Mojave Desert, Nevada

After two great weeks in San Diego, we drove back the five hours to Las Vegas. We decided to drive back and stay one more night rather than jump on a plane right away. I don't think the kids would have done too well with that.

Traffic was horrendous driving into Las Vegas on a late Friday afternoon. We weren't sure how much time we'd have, but we decided to take a detour through the Mojave Desert and try to hike some sand dunes. We'd heard that the place we were stopping at had the third largest dunes in the United States.

Well, we didn't start hiking until almost five and didn't want to get stuck out in the desert at night, but we were able to hike pretty close to the highest dunes you can see in the picture above. We had a great treat as soon as we got out of the car when we watched a desert tortoise make his way across the road. He even let the kids pet him - sort of.

We live in the suburbs of Chicago, so needless to say we never have it absolutely quiet at home. I think it was the first time in my life that I understood what absolute quiet really meant! 

For a desert, it was breathtakingly beautiful. We saw two other people on our hike, so it felt like the desert was ours. Steve and the kids had a blast sliding up and down the dunes. Jared did wind up twisting his knee when he decided to run full force down one of the dunes. I'm just thankful it happened right as we were headed back anyways, and it stopped hurting after a few days.

We wished we could have spent much, much more time in the desert. We love to be in nature and away from crowds of people, so this last little adventure of our trip was food for our souls.

Great Las Vegas Museums for Kids

We went to two museums while in Las Vegas. Both were really wonderful, especially for kids around the ages of 3-10.  During one of Steve's meetings we rented a car and I drove the kids to the Leid Discovery Children's Museum. We went for free since we have the Explorer's membership with the Chicago Children's Museum. If you haven't looked into a membership at your local children's museum, please do. Also, check out the Explorer's level or the level that gains you admission into children's and other museums across the USA and other countries, too. We saved over $150 using the pass during our trip.

We're used to going to a lot of different children's museums since we live in the Chicago area, but we were sufficiently pleased with this one. Although it's not very big, the museum had a lot of unique exhibits like the one above about how the piping system in your bathroom works.

There was shooting basketballs...

....and an awesome exhibit where you had to balance a round, metal object on a metallic spinning wheel. This enthralled the kids for at least 20 minutes. 

The kids also enjoyed playing car mechanics...

...and airplane pilots.  We only had a little over an hour to spend here and wish we could have stayed longer.

On our way back from San Diego, we drove back to Las Vegas to catch our flight back home. We stayed at a hotel the night before flying back and had time in the morning before our 3:00 flight. So, we stopped in for an hour at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. The kids were SO disappointed when we had to leave. The museum was fabulous. It was small, but it had excellent hands-on exhibits.

Anyone who loves dinosaurs would be captivated by the great dinosaur exhibits they have at this museum. The funnest part about the exhibit?  Pressing buttons and making each dinosaur move and make sounds. Very, very cool!

There is a special section for younger kids that drew our kids like a magnet. They enjoyed the pretend submarine....

.....but they enjoyed digging for fossils even more. This museum is worth at least three or four hours of your time. If you're in the area, check it out!

What We Did Love in Las Vegas

Last post I wrote about what we didn't like about Las Vegas, but to be fair, there were quite a few things we did like. For one, we had a great afternoon at the pool at the hotel. I'm pretty much a baby about cold water, so I didn't go in too far, but the kids loved, loved, loved swimming with Steve. We all went into the hot tub afterwards, which I had no problem with!

I personally loved eating out all the time. Steve's work gave us a very generous stipend for food, so we went to the Rainforest Cafe at MGM grand (where we also were able to see the lions), Outback Steakhouse, ordered pizza with room service, and a few other places.

While Steve was in one of his meetings, the kids and I walked over to the Bellagio to check out the indoor botanic gardens. It was pretty small, and the kids were whiny that day and wanted to be carried most of the time, but we did have fun taking silly pictures together.

I think Jared's highlight of Las Vegas was seeing Batman walking down the street and taking a picture with him. We also thought it was pretty cool to see Spiderman walking down the street, by himself, at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

But the greatest part of Las Vegas was going to Red Rock Canyon. We LOVE the outdoors and this was a gorgeous place to hike. It's kinda crazy how Jared will whine to be held when we walk down the sidewalk, yet he hiked for three hours straight and didn't complain once.

We found a man made pond and had a relaxing time dipping our feet in the water and just chilling out. We had wanted to spot some animals, so it was a little disappointing to only see a beetle and lizard, but the scenery was breathtaking. I highly, highly recommend visiting this great get-away from it all just twenty minutes away from the Strip.

Leaving for Las Vegas

Well, it's May 6th in real time and our big trip has passed, Easter has passed and the kid's birthday has passed, too, and I still need to write about it! I also will share the big project I've been working on the past few months, which has made it hard to stay current with what we've been up to.

So, on March 30th at 7:15 at night, we boarded a plane heading for Las Vegas. To make a long story short, we were planning a trip to Europe this year, but Steve's work had a convention in Las Vegas and was going to fly out every one's families, too, so we decided to take advantage of the free airfare and extend the trip to include two weeks in San Diego, too.

Even though it was late when we landed (11:00 p.m. our time) the kids were raring to go. They climbed on some sculptures in the airport. Jared was in such a good mood that he actually let Steve take this picture with me.  Believe me, we don't get to see this sweet smile in pictures too often; he usually has to be very silly.

We stayed at the hotel Aria which was a nice hotel, I guess. We just were not impressed at all with Las Vegas. It's just not who we are. The hotels are more like mini-cities in themselves. It took us 40 minutes to leave our room, walk through the casino, out through all the complexes outside and across the street to a McDonald's for breakfast. Of course, some of that had to do with the kids wanting to stop every five minutes, but still, it takes a LONG time to get anywhere. Plus, all the hotels smelled like smoke, filtered air, and incense.

Still, it was interesting, at least for the first day, to walk up and down the strip in the morning, looking at all the other hotels and buildings.

If it hadn't been for Steve's work we wouldn't have gone there. And for sure it's not a place to take the kids. I thought things would be fine going out in the morning, but as we were walking down the street, there were people at every corner handing out pictures of topless women. We know because they'd also scatter them all across the sidewalk. And then we walked past an open bar restaurant, butted all the way up to the sidewalk, where some woman with a skirt barely covering her butt and wearing a bra was dancing away on a table with lots of dollar bills sticking out the top of the skirt.

Needless to say, we had to have a few conversations with the kids (Why do people like to take naked pictures of other people, Mommy?), but I guess the conversation would have come anyways. But I am very thankful we were able to travel with Steve rather than be separated from him for a week.