At 9am and after a reasonable night's sleep we went hunting for breakfast. Strangely enough that's not as easy as it sounds. At the north end of the famous Strip, things are a bit low. It looks that most of the action is more to the south nowadays. So we first strolled along Paradise Dr. to the Convention Center. And easy walk from the hotel. What we noticed is that the NAB show doesn't really announce itself. Only on the Convention buildings there are a handful of dignified and quiet posters.
While we were walking back towards the hotel we stumbled across a Denny's. Not the most high class place, but we had a decent breakfast with a mediocre services. You know the works, eggs, toast, bacon, etc. After that we walked back to the hotel.
I wanted to see some of the surrounding area of Vegas, Johan decided to stay in the hotel and write.
I rented a car (PT Cruiser) at the Dollar desk in the hotel. Convenient. Before I took off, I changed my room because of the lack of a shower in the suite. No suite this time, which was to be expected, but a perfectly nice room on the 5th floor. Without any real view alas.
Getting out of Vegas from the Sahara hotel is rather easy (okay, I missed one exit and had to double back :-). So after about 30mins I entered the Red Rock Canyon reserve. The weather was great (sunny, around 85 (27C) in the city and upper 70's (25C) in the hills) so I stopped at the first parking and had a lovely little stroll over a boardwalk with information boards about the wild life and the geology of the area. The colors and angles of the layers are really breathtaking (IMHO that it). Even saw some petroglyphs. That picnic area had the standard US BBQ's and the burgers and steaks for lunch were being grilled (love that smell).
After this stop I drove over to the visitor center. At the moment I arrived at the gate ($5 fee per car) they told me the area was closed for the next hour because of a search & rescue operation. It turned out a climber had fallen. No idea what happened.
So I decided to drive back a bit to the outskirts of the city where I saw a shopping area. Although no mall or general shopping center, there was a very nice bookstore which I couldn't resist. The concept of books & coffee is something they definitely have to copy in the Netherlands. So after some browsing, a latte with carrot cake, it was time to drive back.
After a quick look at the visitor center where I picked up a map of the 13m scenic drive, I slowly drove through the heartland of the reserve. I must have stopped several hundred times to walk a little and take lots of photo's. At about the middle I took one of the short walking loops and climb between boulders, shrubs and cacti. It was supposed to be an easy trail, but there was a fair bit of climbing involved and plenty of shaky stones to step on. Still very nice and easy to do. Beautiful formations, some nice pictographs (paintings instead of carvings) and a rock shelter (abri). Archaeology is everywhere ;-). Although the 'hand' pictographs clearly looked like a road sign in that location. So perhaps a nice interdisciplinary subject? Archaeology and Communication science?
After that hike I drove back to Down Town. I decided I wanted to drive north over the Strip. Getting there was easy, driving over the Strip however was something else. Since half of Down Town is a building area and traffic lights seems to have seeded themselves, I quickly took an alternative road back to the hotel where I arrived at about 6pm.
Johan had had a quiet and successful day writing by the time I got back.
At about 7pm we went out to get something to eat. Right around the corner of the Sahara hotel we found a little Thai restaurant. On the outside it didn't look anything fancy, but the food was excellent. We'll probably give this place an encore.
We wanted to close the day with a drink in the hotel, but that turned out to be nearly impossible! One of the bars had just closed (it was 9pm!) and the others all had gambling machines embedded in the counter! Finally we found a bar with some normal tables.
Tomorrow the NAB show. Let the games begin...
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