North to Nevada

 Another day, another hotel, another breakfast we have to wake up for. All the places we've stayed at have included breakfast which has been great. Except you have to make sure to get to the dining room by a certain time which we struggle with. Our latest hotel promised us a "real" free breakfast, so we were curious to see what a real one was as opposed to "unreal".

Turns out we had a choice of three breakfasts, served to us by a waitress (tip expected), with real crockery and cutlery rather than the paper plates and plastic cutlery which haspreviously horrified me the whole time (because of the environmental impact).

We only had a couple of hours to drive to Las Vegas, so decided to check out  the historic part of Kingman on the way out. Well that took at least three hours! Jason and I had fun shop hopping between the antique shops, thrift shops, patchwork shops and pawn shops (me the patchwork, Jason the pawn). It was all the more fun as it was so unexpected.

Cute quilt shop

This is what you do when your parents are shopping at antique shops!

This antique shop was next to....

.....this quilt shop

We finally left Kingman and grabbed lunch on the way. When we crossed the border to Nevada, we went back in time again and reset our watches.
A stop at Hoover Dam was on the plan and well worth having a look. We did the Dam wall tour which took us inside the dam wall and also showed us the power plant that produces much of the electricity for the South West.

Memorial Bridge

Memorial bridge spanning the
Colorado River

Power plant

Art Deco detail in the floor of the power plant

Hoover Dam at dusk

As usual, we left at dusk and close to closing time. In our defence, the sun does set quite early here (4.30ish), and we are often caught unawares with the short days.

It was just a quick drive through Henderson to Las Vegas where it was too good an opportunity not to visit yet another quilt shop (my last I promise). This was by far the best. They even had a water feature to promote spring!

Water feature

"Quiltique"

As we drove toward Vegas, we were dazzled by the lights which never fail to amaze. I'm not a huge fan of Vegas, but you have to admit it's another world. This is my third visit, and Jason's fifth. We are staying off the strip in an attempt to have a more "normal" experience of Vegas if that's at all possible. It is very appropriately named Sin City and looking at it through your teenage daughters' eyes gives you a different perspective. We booked into our Air bnb accommodation and settled in for dinner and a relax.

The lights of Vegas