Instead of me running the Des Moines half marathon this year, Andrea and I decided to run the Rock and Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon. I had plans to fly out early on Veterans Day. Dad and Andrea were going to arrive later Friday night.
A week or two ago, Tom and Cindy decided to come out with us. They arrived earlier than I did. When I arrived into Las Vegas, I rented a car and picked them up at the hotel. We went to Red Rock Canyon and ate an old Vegas priced buffet at Red Rock hotel. It was like $8 or $9. We went to the expo and picked Dad and Andrea up at the airport that night. After checking in, we went to eat at Bobby’s Burger Palace where we surprised Andrea with tickets to Love, a Cirque show.
On Saturday morning, we toured the Bellagio and ate crepes for breakfast. Then, we went to the running expo. It was a streamlined process. The expo was pretty nice. There were a lot of samples. Meb was there signing autographs and talking to people.
Afterwards, we met the Murphys at the Irish Restaurant at New York New York. I had the lamb stew. It was really good. Then, we headed back to get ready for Love. The Beatles show really was amazing. There definitely Cirque related parts to it. I am not a huge fan of Cirque de Soleil, but the Beatles infused into it was quite good. The set cost over $100 million. The performers are so talented. It was very neat. Sometimes I don’t find the Cirque stories to have story lines, but, in this case, you could see the beginning of the group to the end. The beginning started in WWII where the scene was being bombed. I think there was so much going on though, that I became really tired. I barely could stay awake. As we walked out of the theater, we saw Coach Ferentz on the tv speaking to the announcers about the Iowa win. (I thought there was no chance Iowa would beat Michigan, I didn’t even bring a Iowa shirt to wear just in case.)
Yesterday, we took it easy. We went to the Linq. We went to a really neat bath shop where soap is shaped like donuts, cakes, etc. We ate a little breakfast at Paris. Then, we walked around the Shops at the Miracle Mall and ate at Earl of Sandwich. Andrea and I went back to get ready for the race.
We went to Harrah’s to catch the monorail. We took the monorail to the MGM and walked to beginning of the race line. Snoop Dog was performing. I didn’t think he really was appropriate for the race. I also didn’t hear the national anthem before starting. We started running South around 5:15 p.m. Then, we turned and ran down the strip starting at Mandalay Bay. We ran all the way down to the Stratosphere and around downtown. In downtown, we were able to see the Pawn Stars place where the tv show is filmed. I thought they were going to be mad at us taking pictures, but one worker asked if he could take our picture. We saw many wedding chapels and ran back to the finish line. The race wasn’t the best as so many people were walking 3 or 4 to a row and not properly pulling over to the right hand side. It was annoying running horizontally. Later, we ate at California Pizza Kitchen.
Today, we ate breakfast at the Mirage and headed to the airport. I took Dad and Andrea to the airport for their flight to Des Moines. I picked Tom and Cindy up and we drove to Valley of Fire State Park and we even stopped at the snow cone place Dad loved in August. We made it to Zion National Park. It was about 3:30 p.m. when we arrived, but we really had enough sunlight. It was amazing for a variety of reasons. The fall trees were really pretty and the traffic was down. We were able to drive the loop instead of taking a bus. We saw so many deer. I walked a little ways to the Narrows and saw more deer. We ate at the Zion Lodge where I had a buffalo burger again. After eating, we went back to Springdale and returned to Las Vegas. I dropped them off and headed to the airport. I am at the airport. I am pretty tired, so I am hoping I can sleep on the way home.