Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 8 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We woke up really early to get downstairs, check our bags, and get through security in time for the 5:30am boarding of our flight from Tampa to Las Vegas. Thanks to our TSA PreCheck status though, we were sitting at our gate with almost 30 minutes to spare.

The flight to Vegas was uneventful and by 7:30am (Nevada time) we picking up our rental car for the week (a black Mazda CX5) and driving out to the Strip. After a quick family photo in front of the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign we headed southeast to the Hoover Dam. It was the second time for me, since I had just come out two months ago, but it was no less amazing. It was, however, slightly hotter! Summer in the desert is no joke. Back at the Strip, we went to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill in Ceasar’s Palace for lunch and then walked down Las Vegas Boulevard taking in the sights. My daughter and I rode the Big Apple Express roller coast at New York New York which was neat but in the heat of the day the hot air pretty much slammed into you, not refreshing at all.

We left Vegas in the late afternoon, heading west on I-15 towards Los Angeles. Traffic was fine except for the backup at the agricultural inspection station. We tried Del Taco for dinner since we had heard good things about it but were sorely disappointed and ended up grabbing Starbucks instead. There was also one scary moment, on CR-18, where we thought we were going to run out of fuel and barely made it to a gas station. The rest of the night’s drive was fine, although we were getting tired from the long day considering we started at 1:30am PDT. We safely reached my wife’s sister’s place in Simi Valley and were dead asleep by 10:30pm.

9 more days to go!