Nine nights in Las Vegas. Rehearsals two full days on the first weekend and then a further 6 hours before our competition. We were in the semi-finals of the Chorus competiton: 34 choruses, several with over 100 members. That took pretty much all day Thursday. The top 10 went into the Finals on Saturday afternoon. The Swedish chorus Rönnige with around 130 members blitzed the field the stunning performances. Wednesday and Friday were Quartet competition days. 44 quartets down to 10 for the finals. A quartet with 2 women who had visited Australia in September and coached us for a weekend then, and who visited with further hints and tips this last week, won overall so we were very excited for them. I don’t have any photos of any of that – photography banned.
We stayed at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino the hotels/casinos are all very large but MGM is absolutely huge. In addition to 6000+ rooms, massive casino floor, numerous restaurants, several theatres (David Copperfield, the illusionist, has his own theatre and performs every day), huge arena-auditorium seating over 8000 , huge conference centre etc etc and between the hotel and conference centre centre is the large garden and pool complex with several pools and a moving ‘river’ around 400m long in a winding circular course that was much fun (though didn’t take the camera the day I did that.
I did manage a quick foray onto the Strip.
The Theme hotels are still there: Excalibur, New York New York, Paris, Bellagio (though I didn’t get to see the famous fountains this trip). In the last ten years, the main change I noticed were that the big vacant lots on the strip have been built on, and behind the old hotels have been built tall glass towers with more accommodation and hotels, rather overpowering the original scale.
On Monday, four of us hired a car and ventured 20km west to Red Rock Canyon National Park, in the Mojave Desert. The section most accessible is a broad valley with hills on three sides. White limestone Rock had been overlain with newer red sandstones, but a geological fault forced the limestone on top of the red sandstone through the area. We took a walk towards the fault line but our time ran out and we didn’t get the full way. Nevertheless an interesting walk though the desert. Thankfully not too hot!
travellingkathy 
The last four photos are more like it. I would not travel to see the Strip
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Hi Kathy, it’s a different world! You seem to be enjoying it however. Did you attend the Trump/Clinton production? Warming up here, Bgo club relay at w/end, had to sprint to outrun the plague of mosquitoes! Enjoy the rest of your trip. D&P
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