Las Vegas, Nevada

Good morning, my friends. Ordinarily, we avoid Las Vegas like the plague, but we wanted to see the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Garden. It's free to the public (except for parking, which was steep at $20 for the day). Erik and Mae are fans of botanical gardens, in general, and they've kind of hooked us on seeing gardens when we can. Erik tells me this one changes frequently. When he saw it last time, it was decorated to honor the Grateful Dead. (That must have been interesting.)

Okay, so we girded up our loins for a drive into Sin City. And, Las Vegas...what can you say? "Ostentatious" doesn't begin to cover it. Before we were even close to our final destination, we began to see the glitz, glamor, and gaudiness the city is noted for. 

As we made our way to the parking garage, I was just snapping random photos.

The image below is of the hotel, New York, New York. Erik and Mae planned their wedding with the hotel's help. It was Mae's dream to be married in Las Vegas, and when their beloved OSU Beavers football team played a game in Las Vegas, they decided to tie the knot. They were married by the Blues Brothers, and it was so much fun. They were able to spend their wedding night in the penthouse, and the reception was there as well. Great memories. Mike and Matthew rode that roller coaster while we were there.

This was some more freeway art. That horse was life-sized.

We parked in the parking garage, but we made our way to the top of the building. From there, I saw this:

And then we took the elevators to the main level of the Bellagio hotel. I knew you'd want to see this casino carpet.

Approaching the conservatory, this is what we saw:

Oh my gosh...this was jaw-dropping. It was a smaller space than expected, but stuffed to the gills with flowers. At the entrance, these anthuriums.

At my left, this dragon.

There were bromeliads in more colors than I knew existed.

I regret not getting better focus on this next one. 

This next one is called an Amazonian Zebra Plant.

The one is called Flaming Sword.

The figures were all decked out in flowers.

There were also several colors of chrysanthemums.

These round "coins" with a square hole in the center represent Chinese coins. The cash or qian was a type of coin of China and the Sinosphere, used from the 4th century BC until the 20th century.

I wanted to show you the tile floor. Pretty. I left my feet there for scale.

This is camellia.

This was at the far end. The hanging objects represent firecrackers, and the star-shaped objects on the right and left sides of the photo were lit so that they sparkled from the center outward, as if a bursting firecracker. (I tried to get a video of that, but it didn't show up very well.)

Turning around and looking up, it looked like this.

A couple offered to take our picture here, and sure...why not. The cherry blossoms are not real, but it was pretty anyway.

This figure was to the right of the cherry tree.

It was all decorated in real red roses.

My phone was stumped by this one, but they might be a kind of begonia.

There were calla lilies, again, in colors I didn't know existed.

One more small figure.

From there, we left the conservatory and walked through the hotel lobby toward the door. Overhead, we saw this extending from one side of the room to the other.

Here's the front desk.

Just outside, we could see this replica of the Eiffel Tower.

There were more flowers outside. Geraniums.

Cyclamen.

The Bellagio is noted for its fountain shows. On weekdays, they go off every thirty minutes between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. I took this picture around 11:30 a.m., and there was no way we were going to wait around for that.

Nevertheless, you can see the fountain show at this YouTube video:

Also...show me a body of water, and I'll show you a Canada goose.

We crossed the street and entered a structure denoted "The Miracle Mile." Inside was this huge flaming "grill" advertising Gordon Ramsay's restaurant inside.

We selected the restaurant that took us the farthest away from the loud music and the sound of the casino.

Lunch was good, and then we decided to head back to the RV. Along the way, I noticed this ad. I was pretty sure you'd want to see it.

Mike wanted to see The Sphere, and so we drove that direction on our way back. It happened to be projecting advertising for an upcoming production of The Wizard of Oz.

There were images recognizable from the movie...Dorothy's gingham dress.

This would have been the scarecrow. We also saw rivets that would have represented the Tin Man, and we saw what would have been the fur of the Cowardly Lion.

The next one I captured was the ruby slippers.

I barely captured the wicked witch, whose feet were extending out from the bottom of The Sphere.

We drove a block down the road where we could stop, and I could get a better picture of them.

On the way back, I was determined to get an in-focus picture of the Welcome to Boulder City sign. Ta-Da! 

No doubt we'll be back here again, and then I'll be able to use this photo instead of being forced to use the blurry ones. So that was our day. We'll have a chill day today. Tomorrow will be our last day in Boulder City, and we'll have some "life" things to take care of...refueling the truck, and getting some more groceries. 

Consider the soapbox image below your warning that I'm about to say something political and potentially controversial. We're all friends here, no matter your leanings. If you want to stop reading now, then I'll wish you a good day. 

Still with me? Well, one of the things we saw yesterday was the golden edifice known as the Las Vegas Trump Tower. When I edited the photo, look what happened!

That ain't no sky-writing, so how did that happen? Must be a bug in my photo editing software. That's the only thing I can figure out. Maybe it's something leftover from our struggles with OneDrive. I posted this image to my personal Facebook page to see if my friends there had any ideas about what caused it. One of my friends had this to say: "Damn sneaky pirates at Treasure Island!" Yeah...that's probably it. 'Til tomorrow, my friends. Have a good day today.