Months ago, when my friend, Brandi, moved from San Antonio to Las Vegas, a few of us started talking about having a girl’s trip to visit her.  Well, we started planning, and although a few of the ladies ended up having to pull out, my friend Erica and I both left on Friday (on separate flights) to head to Las Vegas.  I flew on Horizon, which is definitely a lesser airline as to comfort and other things, and so I was so amazingly blessed to have my entire row to myself, especially because the flight was very, very full.  I was so tired, and even if I had to maneuver around the armrests, I managed to lie across the seats and take a nice long nap :).

And I am glad I got the rest, because not only is Nevada two hours behind my time zone, but from the time I landed, we hit the ground running.  Brandi picked up the two of us, and after a quick stop at a Walgreens for some snacks, we headed straight for the Las Vegas Temple.  I have wanted to go there since I was a young girl growing up in Spark, Nevada, and the Vegas Temple was built. Even though it was very far away and not our temple (which was the Oakland Temple), it was the first temple built in Nevada, and so it always had a special place in my heart.  Visiting the temple is always wonderful, and it was even more special with friends.  We even did some of my family names – three sisters born in the 1800’s in England, which was so awesome.

As we were leaving the temple, I couldn’t get over how barren the mountains were.  They reminded me so much of the area around Mount Sinai.

After the temple, we went in search of something yummy for dinner, and settled on fajitas at Juan’s Flaming Fajitas.  It was so good, and pretty funny, because they really did light them on fire at our table.  I wish I had snapped a picture of it. 

After dinner, we drove to our hotel, the Eliante resort, and got settled. It was a beautiful resort, and the only bummer was that the hot tub was closed for the season. Pretty lame, but oh well.

On Saturday morning, my internal clock woke me up at 5am Nevada time – good times.  Luckily, I had a really fabulous ebook I was reading, and so I had something to entertain myself with while I waited for Brandi and Erica to wake up.  Ha ha!  After they were up and ready, we had a late breakfast at Chick-fil-A, mostly so that we could visit Brandi’s son Jeff, who was a good friend of Derek’s. 

After breakfast, we picked up some bagels for later, and then headed out to the Valley of Fire State Park.  There were two things that I really wanted to do on this trip, one was go to the temple, and the other was to go on a cool hike in the desert, and I definitely got my wish.

The Valley of Fire was spectacular, and the weather was just perfect.  We were comfortable in our sweatshirts, and even had to take them off at one point, because it had warmed up.

The rock formations were fantastic and beautiful.

 We hiked and climbed around on the rocks, giving us more spectacular views. What was amazing to me was all the color variation in the rocks and the sand, part of which lent itself to making the rocks look like they had been painted.

My favorite hike was a loop that took us through a canyon that reminded me a bit of the one in Petra.  On the ground, not just in this canyon, but in other places around the trail, were the prettiest blue rocks.  I mean, they were so vibrantly blue, that I had to take a small one home for Arthur for his rock collection. (Strangely, however, when we left the park at the end of the day and I took it out of my pocket, it was a dull, dark gray.  We were baffled by this, and thought that perhaps it had to be near the red rocks to bring out the vibrant blue color, or that it was a magic rock that was only blue inside the Valley of Fire – ha ha! I still gave Arthur the rock though, and then told him of the magical properties.)

After our final hike, we stopped to have a snack at the picnic grounds and finally saw some wildlife.  There were the most adorable chipmunks, and in our attempt to get a picture of them, Brandi may have been throwing her cheep Walgreens popcorn to them.  Good times!

It was funny, because I had been thinking that there had been a severe lack of wildlife in the park, and then we saw this big horned sheep on the side of the road.  Just standing there!!  I mean, it was so close and looked so cool with the background of the rocks that it almost seemed staged, even though it wasn’t.

Our last stop on our way out of the park, was to see the Petroglyphs, which were seriously the coolest.  We may have inadvertently entertained some other tourists as we were trying to come up with the meaning of them, including a story about a dragon chasing the people, and possibly Bigfoot.  Ha ha!  It was pretty funny.

After a stop to shower and change at our hotel, we went to dinner at the yummiest place to get soup dumplings at Xiao Long Dumplings in China Town. Oh my goodness, the food was good!  The green beans were spectacular, soup dumplings were divine, but the winner was the pork buns – so tasty!

After dinner, we went to see the movie “80 for Brady” at the theater in our hotel.  It was super fun and cute, and then we came back to the room and talked and laughed until we crashed.

The next morning, my body would not let me sleep on Nevada time, and so I was wide awake at 4:45am – lame.  I took advantage of the opportunity to study my scriptures, shower and get ready, and find the nearest church to our hotel that met at 9am, since Brandi’s ward met right when Erica had to be at the airport. Church was nice, but sadly, that was when my exhaustion hit me, and I kept falling asleep.  After church, we got crepes for late breakfast/early lunch, and then dropped Erica off at the airport.

I still had a few hours to kill, and so Brandi and I went and explored the Bellagio gardens, which were decorated for the Chinese New Year.  They were super cool, although very crowded.  It was cool to see though.

We also stopped at this beautiful restaurant, Sadelle’s, and I bought a slice of chocolate babka from their bakery cart for me to eat on the plane.

We still had so much time, that we walked around and explored the different casinos, and rode around on the train that went between them.  While we were at it, we searched and found a hidden pizzeria that Brandi had read about.  It was down an unmarked hallway, and boom, there you were.  They didn’t even have a menu.  So fun!

All too soon, it was time for me to go to the airport, but sadly, this was where the story took a turn.  And not for the better.  My flight got delayed an hour, then another hour, and eventually another forty-five minutes. So lame!  I was so tired.

I was also very grateful for my chocolate babka.  And that I snagged a spot next to a charging station, so that I could do my Come Follow Me study, including watching “Don’t Miss This” while I waited.  

After that, I read my book, went for a long walk back and forth in the terminal, and when I thought I was about to go insane from exhaustion and boredom, our plane finally arrived!! I almost couldn’t believe I was finally on my way home and leaving the lights of Vegas behind.  I didn’t land until after midnight, which meant I didn’t get to bed until after 1 am, which meant my 5 am alarm felt extra early.  It was a fabulous trip though, and I am so glad I went.