Week in the desert, part 1

Last week, as I've mentioned, I visited family in the desert. My seester and her husband arranged the bulk of the trip for me, as I had no idea what I was doing (so common a problem!).

When I arrived at McCarran International airport, I was stiff and sore already, from a three-hour flight in a cramped seat in coach (I was lucky, though. Nobody had booked the middle seat, so, while I had the aisle seat, I could also sprawl my left leg out into the space under the next seat, & my knee didn't cramp up the way it often does when I can't do my exercises every half hour).

Still, I managed to make my way to baggage claim, get my suitcase-in-a-suitcase, and get to a door to call my seester, to say I was here and where was she? After some confusion, I finally found the passenger pick-up curb (near the ill-marked parking access), and my brother-in-law drove us outward... we didn't feel quite like driving all the way to our hotel in Primm, so we played for an hour-plus at the gigantic Bass Pro shop just off the interstate. I believe we acted like tourists as we Gol-lee'd our way around the obscenely large displays. The single store was as large as our regional shopping mall -- and it had a second story which the Sandburg Mall lacks.

As I said, we played a while, then tried to find our way to the place we planned to meet my daughter and her family. First, we contended with crummy, slow traffic. Then, as we followed the advice of the GPS toy, we got lost. By the time we arrived for dinner, I was so nervous I could have chewed my fingers down to the elbows.

But dinner went fine. I wish it had lasted longer, and I wish I hadn't been so nervous I'd left my camera locked in the trunk of the car, but at least my seester got a few pics, & she promises she'll send me copies as soon as possible. I guess she even got a sort of the-Madonna-like shot of me and the baby and a bizarrely beatific expression on my face (bizarre because I don't often relax enough for such expressions, not bizarre because of the general circumstances).

By the time we got to our rooms at the end of the evening, it was nearly midnight, my time, and practically one o'clock by my seester's & BIL's time. The hotel was Terrible -- seriously. It was owned and operated by the people who run the Terrible's gas station chain. They were in the process of changing over from the Primm Valley Hotel and Casino to the new name.

But the accommodations were clean and, while not terribly pretty, they were comfortable and cheap.

view from the parking lot of our Terrible Hotel experience

We rose the next morning before dawn.