Las Vegas Is Awesome, Part the Fourth

On our first full day in Las Vegas, we decided to just do a general tour of the town, so the three of us (myself, the husband, and the beautiful Elizabeth) toddled off for our first adventure.

Well, the two of them toddled.  I scooted in my rented wheelchair.  I was a bit of a terror at first - electric wheelchairs are not necessarily as easy to steer as one might assume, and Las Vegas is surprisingly wheelchair-unfriendly.  They have lots of escalators and moving walkways and elevated walkways so that you can get over streets, but wheelchairs are (quite reasonably) not allowed on the first two, and the elevators to the latter are not always as convenient or as roomy as one could wish.  Most doors were very narrow - barely wide enough to scrape one's chair through if it was aimed exactly right - and in most cases there were no electric door-openers, so that one had to have a companion to open the door in order to gain entrance at all.  And that's if you can actually find the elevators or stairless doors - Caesar's Palace, for instance was pretty much impossible to get into.  I'm sure there must have been one door that wasn't flanked by stairs, but we walked completely around it and were unable to find it.

That said, I'm very glad I rented a chair, as I wouldn't have gotten more than a block otherwise.  As it was, we walked from Mandalay Bay to Caesar's Palace, and all points in-between.  We saw lions,

and we saw Lions...

We saw large impressive sights,

And sights that were more inspiring close-up...

At the end of the day, we did find that Las Vegas does have at least one handy wheelchair-friendly service, which is their handicapped taxi fleet - it was cheaper and faster to get a wheelchair-accessible taxi to take us all back to our hotel than it would have been for us to take the monorail.

That night we took Elizabeth to the buffet at Studio B, which was counted a great success.  Once again we waddled back to the hotel, completely sated and ready for bed.

The next day was spent in exploring Las Vegas' surrounding environs.  After picking up picnic fixings at Whole Foods, we took off in our rented car.  First we went to the mountainous desert area of Red Rock Canyon.

It was a beautiful day.  Scott got a chance to commune with a few wild burros, Elizabeth was able to pick up quite a few educational brochures for her kids at the visitor's center, and I was able to take lots and lots of photos, to which I will not subject you, faithful readers.  Let's just say that it was gorgeous and fascinating, and leave it at that.

We also went to the top of Mount Charles,

which Scott was able to navigate without anyone being overly concerned for life and limb.

All in all, it was a perfectly lovely day.  

We arrived back at the hotel, satisfied, but a bit sad to know that our friend was going to be gone when we got up in the morning.  Luckily for our spirits, the message light was flashing on our phone, and we were about to get a wonderful surprise...

to be continued!