Red Rock Canyon

Today we gambled all day.

Not really.

As usual I was up earlier than my attendant so I did do some exploring whilst she slumbered. Here in the Paris Hotel we are in France. Directly across the Strip is the Bellagio. I walked in there and discovered that I was in Italy. So that's kind of cool.

I also discovered that the Paris is a hotel (and a pretty nice one) but it really doesn't have a casino in the way that Las Vegas means casino. There IS a large room on the ground floor where you can gamble in lots of ways but most often in ways which did not appeal to my particular aesthetic. The Bellagio on the other hand, that place has a casino. I was there at, oh 7:30AM and there were three tables of no limit hold 'em in process in the poker room. True, two of them were small stakes (1/2) but the third table was 40/80 with 5 players. I don't yet know the exact guidelines but I believe most of the games require that you sit down with chips equal in value to 50 times the big blind.  That means that a 40/80 table ($40 small blind, $80 big blind) has a minimum buy in of at least $4,000.

At 7:30 in the morning.

To us gambling seems like an after dark activity and we have a rental car so we set off for the edge of town.

Just barely beyond the edge of settlement on the northwest side of the metro area is the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It isn't an actual national park but it certainly is managed like one and by the same people (Bureau of Land Management). I was pleased to discover that my national park access pass got us past the gate without having to pay the admission fee being charged to the other cars in line.

I apologize here and now but for the next several days there are going to be LOTS of pictures similar in theme to what follows. I do not apologize for the individual places, every place is unique. I got some nice photos today, I bet I get a few more before we are again in Roseville.

Here is the attendant at the Visitor Center. That formation is called the Calico Hills.

The Visitor Center also features a desert tortoise habitat.  Think zoo.  They have buried clay sewer pipes to provide shelter but they put out dishes of water.  The tortoises have to come out of the provided burrows (think cages) to get water.  An edge of one of the dishes is just visible on the edge of this photo.

Still, as with most zoos, it was interesting to see such a unique creature moving about in the relative open.  Probably the tortoises mind less than the lions at Como.

The conservation area has a 13 mile one way road loop with numerous parking areas and hiking trails leading out into the conservation area from each one.  Mostly, even at the hours we were there (10AM to about 12:30), it was too hot (already upper 80s) for venturing very far from the parking areas but there are lots and LOTS of interesting looking little walks into  the desert.  Some of them look not at all daunting and some of them look like treks better left to someone acclimated to the heat.

Plus there are snakes and scorpions out there.

Here's a closer look at the Calico Hills.

The attendant ventured a couple of hundred yards down the trail seen in the photo.  I waited near the car.  Close circuit to the child we once took to Mount Rainier:  I think that brings her even with me in the venturing from the parking lot criteria.

This looming other colored monster is Turtlehead Peak.

I am not a geologist but because of my past I know more geology than anyone else in my immediate family.  There are three distinct rock types visible in that photo.

And in fact a lot of the interpretive material keeps coming back to the geologic process which is still ongoing at this site, something called the Keystone Thrust.  Here is a photo of something called Ice Box Canyon which I think illustrates in a very, very obvious way that something significant is going on.  This one is for you Dennis and Heather.

This is all sedimentary rock, originally deposited in layers.  The force involved is gravity which means the layers must always be horizontal, that's the way gravity works.  The rock on the right displays clear layering in a still horizontal pattern.

The  rock on the left displays clear layering in a vertical pattern.  We know gravity formed those rocks which means that when the rock formed those layers were horizontal.  It took what can only be described as a force of nature to tip those rocks up on their edges, a force called the Keystone Thrust.

The attendant said this is the view she found most attractive, the "V" formed between the two sandstone formations with the greenish behind.  The green deal is La Madre Mountain.

And this one, I don't really know what it is called but you can see it from a long way off and it is one of my favorite views.

I bought the t-shirt.

After navigating back into town we searched out the Liberace Museum. I have an Eyewitness Travel guide listing this destination as one of the top attractions in Las Vegas. I also have a Borch Map Company $9 map of Las Vegas including the museum as one of the top attractions.

Alas!