Vegas, Baby!

It's Fall Break!  We had a little get away this week to Las Vegas.  We chose this location because in our quest to get to all 50 states together before Evie turns 18, we have been to everything west of the Mississippi except for Nevada.  And because there's plenty to do in Vegas, even for kids.  So this was Evie's 38th state!

We left Sunday morning and had a layover in Dallas, then arrived in Las Vegas about 2:30 pm local time.

Waiting to board in Memphis

Squished onto our Southwest flight

Grand Canyon from the air

Exiting the Vegas airport

We got checked in to our hotel, but they didn't have a room ready for us so we went to Starbucks and then headed to Area 15.  This is basically an enormous building with a large bar in the middle, putt-putt, bowling, and other such entertainments, but the big attraction for us was an interactive art installation called Omega Mart which is a Meow Wolf brand hall of weirdness.  Basically you walk into what looks like a grocery store, but you discover all kinds of weirdness, like fridges you can walk into or spiral staircases in the janitor's closet that lead you to these very trippy back rooms that have neon and black light and all kinds of weird stuff to explore... flowers that are 10 feet tall, caves, strobe light rooms...  Just all kinds of trippy stuff.  Evie and Seth loved it (I went along).

Enormous flowers

Fake soup - I mean sop

After that, we went to dinner at a delicious Thai place, in which we were the only non-Thai people, so you know it was good!  Then we went to the hotel and crashed.

Monday we had breakfast at a diner called Blueberry Hill, which we ended up eating at every day because it was that good.  We would definitely recommend it to Grannadaddy who loves a good diner with chocolate pie.  

Then we went to FlyOver which is a large screen experience where you are put into a glider simulator and you're surrounded by footage of whatever video you've chosen.  We opted for Iceland so it was a lot of footage of mountains, glaciers, islands, volcanoes, etc.  Evie had a blast with it, especially the mist that they spit out at us every time we "went" through a cloud.

Here was our green screen picture prior to the flight.

Then we hopped in the car and went out to Hoover Dam.  As you can imagine, Seth incorporated a lot of dam jokes, to the point that Evie told him that she would be fining him a dollar per joke.

On the state line between Nevada and Arizona, in the middle of the dam

We got pretty hot out there so we went back to the hotel and caught some naps.  Seth and I had to sit through a vacation club presentation because we'd agreed to do that to stay at the particular hotel we chose.  Evie stayed in the room and read and played on her iPad.  

Then we went to dinner at Hofbrauhaus, then went to check out the Mob Museum.  Evie was pretty fascinated with the mobsters.  We tried to go to the Neon Museum after that but it was difficult to park so instead we drove down the strip to look at all the Las Vegas weirdness.  We ended up exploring the M&M museum and the Coke Museum before getting some ice cream and heading back to the hotel.

Can you spot Evie behind the car?

A wall of M&Ms

On our way to find ice cream on the strip

Tuesday we started our day at Blueberry Hill for breakfast, then went to the Pinball Hall of Fame.  We spent about 2 hours playing a bunch of pinball. 

Seth is coaching Evie on when to hit the flippers

Inner workings of a pinball machine

After that we went to an escape room which is a favorite pastime of ours.  We escaped, of course!  This was a WWII submarine theme.

We then headed over to the Luxor to check out the Titanic exhibit and catch our show for the Blue Man Group.  Evie had studied the Titanic in 2nd grade, so she was very enthralled.  They gave each person a passenger card with their name and class so you could sort of put yourself in the shoes of a first, second, or third class passenger, and find out at the end whether or not your person survived.  This definitely captured Evie's imagination.

1st class girl

On the promenade

Our Blue Man tickets were comped, courtesy of Annalisa's connections.  We had a great time at the show, and after the performance, Evie was handed the painting that was created by the Blue Men at the beginning of the show, so that was very neat.

Then we went to Pampas which is a Brazilian steakhouse.  I'd never been to one of those, and it was an interesting experience.  It was complimentary as part of our vacation club presentation package (we did not buy into the club, by the way), and I was glad because I certainly wouldn't have paid that kind of money to eat there.  But we did enjoy the experience as a one off.  We did get these pictures taken for us, so that was something.

Wednesday morning we woke up very early, checked out of the room, and headed, again, to Blueberry Hill for breakfast.  We returned our car and caught our flight to Denver, then on to Memphis with no delays.  We even managed to get to trivia before it started.

We definitely enjoyed this getaway to one of America's weirdest spots.