Laaas Vegas

Chloe, Christa , Stephanie and the kids and parents had breakfast together in the hotel



The parents and I decided to rent a car and drive out to the Valley of Fire, which was quite beautiful, even in the poor light. I was gently introducing myself to shooting raw and just generally shooting digital landscapes on the K-5. I had brought along my uncles ancient Japanese tripod which was not significantly better than shooting hand held with shake reduction on.

Despite the abundant beauty of France, I miss scenery like this sometimes. We started by looking at the ancient petroglyphs high on a red sandstone buttress (Atlatl Rock)

and then stopped at the extremely underwhelming natural arch. I didn't take a picture, but imagine a small scale model of what you can find in Arches. After taking a few pictures *without* the arch

we drove to the visitor center, and I took a few more photos


and then off to White Domes


and then on the dirt track to Silica Dome. We were in a rental car, and that (in my opinion) obliges you to treat your car like a rally car and get it sideways, but the parents were definitely not on board with that idea.

At this point, we were starting to get hungry, but did not have any food with us. Nor was there any kind of concession stand or even snack machine for miles. We continued along Lake Mead until we eventually found a place with snacks, and we dined on a sumptuous meal of beef jerky, chips and peanuts. The color of the lake is a spooky turquoise color

We continued on and saw some dramatic skies to the north, so I stopped and shot with different combinations of ISO and f stop. I am still trying to figure out good compromises between ISO, dynamic range and noise. I'm happy with this shot, though.

For dinner, we went to Wolfgang Pucks. We walked along the skyways and passed by the opulent shop displays that just seem normal when you are in Las Vegas. One shop had at least several million dollars worth of watches on display, like this three hundred thousand dollar Breguet double Tourbillion:








After some pizza and calamari, it was time to go back to the hotel. Unbeknownst to us, Zoe had surreptitiously removed her shoes during the dinner, and walked all the way back to our hotel along the strip with no shoes on





The socks that we tossed in the trash



mom on the strip: