Greetings from Las Vegas! This is definitely the easiest city we've been to. The last few days were incredibly fun. High Sierra was totally different than anything else we've done on this trip. I heard someone say that 17,000 people were there this year. We camped in an area called Hillside, which as you can guess, was on the side of a hill. We camped on a small patch of land that was probably on a 25-30 degree slope. We would have slid out at night if it wasn't for the zipper. We did slide down as far as possible thought. Besides the slope it was a good spot. It was shaded so we didn't need the canopy (there wouldn't have been space for it anyway) and it was close to the main stage, so because we didn't know many of the musicians, we could hang out at the tent and just listen instead of standing in the heat at the shows. We did actually go to shows, but usually just for a song or two. The festival was at a county fairgrounds and there was plenty of camping set-ups and other crazy things to look at, so Alicia and I spent a lot of time just walking around and stumbling upon music. We had to park the car about a mile away from the campsite so we were limited to what we could bring in, so we ate from the venders. The food was pretty healthy and had remarkably portions. I was expecting to get raped by the food venders but it was more like being molested. The headliner Friday night was a band called STS9. They were described as Jam-tronica. They were awful in a way that gets people together and totally took over anything else going on to the point we were surprised that anything else was going on anywhere else...and that anyone else could have been doing anything else except being consumed by this loud, repetitive music. Ben Harper was much more enjoyable the next night. We also saw some firedancers with batons and hula hoops and whips, etc that were on fire. That was awesome! High Sierra was a lot like DragonCon, except in the woods.

After leaving the festival we stopped for a few hours at Lake Tahoe and relaxed on the beach for a few hours. It was a little hot but the water from still pretty cold. It was a nice break after the festival. We planned to camp at Walker Lake in Nevada but when we got there we weren't even sure if the campgrounds were open. There was no information on the information sign and no one else was camping. It was also right on the highway and there were no trees. We drove on to Hawthorne and stayed at the El Capitan and lost $6 on the slots.

The next morning we got up and drove to Vegas. We're staying at the MGM Grand. The hotel/casino is much like being at a festival. Everywhere you walk there's music and there's plenty of things to amuse you without leaving the hotel. Being here feels like a real vacation. I'm kind of sad to leave here tomorrow but everything except for the room is really expensive, so it's probably not a bad thing we'll be back at a National Park tomorrow.

No pictures this time.