Lulu was asleep under the bed while I was quietly working at home.
All of the sudden, I heard a thunder in far, then huge rain drops started to fall.
I love the smell of desert rain, so refreshing!
Our patio looks more beautiful in rain, with such vivid colors!
We went back to Caesars to walk around in the Air Conditioning. The mall was busy and full of tourists. There is a fairly new Italian place right next to the Fountain of the Gods. It is loud with the running water. This place does have atmosphere. The food was better than I expected. The menu is just your typical Italian standards. Lots and lots of clams in the linguine. The Lasagna was still al dente and not a reheated mush (as typically found). The Eggplant could have been thicker but overall not too bad. The service was slow but we were not in a hurry.
Birthdays mean one thing around here: Food. One thing that is not commonly found on menus is the classic Beef Wellington. It is hard to make because you have to bake the filet inside a pastry sheet where you cant poke or prod it to tell how done it is. Chef Gordon Ramsey is famous for this and we happen to have 4 of his restaurants in town. (along with all the other FoodTV personalities)
The Pub and Grill is inside the wonderful Caesars complex (my favorite casino). The food and service was good, but the bill did reflect that. Casinos are expensive and you are paying for Gordon’s name.
Overall we would have to agree that the Beef Wellington across the street at the Paris Eiffel Tower was better in looks, taste, size, and sides. Plus you can watch the Bellagio fountains. Thank you for a fun birthday evening
The small town really puts on a big show for the 4th of July. The rotary club puts on a pancake breakfast followed by a parade and vintage plane fly over. The planes fly in small groups and go right over the main street.
The parade is unique in my experience as there are wet and dry floats. The dry floats are your typical entries of horses, marchers, classic cars and special interest groups. The wet floats have water tanks on board. The last 2 blocks turn into a giant water fight with the floats firing water at the crowd and the crowd shooting water at the drivers. I have made the mistake of walking back from the store after the parade ended and had buckets of water thrown on me.
The park then puts on a 30 minute firework show. They have a DJ pumping out crappy pop music and big crowds on the grassy areas. We watched from down by the airport this year which avoided the traffic and loud PA speakers.
We drove to Yellowstone last week. NV>AZ>UT>ID>MT>WY and back for over 2000 miles. We rented a Mazda from National and stayed at a Best Western at the West Entrance.
I knew about Old Faithful that blows every hour or so but I did not know that there are hundreds of other geysers, vents, and springs. It is a huge park and we only saw a small part of it. You could spend weeks here. Some springs are constantly boiling and venting. Some geysers go off regularly throughout the day. Some are unpredictable and go off every 100 years. Some smell like steam and others reak of sulfer. Yellowstone gets swarms of small earthquakes causing some to speculate that the magma below could erupt at any time.
We saw buffalo, a small black bear, elk, and deer. We did not see any moose or wolves. I expected to see more rabbits and rodents than we did – maybe the wolves are to blame.
It was nice to see S and T up in Bozeman. Thanks to K and A for watching Miss Lulu.
Below are photo albums broken into categories hosted at Shutterfly (click on picture to open in new tab (if on phone you may have to hold down on picture, select open in new tab/private tab)).
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