Vegas, baby!

Back home safe and sound from Sin City. Elisha and I had a good trip. Thanks to a limited number of guests, we had three days off, so Elisha and I packed up and headed out.

Tues and Wed were spent driving. Elisha has friends just this side of the Utah border that we stayed with. The weather in Colorado was a little hairy, but we prayed a lot and God kept us on the road. The term we used for the slippery hairpin turns through the mountains was "death-defyingly beautiful." It was completely unspoiled and ruggedly stunning, but sometimes there weren't even guardrails.

We decided there's a good reason that Utah is a four-letter word. We looked at the map and saw plenty of little towns along the way, but all the exit signs said "No Services" once you actually got there. The gas light was on for many more miles than it actually should have been when we finally came across a Shell station in the middle of the desert. We are now whole-hearted supporters of Shell.

We made it to her friends' house and slept in our own rooms with full beds--heaven compared to the bunkhouse. The next morning her friend showed us around a little, and we drove into Vegas.

I was not super impressed by Vegas. I thought it would be very glamorous. Only the strip was flashy and glamorous, and the rest of it was sketchy and depressing. We ate lunch in a pizza place with bullet holes in the door. The strip itself was too much--all this opulance and pretension and so much reckless spending of money. It was sensory overload. I played a dollar on the penny slots, but I didn't win anything. My favorite part was the fountain show at the Bellagio. It was coordinated to music, and the song was a beautiful classical vocal song. We had plans to find Wayne Newton because Elisha knows him, but sadly he was not to be found.

Thursday was a long day of driving with more bad weather in the mountains. We were just happy to be home, esp since it was pitch dark, which made the hairpin turns merely death-defying. We had the same Johnny Cash CD on repeat for about two hours because were so on the edge of our seats that we didn't want to be distracted by changing it. But we made it safe and sound. I was glad to be back.