Free Stuff is Good. Pools are great!

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that my husband and I visited an incredible pool in Nevada for free. Yes, completely free entrance to a pool on a hot and sunny day. It was like winning the pool lovers lottery I tell you, and I do love spending time at the pool.

Days before leaving Colorado, I researched casinos that allowed non-hotel guests entrance to their pool. As far as I know, most (there are a few exceptions) Las Vegas casinos require that you are a guest of the hotel in order to enjoy their pool. The researcher in me was discouraged that I had not found a pool we could use as visitors, but my husband saved the day and told me about a casino south of Las Vegas, called the M Resort, that allows people to pay an entrance fee and use their pool. I was sold at "pool". My husband browsed the M Resort website and found that women over 21 get into the pool for free, and men pay a fairly small entrance amount ($10-15) to use the pool. Upon arriving at the pool entrance, the employees told us that the entire weekend was free for everyone, men and women. I mean, combining free and pools is like winning the lottery twice! Needless to say, we were pretty happy with our free day at the pool, which actually turned out to be not so free after a couple buckets of beer and some lunch. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

We relaxed at the M Resort infinity edge pool for most of the afternoon. The lack of crowds was a very pleasant surprise, and the deejay-mixed music created a fun pool atmosphere. Food and drink prices were surprisingly reasonable for Vegas standards too. We expected higher prices, but it's possible they are more competitive since the location is a far enough distance south of The Strip. Too bad their room prices seemed a bit high, because my husband and I agreed that we wouldn't mind staying at the M Resort over a Las Vegas strip resort some time. Our day at the M Resort pool was a nice way to start off our time in Nevada together.

I'll leave you with some pictures

from our day at the M Resort:

Happy Friday blog friends!

I'm Back... and with a Picture Sneak Peek

As you might know, I have been in Las Vegas visiting my husband for almost the past week. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with guest posting, not to mention I didn't leave myself enough time to schedule any blog posts before I left, but I am glad to be back with you all today! Please don't think that I left you for good. I would never do that. Hopefully you all had a great weekend, and I wanted to share with you a few pictures from my time spent visiting my husband in Nevada.

Later this week I'll go into detail about:

travel and airline "perks"

free entrance into an incredible pool

visiting the Hoover Dam and some "Damn" jokes

our ride on a world class roller coaster!

I hope you'll join me!

And I'm Off...

Las Vegas is one of those places that almost (notice I did say almost... you won't hear me complain about going again) stops being fun if you go too often, but I am thrilled of having the possibility of visiting the Hoover Dam this time! I guess that doesn't really count as Las Vegas though does it? Either way, I'm going to visit my husband who's still there for his job training! It's been about 2 weeks since I've seen him, and that is a little too long if you ask me. So off to LV to visit my favorite pilot.

I actually just got off of the phone with my husband, and he scolded me (in the nicest way) when I told him that I had to write a quick blog post before I went to bed. Blogger addiction, anyone?! It's 11pm here, and I have to be up at, oh, about 3am. He might be slightly worried that I won't wake up in time. The funny thing is, that even though I'm not a morning person at all, I always get up super easily (yes, even at 3am) when I have a plane to catch. There's some traveling blood running through my veins I tell you. If only I could figure out a way to make money traveling and writing about it. Goodnight blog friends! I just couldn't go to sleep tonight without a post for you all. I might have a blog addiction, but for now it's off to sleep.

Are there any places that you've visited too many times?

Does it start to lose the thrill after a while?

Do you have any vacation destinations that you never get sick of?!

Good Morning From the Sky

Yesterday at this time I was on an airplane over Las Vegas.

My husband and I took a little road trip out there (more on that later), and I flew back to Colorado on Frontier's first flight of the morning.

good morning sunshine

The morning sky and landscape were beautiful. I rarely have such great timing with flying, and the luck of snagging a window seat, where I get to experience a lovely sunrise. It's one of those really great things about flying that don't happen all of the time. The weather was clear and the sun was rising. Just lovely!

view from the sky

After takeoff, and snapping a few pictures of the sun rising over Las Vegas, I promptly fell asleep. Sorry there aren't more pictures of the morning flight, but I passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Do you enjoy the view from an airplane?

I hope you all had a great day yesterday and that you didn't struggle with too many Monday issues. (:

More Vegas and a Fountain Show

Hopefully you had the chance to check out some of my pictures from Las Vegas yesterday. I promised some more pictures and at least one video today. So here goes!

There are seriously too many things to do in Vegas. It can be a bit overwhelming. You cannot possibly do everything all in one trip, so don't even try it. (Unless maybe you're staying for a month or something.) There are tons of great shows, stores, restaurants, bars, hotels, casinos, etc. My husband and I don't really gamble, but we do enjoy a show now and then. We've seen three of Cirque du Soleil's shows: Mystére, The Beatles LOVE, and 'O'. We still love Mystére the best out of those three, but they're all great though! Another fun thing to do in Las Vegas is just walk around and enjoy the sights. The casinos/resorts are incredible, and there are so many fun things to see at each and every one of them. Just about every casino has some sort of attraction, and quite a few have free things to enjoy too!

I came armed with a camera!

After four visits to Vegas, the Bellagio fountains (which are free to view) are still one of my very favorite things to see in Sin City. It obviously doesn't take much to please me. Out of everything to do in Vegas, I just want to watch the free fountain show at Bellagio.

* There's a bar called the Fontana inside the Bellagio, and it has an incredible view of the fountains... try and get a seat outside there at night to watch the fountain shows.

The Bellagio fountains in action:


* sorry it's cut a little short, but you get the idea. (:

We stayed at the Bellagio on a past trip to Vegas, and it's a great property with wonderful rooms. The pool is nice but pretty quiet due to the amount of older people who seem to stay there. A major downside to the Bellagio is the price to stay there and the limited price options when it comes to dining on the property.

* we had a view of the airport, how appropriate *

We stayed at the MGM Grand on this trip, and we were really pleased with the price of food and drinks (minus the pool bar prices). Even room service was reasonably priced. The one major downside to the MGM was its location at the far southern end of The Strip. If you wanted to walk and see the resorts and casinos at the north end, it's quite a hike! 

Either way, we occupied ourselves with plenty of activities at the southern end of the Vegas Strip. The New York, New York has a great dueling piano bar which entertained us for most of our first night in town. The roller coaster there was fun too. (Nothing like Cedar Point, but not bad.) Overall, the MGM was nice but we would prefer something a little closer to the middle of The Strip. Maybe next time we'll stay at the Venetian... has anyone stayed there before?

On this trip to Vegas we also met up with John and his wife Christy. John will be joining my husband as a pilot new hire in their training this month, and it was really nice to meet him and his wife! The four of us walked The Strip, watched the Bellagio fountains, and ended our night with a couple of drinks at the MGM. I look forward to seeing more of them and possibly getting together in Vegas again soon. (:

We had a fun time in Las Vegas but still want to go back with a group of people and rent a pool cabana sometime!
Who's in?! (:

Viva Las Vegas!

Goodbye snowy Colorado...

... hello Las Vegas!

Just last week my husband and I spent a couple of nights in Las Vegas. Long story short, my husband had planned on attending an aviation job fair in Vegas but was hired at an airline in the meantime. We kept our plans to head to Vegas anyway though, because for my birthday a couple months ago he bought me tickets to see Cirque du Soleil's 'O' at Bellagio. Even though he was no longer going to attend the job fair, we had fun and celebrated him getting a position at another airline. Either way, the trip worked out for us and was a chance for us to spend time together before my husband heads off for 6 weeks of training for his new job. (Yes you read that correctly... 6 weeks apart, yuck!)

Since we flew standby, we aimed for the very first Frontier flight to LV. The first flight is usually the best chance when 'non-reving'. Fortunately there were tons of open seats, and we managed to land a couple of seats together rather easily. This early flight put us in Vegas far in advance of our check in time at the MGM Grand, so we just checked our bags with the bell hop and explored 'The Strip'. I never get sick of walking around The Strip and seeing everything that Vegas has to offer. I've been to Vegas 4 times now, and I always see something new. While waiting for our check-in, we walked through City Center, the Bellagio, and Caesar's Palace. The weather was perfect for walking around, because it was not too hot but warm enough for a comfortable dress and sandals. Yay!

I hope you enjoy this picture tour of our first day in Vegas!

There is never a shortage of things to do or see in Las Vegas, but I could imagine it might get a little old if you lived there. Have you been to Vegas and visited any of the places in these pictures?

Join me tomorrow for more about our trip to Las Vegas. I'll be sharing more pictures and videos too. (:

Coming Up

Next week, I'll have more to show you from our quick trip to Vegas!

Things I hope to share next week:

• review of Cirque du Soleil's 'O' at Bellagio
• hopefully lots of fun pictures of the Strip, hotels, etc.
• maybe even a video or two

Hope you've had a great week!

Vegas Baby!

Recently, Nate and I were in Las Vegas for a a few short days. Both Nate and I have been to Vegas at least a few times now, and this time was sort of for work/play. Nate attended an aviation career fair, and I just tagged along for the ride. We stayed at the Palms Casino and Resort, which was pretty cool... and I say this because everything seemed to be a little cheaper there (possibly because it's not located directly on The Strip). The Palms also seems a little more hip than many of the casinos on the strip. I still think that Las Vegas is a lot more fun with a group of friends, but we still had a good time during our short trip there.

We arrived in Vegas without much trouble on standby... we only missed out on one flight. I got stuck on Southwest and Nate lucked out with Frontier and free TV! So we arrived at the Palms a little early for check-in, and the girl at the counter told us there were only rooms with 2 beds clean that early and no king rooms. Ugh. I guess that's what you get for flying standby and arriving too early. She gave us the key to our 8th floor room with two beds... and we open the door to a dirty room, so she lied... the rooms with 2 beds were not ready either. Ha! So we make our way back to the front desk where a young man helps us. He sincerely apologizes for us walking into a dirty room (it really wasn't a big deal), proceeds to whack away at the keyboard for a couple of minutes like his fingers were chickens pecking at their meal... and then checks us into a room with a king bed on the 30th floor, and he also gives us (by us I mean me) two passes to use the spa facilities! Score! I guess it pays to get checked into a dirty room. :)

View from our room in the morning... Vegas appears rather quiet in the a.m.

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Since I'm  sort of  really obsessed with Cirque du Soleil, and have been for a long long time, we saw one of their shows while in LV. We've seen Mystere, and since 'O' was not showing this time... we saw the Beatles Love. The music was great, the theater was unique, and the costumes and dancing were fun too. However, we both agreed that Mystere was more exciting, fascinating, and seemingly dangerous! Not that we disliked Love (although I did see Nate getting a bit bored after a while), we just expected more athletics and unbelievable stunts, etc. I am still singing Beatles tunes in my head though... "All you need is love..."

The waiting area outside of the theater for the Beatles Love was crazy fun! What would Vegas be without all of the lights and color?!

 I took a quick sneak picture (hence the fuzziness) of the show... you aren't supposed to photograph inside of the theater, but I'm b.a. like that  ;)

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In our hotel room, I read through a magazine filled with advertisements and articles for Vegas. I stumbled across an article for Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill. The article mentioned a drink called White Trash with Money, and I instantly decided that I needed one of those... so we went there! Talk about a classy white trash drink. White Trash with Money consisted of Chambord, sprite, sweet & sour, and Coors Light (it was supposed to be PBR.. I was sort of disappointed I missed out on that). It was a little too sweet for my tastes, but it was pretty good... and strong. Whew. We sipped our drinks out of mason jars while listening to the live band play country and rock&roll. Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill was a pretty good time!

Classy White Trash... with Money! ;)

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One thing that I always, always, always want to do in Vegas is watch the fountains outside of the Bellagio! The music is always fun, and the fountains are amazing. Not to mention... it's FREE to watch. Not many things in Vegas are free, so take what you can get!

Viva, Las Vegas! See ya Vegas, until next time. :)