Blake and Deb Far Away

Even if you aren’t fond of throwing your money away (i.e., gambling) the Las Vegas Strip is an interesting place. Many of the big casino hotels/resorts have themes that range from tacky (Excalibur) to elegant (Bellagio) to amazing (Venetian). We enjoy just walking through the various properties on the Strip to see the designs and décor while quickly passing by the smoky casinos, overpriced restaurants and luxury shopping that hold no appeal for us.   If we hadn’t actually travelled to the real places the resorts are meant to represent, we could almost convince ourselves that we were taking a mini world tour within the several blocks of the strip by visiting the Luxor (Egypt), New York New York, Paris, Caesar’s Palace (Rome), Bellagio (Lake Como), The Venetian (Venice), The Flamingo (Miami), The Mirage (South Pacific), Treasure Island (Caribbean), MGM Grand (Hollywood), and Mandalay Bay (the tropics). And then there are the street hawkers and mall touts fishing in the endless rive...

From Sedona a drive of about 5 hours brought us back to Las Vegas where we ditched the rental car and settled into our enormous hotel room – all 950 square feet of it, more than three times the size of the Nest, the 1954 trailer we are staying in back in Olympia.   Our hotel room even has a full kitchen so we can save the cost and inconvenience of constantly eating out. The Platinum Hotel and Spa is technically only a block from the famous Las Vegas Strip (although in Las Vegas the blocks are absolutely huge). But being right on the strip wasn’t important to us anyway since we aren’t gamblers or heavy drinkers or serious shoppers. We just came to Las Vegas to escape to escape to the sun for a several days, catch a few shows, and relax in a comfortable and affordable space where Deborah didn’t feel compelled to work on projects nonstop. We have seen three shows here. The first was Human Nature, a vocal group of white guys from Australia that, unexpectedly, specializes in Motow...

Sedona is not far from Jerome, just 28 miles to northeast on the other side of the Verde Valley.   The landscape here is gorgeous with towering red-rock buttes contrasting with deep green forests of juniper and pine.   Brilliant sunset skies just add to the splendor.   There are dozens of hiking trails but we only had time for a couple. I’d love to come back some day and explore more. The town of Sedona itself is tidy but fairly generic save for its wealth of art galleries and a predilection for all things New Age. So if you want to pick up some healing crystals, have your aura photographed or do a bit of “quantum lightweaving” then this is your place. The New-Age-inclined also claim that Sedona is home to some sort of spiritual energy vortexes (not vortices , the normal plural form of vortex).   I’m not a believer in such unscientific propositions, but I can certainly understand how the spectacular beauty of this area could inspire such mystical feelings in t...