October 20, 2009
Las Vegas, NV

Sunday was our travel day and everything went like clockwork. We tried a different route, designed to avoid most of the potential issues with Los Angeles traffic. We hit the road roughly on schedule at 7:20 AM (early but not out of bounds, as the sun was already up). Hopefully, we didn't wake too many of the neighbors as we eased out of the relatively tight spot, with about two feet to spare given the other rigs and parked cars.

Our route took us south on US-101, then east on CA-126 once we got to Ventura. This was a great 4-lane road, freeway to Santa Paula and an easy drive over to Santa Clarita. We hopped on the I-5 south for only a couple of miles then north on CA-14 toward Palmdale/Lancaster. We've been up this way several times for rallies at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds. We cut off on the Pearblossom Highway to CA-138 to CA-18 directly east to Victorville. From there, we turned north on I-15 right into Las Vegas. We stopped for breakfast along CA-126 and for fuel and lunch (both "fuel", I suppose) in Barstow, and rolled into the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort by mid-afternoon. Perfect.

The weather's been nice but breezy. OK, windy. Temperatures were warm to start but are supposed to be in the low-80s for most of the week. We're looking forward to that, as we've got several activities planned for the week.

Monday was a day for chores. Geri knocked out a couple of loads of laundry and we each spent some time on the phone arranging things for when we get back to AZ. Geri's got hair lined up, plus her next follow-up MRI to verify that her kidney is OK. Merlin and Maya Lynn are going to the vet. I've got city services (water - sewer - trash) restarted, and made arrangements to reactivate our high-speed internet service via Cox Cable.

I decided to do that since we had some capacity issues last year with the Verizon "air card"; there's a 5 gigabyte limit on that service and we came close to going over. Who wants to be constrained? Cable is cheaper, I can suspend the air card, and it's faster as well. With the new cable modem I picked up (thanks to a Best Buy coupon), we should have 20mbps service by the time we get home. Installation should be a snap since all the wiring is done from the service we had before.

We also did some shopping Monday afternoon, checking out a new Whole Foods right on the strip north of here (Blue Diamond), plus Wally World and Costco. Since we're eating out most nights this week, I decided to fill our dance card by booking a reservation at Carnevino, a new Mario Batali/Joe Bastianich venture in the new Palazzo Hotel for Wednesday night. OpenTable.com is our friend. To prepare ourselves for feasting, we just had a small salad with some sautéed bay scallops for dinner.

Today was a relaxing day, as we spent most of our time at the coach. Tonight, we'll head to the MGM Grand for dinner and a show.