Roadtrip – Vegas Style!

Here’s another  quick post with some pics from my trip to Vegas for WPPI.  I hope in the next couple days to have a few more up from my amazing class with Mike Colon and Ray Santana as well as the trip I organized to the Neon Graveyard as well as the trip to the Ghost Town later that evening.  I met some awesome people during this trip – some definite lasting friendships have been made (I hope!).  I also learned SO MUCH MORE than my sadly stolen D300 is worth.  It still burns a smidge – I won’t lie! – but I know that the value of what I came away from this trip with is priceless.  If the cost of the knowledge and friendships was the D300 so be it 🙂  Who’s coming next year?!

Sooooo – on with the trip!  My travel buddy Kelly and I left the Grand Canyon and headed back towards Vegas for the WPPI convention – along the way though we were hungry and could NOT pass up the chance to eat at the authentic (!) Roadkill Cafe!

 

I have to tell you all – the food was actually quite scrumptious and I would highly reccomend it!  The sweet spot was that it was also on Route 66 (whee!) next to an old facade of a mining town (not 100% sure if it is authentic but I think it is?).  So not only did we have a photo op with the awesomeness that the Roadkill Cafe was but there was some fun things to shoot next door as well.  This Ohio gal can’t complain about the weather either – blue skies and it was a sunny 80°!  This old car was my favorite thing next door.

Kelly took over the driving for a bit so I got to enjoy the rare luxury of being a passenger.  I’ve never been to Arizona before so I was quite taken with the bizarre landscape to behold.  I was especially fascinated with the random cows/steer that were fenced in along the highway.  Every now and again there’d be a sign for cows and they’d be there along the side of the road – no farm, no sign of human intervention – just cows, munching on what appears to be tumbleweed.  I had to take a picture of this bizarre thing… (at least to this girl who always sees her cows on farms!).

A bit further along and we decide to be tourists a bit longer and stop to take a picture of Lake Mead/Hoover Dam.  The pictures are pretty unimpressive of the Hoover Dam, I guess for some reason or another they don’t really allow vistas of the side with the huge wall of the dam – just the lake side.  So here’s a picture of the beautiful Lake Mead that butts up against the Hoover Dam (which trust me, is very unimpressive from this angle).

About an hour or so and a LOT of traffic later, we finally reached our destination and our new home for the week in Vegas – Paris!!!!  I was SO stoked to see the Eiffel Tower up close!  I had caught a glimpse of it during the landing of the plane but it was was more exciting to see up close and personal!