling pretty tired, and we drove home and flopped into bed.

Lisa’s hip had been giving her some trouble recently, so she decided to skip the trip to Red Rock Canyon and catch up on some work at home. The rest of us packed some extra water and a snack, and put our walking shoes on.

Red Rock Canyon is about 30 minutes drive away from Las Vegas. You basically go South on 95, exit on to Charleston Blvd and head West into the hills. Eventually you come to this valley nestled up against the mountains, filled with canyons and large sandstone outcroppings. It’s pretty cool. A favorite location for filmmakers apparently.

We pulled into the car park – there were about 4 other cars there – and walked through the cactus gardens to the nearby cluster of buildings. These turned out to be a toilet block and an information kiosk set into a landscaped section of land.

The valley is boarded to the West by tall vertical cliffs, and these were lightly dusted with snow. There was a chill in the air even though the sun was up and felt warm on my skin.

After walking through the natural science displays and dioramas – quite a few stuffed animals in there – we found out what the landscaped section was about. It was a tortoise habitat. No critters to be seen, unfortunately. The explanatory panels informed us that most likely the tortoises were all hibernating.

From the information lodge there’s a 13 mile loop scenic drive that you can take around the valley. This seemed like a good idea. As we drove slowly around the one-way loop, we could see that there were numerous places to stop, get out of the car, and trek around the outcroppings.

At the first place we stopped, a couple of friendly squirrel-type critters came out and fearlessly checked us out. Unfortunately for them we didn’t have anything to feed them with, and it probably isn’t a good thing to do anyway. Given their boldness I suspect people do feed them anyway. They were very cute.

There was a walkway down from the car park that gradually changed from a graveled path to jumbled rocks, requiring serious free rock climbing gear to get much further. There were no fences or anything, just a sign that said, “Use proper equipment when climbing. No responsibility taken etc etc…”

We walked as far down as seemed safe, then stopped for a few photos. It was difficult to get a sense of scale. The creviced landscape seemed to “flatten out” as you look. Then we’d catch a glimpse of some climbers with ropes and everything, and realise that the rocks were a lot further away – and larger – than they appeared

At the highest point on the scenic drive there is a lookup stop. It is not that high up when you look around at the cliffs and mountains behind you, but the view was still pretty good. You get a good appreciation of the size of the sandstone outcroppings when you see them in there entirety, nestled in the valley.

There are some great canyons on the South side of the valley that look like a lot of fun to scramble around in, but the sun had dropped behind the mountains and it was getting pretty chilly.

The scenic drive actually looked like a rather good loop to cycle around. One day I fully intend to do that. Of course I’ll have to get a bike first. And then put in some preparatory exercise!

I think we fired up the outdoor gas grill that evening and had steak, spuds, and salad. Kind of a Summer meal, but what the heck. It smelled good. It tasted good.

Here’s the thing: The only reason not to grill in the Winter is that it’s cold, and it seems a shame that the waste heat doesn’t go to warming up the house instead.

The rest of the evening was pleasantly spent watching _Barry Lyndon_ on DVD.

I’ve known James and Sue since university days. Several years ago they left New Zealand to spend some time in England. In fact, Mitchell (whom regular readers of my verbiage will be familiar) who was boarding with J&S ended up staying with us in Browns Bay, Auckland, for a few months before independently moving to England himself. Well, Mitchell’s still there, but James and Sue are moving back “home” to New Zealand, and stopping by some old friends on the way, including Washington, Vegas, and San Francisco in their itinerary.

I think I officially took Monday off from work, as for some screwy reason I had more days off owing to me than I could actually take before the end of the year, but as luck would have it, I think some work issues came up and I didn’t get as much music done as I wanted to – or whatever it was I was planning to do that day.

That evening we picked James & Sue up at the airport. They were a little jet lagged, but had enjoyed their day in Washington.

I can’t remember what we did for dinner that evening.

We decided that given that James & Sue only had a couple of days with us, we would limit our sightseeing plans to two outings. 1) we’d take them to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area; and 2) we’d visit some casinos on the Strip. After some discussion, we decided to do the natural scenery first.

We finally went and checked out this restaurant/brewery that we’d first noticed while trying to find our “local” Post Office on Tenaya Way. I say “local” in inverted commas because it’s miles away from our house. Hardly local.

Anyway, Tenaya Creek Restaurant and Brewery is just up the road from the Post Office and after passing it a couple of times recently, we dropped in and checked it out. It wasn’t very busy and now I can’t remember exactly what time it was when we arrived – around 5:00 I think as the sun has just gone down or was in the process of doing so – and the menu looked pretty varied and interesting. If I remember correctly, I had a chicken and mushroom pasta dish, and Lisa ordered a steak. The food was excellent. I was pleasantly surprised at the bang for the buck in the food quality department. The beer was good too.

From a price point, this is not going to be a regular Friday night eating out location for us, but it certainly won’t have to wait until our next “anniversary” either. We debated taking Derek and Teresa there when they arrived later in the month, but as it turned out our week was pretty full and it didn’t happen.

I’m looking forward to going back there.

Here’s a pretty good review of the place, albeit from the perspective of a brewpub aficionado: http://celebrator.com/200002/tanaya.html.

As a frequent peruser of Sky And Telescope’s web page, I was well aware of the upcoming Leonid meteor shower somewhat in advance of the local news media. We had tentative plans to spend the night of Saturday 17 in a cabin on Mt Charleston, hoping to enhance the experience by avoiding the light pollution of the Las Vegas Valley.

After the recent cat adventures, though, neither of us felt like we deserved to treat ourselves to a cabin-in-the-woods experience, and anyway, we had a Plan B that was actually a much better idea than the original plan. We would connect up with whatever the Las Vegas Astronomical Society was doing.

After some research on the Internet (see http://www.ccsn.nevada.edu/LVAS/) and some hasty emailing, we determined that, yes, the Society was meeting this weekend at one of their observing locations: Echo Bay.

The map online seemed to match up with the map in our little Nevada tourist guide book, which was a good sign. The observation site that the Society uses is located on a nearby airfield, but Echo Bay itself is a resort on the shore of Lake Mead. After a quick phone call, we verified that, yes, we could get dinner there if we arrived before 9:00pm. Plan B was sounding better and better.

After spending the afternoon shopping in town, we packed the ‘scope in the back of the car and tossed in a blanket, dressed up warmly, and set off to put some gas in the car before driving out of the valley.

A Nasty Shock

We drove down Decator Blvd and I got in the right-hand lane looking for the corner gas station entryway, came upon it quicker than I expected and started to make the turn. I heard a horrible screetch of brakes behind me and with a bit of a panic, I straightened out of the turn and slowed, pulling over to the side of the road. Looking back I saw a huge SUV which has somehow been on the *right* side of me and had obviously not expected me to turn. They had had to stop suddently and had turned into the curb. Ugh! How had I let that happen? I was *sure* that I had been in the Right-most lane. Yet somehow, we had almost had a nasty accident. I saw the other driver’s arms waving in frustration. I waited a couple of seconds to make sure no-one was hurt, decided they were ok, and seeing that neither of us had actually hit anything (or each other’s vehicles), I pulled out from the curb, turned the corner, and turned into the other entrance to the gas station. I think I made it clear that I wasn’t running away, but just getting off the road and being pretty obvious about it. If they’d wanted to follow me and have a conversation about the incident, they could have done so. But they didn’t, for which I was relieved to say the least.

(I am quite honest about the fact that I was deficient in that I had not indicated the turn in sufficient advance of doing so, but I couldn’t explain how I had suddenly been one lane over from where I expected to be. Naturally, the next time we drove down the same stretch of Decator Blvd, I took some extra time to examine the layout of the road. It turns out that just before the entryway, the road widens to the right and an extra lane appears ready for the right-turn-only lane at the intersection. So, even though you are in the right-most lane on the approach, you do have to indicate a lane-change right before making the turn into the gas station. The SUV was obviously familiar with the road, and assuming that I was going straight ahead, must have zipped in behind me just as the new right lane appeared. So I don’t feel entirely to blame for the near miss, although you can bet I’ll look more carefully and indicate sooner in similar situations in the future…)

We stop for backup dinner

After filling up with gas, we head for the Eastern mountains, and Lisa checks the map and observes that our destination may be a little further away than we thought. The map said 50 miles from some junction; I’d looked at the map and done a ball-park estimate of 1 hour travel time, but as usual I’d neglected to take into account the time it takes to get to the Las Vegas city limit. We did some mental math and decided that in case it took us longer than we thought to get out to Echo Bay, we should take 10 minutes and stop for juice and sandwiches so that worst case, we’d have something to eat and drink.

It was just as well we stopped at that point, because were almost at the Great Unconformity – and we knew that beyond that there was no place to eat until Echo Bay Resort.

As it turned out, the road was in pretty good condition and even though it was very dark and we were driving in unfamiliar territory, we made good time and arrived at the Echo Bay Resort at about 8:20pm. Plenty of time for a burger and coffee at the restaurant. Lisa was sensible and had the presence of mind to ask the waitress to fill our thermos flask full of fresh hot coffee.

There were plenty of grizzled, grey-haired astronomer types getting “warmed up” in the bar, but we decided to head straight out to the airfield. Even though it was only 9:30 and the predicted Leonid window was 12:30 – 3:00am, I wanted to get out there and park the car, set up the ‘scope and meet some members of the Las Vegas Astronomy Society.

The drive took us back towards the main road, but before you get there, you take a sharp left turn on to a metalled road which appears to vanish into blackness. For about 10 minutes we drove slowly around humps and turns and ruts, trying to penetrate the pitch blackness outside of the glow of our headlights. It occurs to me know that if I had been able to turn off the headlights, we would have actually seen where we were going, by starlight alone. However, our Toyota Carolla has a safety feature in that even if you turn the headlights off, a darkness sensor turns them on again. I was painfully aware that any astronomer types who had arrived previously and had acheived “night-vision” would be cursing our bright lights as we approached the airfield.

After some dead-ends and retracing our path, we found a wide open area that had to be the airfield. There were a couple of wide strips of blacktop that were presumably the landing zone and taxi lanes, and up one end there was a group of cars with people standing around.

We drove up and parked in an empty space.

Checking out some heavenly bodies

Out of the car it was pretty chilly, but not too bad. I was wearing two layers under my leather jacket and I felt the cold most on the top of my head, predictably. Should’ve gone back for a hat after all.

The sky was awesome.

We could see the milky way overhead, it was hard to pick out the constellations because the background stars were so much brighter than usual. There was a glow behind the mountains in the West from the Vegas Valley – you could still see the vertical beam of the light on top of the Luxor Pyramid but only just. There was another glow from Echo Bay but again, it didn’t distract from the fantastic view of the heavens. I’d never seen it like this, not even in Marin or Auckland, for that matter.

Even if no meteors showed up, I thought, it was going to be worth it just for this.

Every now and then another car would drive up the gravel road and turn onto the airfield and everyone would yell out for them to shut their lights off.

We took a walk up and down the array of cars, admiring the various telescopes and reclined sky viewing arrangements. There were some camper trailers and quite a few children running around.

I set up our 6″ Dobsonian ‘scope and checked out its spotter scope – it seemed to be still aligned correctly after our bumpy ride. A quick check of Jupiter and Saturn, both high in the sky, looking great.

After that, some more challenging targets: The Orion nebula! Finally I get to see it with my own eyes. Somewhat disappointingly, you don’t get to see the colours that you do in photographs. It appears in shades of grey. But it’s still pretty cool.

Next up: The Andromeda Galaxy. This one isn’t really visible from the Southern Hemisphere, and I had never actually managed to track it down before, but in this gloriously bright sky, you could see it as a naked eye object, about half the width of the full moon: a faint oval smudge. In the telescope it resolved to: a faint oval smudge. (Well, you can see a globular center, but no spiral arms or dust lanes like the multi-minute exposures you see in books and stuff.)

It was starting to get cold. I don’t think the temperature dropped, but I was starting to feel it. I wrapped myself in the blanket and Lisa retired to the car for a bit.

The folding deck chairs were a good idea, but I couldn’t stay still there for too long before having to get up and walk around to keep warm.

During this time we’d see the odd “regular” shooting star, and the occasional Leonid meteor. At around half past midnight we definitely started seeing more of them, radiating up from the Eastern horizon, where the constellation Leo had yet to rise. The Leonids are so-called because the point at which the Earth’s orbit intersects the orbit of the 33-year periodic Tempel-Tuttle comet appears to be in the constellation Leo. The meteors are literally space-dust left behind by the comet, impacting the Earth’s atmosphere at a relative speed of 70 km/sec. Yeah – they burn up pretty good.

Interestingly, looking towards the West (opposite where Leo was rising) resulted in a goodly number of sightings, only instead of radiating away from a point on the horizon, they were direct down towards a point on the opposite horizon. (This is an apparent optical illusion that happens as a result of us living on a sphere.)

Invasion of the Lenoids

About 1:00am the constellation Leo was climbing into the Eastern sky, and the meteor rate seemed to pick up a bit. They didn’t get brighter or larger, but more frequent. Instead of one every 10 seconds, we started to see 2 or 3 in quick succession, every 10 seconds or so. Some of them were very bright, leaving a trail that lingered in the sky, fading from bright white through yellow to green. Freaky.

The best picture I’ve seen online that most closely resembles what we saw that evening is here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011123.html.

There was one older guy sitting behind me who continued to mispronounce “Leonid”, saying things like, “Whoa, look at that! That was definitely a Lenoid!”

Just past 2:00am I was having trouble staying warm enough, even with frequent retreats to the car and sips of coffee from the thermos. We decided we’d seen enough, even though the “invasion” was still happening. We apologised in advance for the sudden brightness of the car headlights, and quickly drove back down the dirt road back to the highway, turned South-West and headed back to the Vegas Valley. We continued to see bright meteors burn out ahead of us in the sky, even above the glow of the headlights. We’d pass other cars pulled over to the side of the road, with people sitting on them staring at the sky.

Even after we’d crossed the mountains and were driving back towards home in the light-polluted valley, we continued to see the odd Leonid meteor.

Even though the meteor rate had not approached that required to achieve the the coveted “hyperspace” effect, it was still a truly awesome experience. I am very happy to have been living in one of the regions of the globe where the Leonid shower was visible.