To Boldly Go.............

The only reason that I wanted to come to Las Vegas was to see 'Star Trek – The Experience' at the Las Vegas Hilton. If I could have juggled it, we would have been in Las Vegas a month later for the Star Trek Convention that's happening there in August.

There. It's been said. I am a Star Trek Geek. And Las Vegas has the Star Trek Experience. The definitive Star Trek timeline and museum. Awesome rides – get assimilated by the Borg, and fight the Klingons. Backstage tours and photo opportunities all over the place. The inevitable merchandise shop as well.

We got the Admirals Pass. This is the 'all you can eat' ticket for the day. This gave us access to the museum and all displays, both rides, a backstage tour, a meal at Quarks, a whole bunch of photos, and a showbag full of goodies.

The rides are excellent – well on a par with Disney. The Borg ride uses 3D stuff and is seriously scary. Then to be able to do the backstage tour and see how it all comes together is fabulous. We got photos in the Captains Chair on the Enterprise, and Amy was assimilated by the Borg and makes a very scary (and I think cute) Borg. Unfortunately I can't post those photos here – I'll need to scan them and upload.

I've got a great t shirt collection as well as a few other bits and pieces from it. Well, maybe a bit more than that - I'll need to post it all home so that we don't have to haul it all over the US with.

We played the pokies. Amy, more so than me because I was, well, busy with Star Trek. Amy did really well and while I was touring backstage she won a few hundred dollars on a 1c machine.

It's summer here and so we expected it to be hot – but parts of California, Nevada and Arizona are having a heatwave. There are wildfires in northern California, and the temperature soars up over 100f on a daily basis. In Las Vegas it didn't drop below 110 f during the day, and never got below 85 f at night. So, we stayed indoors in the airconditioning of the Hilton.

From Las Vegas, we had no definite plans or destination - no where to be until July 19 when we hand the car back at Albuquerque. We planned to spend the two weeks in Arizona and New Mexico, but it looked like the heat in Arizona was more than we wanted to cope with. We looked at going through Utah, and Colorado to bypass Arizona all together.

But the Weather Channel changed all that for us. Flagstaff is in the mountains. According to the Weather Channel it's hot – but hot in Flagstaff is in the high 80s f.

So we checked out of Las Vegas, fired Ken up, and pointed ourselves towards Flagstaff in Arizona.