To Las Vegas – which Neil tells me I have to see before I die. A long ride with a few hot sorties from the car for water etc – the temperatures climbing into the 90s, which is difficult for us Brits more used to the lower 50s. Again the scenery before and around the Hoover Dam was breathtaking – I didn’t know I had any breath left after the Grand Canyon. We didn’t stop to look at the dam, but we could see the lake was a lot lower than it had been. We heard about water being sold off to private companies who were then selling it off to other states leaving this area with very little. I think it has been rectified a bit – they are getting water from higher up but it cant last, can it? Like the snow dome that has been built in Dubai for people who are not content to do snow sports in areas of the world that have real snow and ice. They want to do snow sports in areas that don’t have it too -desert areas, so a dome has been built for them. It beggars belief.

Later we check in to the Las Vegas HIX and get in touch with Bonnie and Laurie – the two ladies who started www.neilinnes.org and who have become personal friends. Laurie had arranged a treat for us – a restaurant next door to the Liberace Museum, a crazy, inspirational building, designed by the man himself. Sadly it is now closed through lack of public interest so that soon no-one will know who this flamboyant, mega-star was. Did think later that if I laid on the ground and Neil stretched up, I could have taken a photograph of him playing the piano on top of the building, but I had my whites on and the washing machine at the Vegas HIX was broken. The building gave us a taste of things to come in Vegas. We had an Italian supper and somehow didn’t stop talking right through the meal. Then Laurie drove us through the night-shiny scintillating Strip. What can you say. I was like a child, my eyes as big as saucers. Huge fountains leaping fifty feet into the air, colours running up and down like spiders. Las Vegas had seemed fairly empty till then – I had even asked Laurie where all the people were, and now we found them, thousands of them, wandering as light and sound -struck as I was. Impossible to describe. Later Laurie dropped us off at the hotel and we tried to sleep, images of pirate ships and palm trees floating past the statue of Liberty. Thank you Laurie – that was an amazing evening.

Drive the strip yourself here on YouTube and you’ll get the idea!