The power went out this morning before the alarm was supposed to go off, and did not come on again until mid morning. Fortunately, my alarm clock had just enough battery backup to sound the alarm even though the display was not illuminated. It beeped 2½ times, which was enough to get us up and moving, then died and didn’t come back to life. It died valiantly, doing its job with its last ounce of energy!
(Update: After removing the backup battery and letting the clock sit for several days, I plugged it in and it did come back to life. This is good, because I have not found another clock like it!)
The car was loaded with our luggage, and as soon as the kids were off the bus after school, we were headed to Cleveland Airport. We had plenty of time to get checked in and get to our gate.
We had a TSA agent unpack one of our bags at the security check. Apparently, Bibles are suspicious-looking to the machines that scan the luggage! I suppose there may come a day when it is hard to sneak around with a printed copy of the Word, all the more reason to commit it to memory!
We arrived in Las Vegas around 9pm, grabbed our checked bags at the carousel and headed to the car rental counter. Since I am a “gold” member, we got to proceed directly to the car lot to pick out our car. We were walking up and down the rows, looking for one that would have plenty of trunk space and elbow room. As we were just about settling on a particular car, another customer that had been watching us as he was loading into a Hyundai Sonata called to us and insisted that we take that car, he said it would be the most practical for our family. We thought that was a very kind thing for a total stranger to do, and we certainly appreciate his noble gesture. The Sonata was indeed a great car for our trip, with plenty of room for us and our luggage, and as an added bonus we got an average of over 40 mpg.
We had originally entertained the idea of driving through The Strip to see the lights on our way from the airport to our motel in Boulder City, but we were tired and hungry, and decided to just get dinner and check in to our motel.
When traveling, some people may gravitate toward familiar options. We don’t look for food choices that we can get at home. For dinner this evening, we stopped at a regional hamburger chain that we read about online and wanted to try. While it was good, it is probably nothing that we’d feel the need to go out of the way to have again….
We got to Boulder City, checked in and settled down in our hotel by 11:15pm. The plan is to spend tomorrow exploring the area.