POTPOURRI



 Remember to click on the first picture of each category for a slide show without the commentary.

 Now that is a gingerbread house! Christmas 2011 in the Banff Springs hotel.

  The atrium in the Banff Springs.

 These two were one of the teams used for the sleigh rides  offered in Banff. Not a very exciting excursion unless something spooks the horses. Not recommended by us.

   And there they go.                                                        

A window at the Hoover Dam. I loved the abstract element of it.

Monarch Butterfly having a snack.

Eye of the wood.

Swamp grass stalk.

 Rusted metal.

Another part of above.

Las Vegas and Hoover Dam

If you don't want to read what I've said just click on the first picture for a slide show of the pictures. It won't play the videos for you though so that would have to be done separately. Enjoy.

Okay, this big boy is in his winter coat and all fluffed up because it's getting colder and the forecast is for minus thirty temperatures and snow. He doesn't look too happy about it and neither are we so we are wondering where we can go to get away from it all and perhaps cut winter short by a week. Hmmm, rabbit...lucky feet...lucky???... gambling...... how about

LAS VEGAS!!!!!!!!!

This is the famous sign that welcomes you to Sin City if you are coming in off the highway. It is the original one designed when Vegas first came in to existence. Not too impressive but tour bus drivers make U-turns in the middle of busy traffic just so they can park and let passengers out to take pictures with this landmark. I considered passing up the photo op but what the heck, it's part of the history of this place.

This is Vegas at night shot from one of the glassed in overpasses for pedestrians. (thus the reflections). This is Caesar's Palace hotel, one of the older but still very nice hotels. Celine Dion has her show here and other big names like Elton John and Rod Stewart fill in for her when she needs a break.

This is the interior of the hotel. The sky changes from daylight to night every few minutes. There are elaborate fountains at various parts of the walkway and most of them have statues that are  animated to rise and sink into the water while acting out an Atlantis play of the 'gods'. There are blasts of fire coming from the water and plenty of action. Unfortunately, while we were there they were undergoing  repairs and not working.






This is one of the fountains outside in front of the hotel. Very pretty at night when it is lit up.

The Bellagio Hotel is known for it's dancing fountains show directly in front of the hotel that runs hourly until midnight. We met a couple who were so pleased that they had a room overlooking the fountains. We wondered how happy about that they were after the first night as the noise is so loud we could hear it in our room across the street and we were at the back side of our hotel.

Just a sample of the fountain show.

This is the Paris Hotel where we stayed. We thought it was one of the prettiest from the outside, especially at night but inside it was so smokey because of the casino. We were on the 22nd floor and when the ventilation was set to run all the time we found that the non smoking room smelled smokey. Once we switched it to automatic the air improved a bit. As former smokers we have a very hard time with the smell now.

The 'Eiffel Tower' at night.

Close up from the pool side.

Bally's is the sister hotel of the Paris hotel meaning it is connected by a walkway. As you pass from one to the other there is a distinct change in the air as Bally's ventilation system works much better and someone mentioned that they confine the smokers to a certain area. There are some good restaurants here and we enjoyed a Thai one that was decorated very well and the food was fresh and tasty. This shot is of one of their skylights, very pretty.

The gondolier inside the Venitian Hotel. This seems to be a very nice place although we never talked to anyone staying there. They had lots of 'living statues' and plenty of shops and dining. I had considered doing a comparison of Vegas spots and the originals in Europe but that would be another whole blog in itself.

Chinese New Year was about to happen the weekend we were in Vegas and some of the more upscale hotels went all out in their recognition of the event. This is in the Venitian hotel and the dragon blows steam out of his nostrils in addition to being very large and impressive.

Two more beautiful displays in the Wynn hotel. The garden area is lovely without the decorations but it really pops with the colors added. 

Now here's a decoration we can really sink our teeth into. This dragon is the size of a pony and is made entirely of chocolate, flowers as well. This scrumptious display was at the Mandalay Bay.

The first time we ever went to Vegas we stayed in the Luxor which is the black glass pyramid behind the Sphinx. Back then we thought it was amazing and at night a beam of light shoots straight up out of the tip which can be seen by astronauts in outer space. Now it seems shabby and run down and has lost the glitter it used to have.

This is the inside and the horizontal lines are the hallways for the rooms. In the middle about a quarter down the picture you can see a dark spot which looks like a fly splattered on the concrete. That's actually a person hanging from a rope who was doing some kind of maintenance at the top. Gives a bit of perspective as to the height.

 
The infamous Golden Nugget hotel which is in downtown Vegas. Sinatra and his entourage used to hang out here. For an old hotel it looks pretty good but they've renovated and taken care of it so that helps. Unfortunately it is downtown which is a bit of a scary place to be as some pretty hardcore down and out people make this their turf. Stay on Freemont St. but definitely go down to see it if you are in Vegas.

 This is the reason people go downtown. The canopy covers the whole street and is at least two blocks long. There are approximately one and a half million lights up there and the show plays every hour on the hour and lasts about ten minutes. Each hour is a different show and there's something for everyone, country, rock, new age etc. There is a bus that leaves the Strip and comes directly here and directly back so you don't have to worry about waiting on some dark side street and risking being mugged or worse. Vegas is all about tourists so they do all they can to make it safe but common sense is always advised.






We followed this couple just to get video of his dancing. Before I started the camera he was really getting into it so this is pretty tame but I like how he just could not resist moving to the music.

            A very short video with some of the locals being part of the entertainment. Lots going on                  between  the light shows.

 

The Freemont Light show video is a small snippet of the ten minute display. It doesn't relay how impressive the show is when you are actually standing there beneath the canopy. All of the businesses on the street shut their lights off so as not to interfere with the display. I think the hope is that people will come in and shop or gamble while they are waiting for the next show to begin.                                                                         

Hoover Dam

This is a shot just before arriving at the dam. Very volcanic looking in the area.

This is the plan of the dam explaining the different parts of the whole system. We got to go into the working part before we even saw the dam itself. We took an elevator 500 feet down to the area at the bottom .

The above picture is where the water comes into the generator room to produce the electricity. The pipes are big enough to stack three buses inside. At the beginning of construction these tunnels were for diverting the Colorado river around the site where they wanted to pour the concrete. 

 Above is the generator room where the electricity is produced. The flag is hanging from a gantry crane that lifts the rotors out of it's housing and moves it to the foreground area so that cleaning and maintenance can be carried out. Below is one of the rotors being cleaned.

 

 Back up the elevator and out to see the actual dam. These buildings are the generator rooms and we were in the one that you can only see the roof of.

 It is really difficult to get a complete photo of the dam unless you walk over to the bridge and we didn't have time for that. We also weren't allowed to go outside at the bottom of the dam. 911 stopped the wide open tours and tightened up what the public got to see. The dam was built in five years and there was enough concrete poured into it to build a four foot wide sidewalk around the circumference of the world. Rumors about people being buried in the concrete are false, they only poured about five feet at a time as it had to set before they moved on to the next pour. It is about five hundred feet thick at the widest point.

 This is the water backed up against the dam which forms Lake Mead. The band of white is where the water line used to be.









This is a shot from the middle of the dam looking down on the Colorado river. You used to be able to drive across the dam but they have changed that to the new bridge that you see spanning the river.

This is a time lapse video of the construction of the dam. It was interesting to see it after hearing so much about it and it was a nice change from the hustle and bustle of Vegas.

These are bronze angels erected to comerate the men who died in the construction of the dam. I can't remember the exact number but believe it was around 60. I do remember that the first and last to die were father and son and there were 13 years between the first death and the last one. Since the dam only took five years to build the son died on the second stage of construction which took eight years.






A close up of the angel.

Well that was our trip to Vegas. Not too exciting but much warmer than staying home would have been as we managed to time our trip leaving just as minus 30 temperatures came in and returning the night before it was to warm up. Who needs to gamble when we got this kind of luck instead.                                          

While we were waiting for our shuttle to the airport we relaxed by the pool and I got a snap of this little humming bird. I think it's so funny how he is perched on two branches that make him look like he has the legs of a stork. It was hard to get an in focus picture as even sitting, his head would be whipping back and forth. Well time for these snowbirds to head back home. Thanks for reading my blog.