Go to Church in San Felipe, or Play in Vegas?

We are having breakfast in the church parking lot, which also serves as a basketball court.  I forgot to pack my dress, but of course no one minded.  What a treat!....both the breakfast and the Sacrament Meeting...which turned out to also be a testimony meeting....as it was New Year's Day.  We toasted 2012 with glasses of premium fresh-squeezed from a street vendor and gobbled up giant cookie-breads from the local paneria.  San Felipe had a new LDS chapel, sitting like a light up on a hill.  In fact, one of the members (a Catholic from the Bronx) told how it had drawn her inside where she found truth after truth and asked the missionaries to explain how that can be.  It turned out to be modern revelation through modern prophets.  This woman gave up everything, including her family (who rejected her and her baptism) to follow Jesus Christ. 

Luke 18:29-30 reads:  "There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting."

With a prayer for safety, and a carload of Chinese-Mexi food, we crossed the border at Mexicali (the only city in Mexico with a real "China Town").  Beggars worked the lines of waiting cars, so we shared our stir-fried and the rest of our pesos with them.

 Newel, the machine, drove straight to The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, where we were dazzled by rows of chandeliers and tanks of brilliant tropical fish.  Our new rooms were so posh we didn't want to touch anything.  So we just stared at the opulence and curled up in the most comfy beds we'd ever met.  It was the formula for perfect, instant sleep.

Monday morning was a bit chilly for a swim, so we started off with the hot tub.  That's Maya in the Tinkerbell suit.  She flew everywhere, even down the twisting, see-through water slide that zipped through the shark tank.  Here Daddy tried to keep up.

Amazing! Once we were warmed from the hot tub, it was into the pool to swim with the sharks. With your nose pressed to the tank it really was just like you were swimming with these giants...with no scuba gear required. Perfect for a claustrophobic. It was enthralling...really! Arden is at the firepit, getting some BTUs...then back to shooting the shark tank on the slide.

 

Engineer Newel had to get back to his project and Arden needed to get himself back in school... so what do we do without them? Why relax on the giant stuffed lounges and take pictures of shiny buildings and then climb them to get "aerial" views of downtown Las Vegas and the "original strip".

I struck gold!  "The Hand of Faith" was right in the lobby, all along.  This is the biggest nugget known at 61 lustrous pounds.  How did the Golden Nugget ever afford to buy it?  RU kidding?  Bob talked one gambler into quitting while she was ahead, but most seem to think their faith in their bets will make them winners.  Read more about this nugget here.  So did I gamble?  No.  But I did put money in a slot once on a field trip with some of my Earth Science students.  I was trying to give a lesson on what a waste of money it is, and the pull of the handle resulted in the sound of coins dropping and students laughing.

Crazy FUN in The FLORIDA KEYS...now that the storm is over!

Treasure hunting!... not exactly panning for gold.  But the sun came out!    Now it's time to clean up our beaches from all that the storm left behind.  Plastic of all sorts is the main trash item amongst the tonnage of sea grasses and coral that were uprooted by the churning waters.  But thanks to Bob's metal detector, there were coins for the collecting, too.  (You can order your own detector at good-deal prices from the Amazon.com link to the top-right!)  Beach-goers wanted to have some detector fun, too.  We offered to let them try it out, but they said they had to have their own.  Especially fascinating was how many dimes were in the sand offshore.  We're not sure why. 

      We survived the deluge and our campers are on the beach and doing what they came here to do. 

Hurray!  In the photo on the left, the birds have even joined in.          Ahhhh....the Florida Keys at their best.

Bob had been trying his best to get me to take up the fine art of snorkeling.  He'd say, "You have to see the coral beds..."  Well, sadly, today quite a bit of coral washed up from the storm and is bleaching in the sun.  I picked some pieces out of the smelly sea weed piles and made my own coral viewing area...and I didn't even have to deal with a mask filling up with water to view it.   >> sputter<<     >>sputter<<    Below are my films of an "undersea adventure" on Loggerhead Beach, Bahia Honda.

Flood inThe Florida Keys! Weather Report

October 17, 2011, brings another 24 hours of rain. Our RV is sinking in the quick sand, as Bob inspects our neighbor's new half-acre lake. We've got our rocking camp chairs set up under the Gumbo Limbo Trees, but there's no using them today. We've been watching NOAA radar images for days. Bahia Honda Key has been lit up in dark orange bands... Scary enough to stay home from church and skip the 7-mile bridge ride in a cross wind! The storm is just getting some real muscle when Bob says to grab our $1,200 Sony HDR-DX550 camera and wade out to take some footage. I don't know.... It's mighty wet out there....   Handycams don't like soakings.

Our host carts leave wakes?

 

Cars aren't supposed to leave a wake!

Here's a link to the NOAA Radar for The Keys: http://radar.weather.gov/radar_lite.php?rid=byx&product=NCR&loop=yes