Yeah, so it has been more than five months since our trip to Las Vegas… Oops. I have been so busy catching up on client work that some of my personal posts had gotten put on the back burner! I’m so excited to say that we LOVED Las Vegas. The Strip itself is a whole world of its own, but outside The Strip + Old Vegas, the outskirts of the town are actually really nice. We stayed at the Mirage for half of the trip, then stayed with some friends in their suburban home for the other half. We were able to see both sides of Vegas and ended up saying out loud, “I think we could live here!” Hmmmm, we’ll see…
I shot some film on my grandfather’s old camera during this trip, and only used my digital camera for my hired work. So these are mostly iPhone and 35mm film snaps. Anywho. Here are some fun things we did:
Old Vegas was perhaps our favorite area for betting. It’s a little rougher, a little grungier, but equally as fun! It’s more along the lines of what you think Vegas is, if that makes sense. There’s also one of the two old-fashioned, 25 cent, horse race betting machines left in Old Vegas. We didn’t get to play the other one, but this one was so fun + kitschy.
Vegas has an open container law, so you can purchase an alcoholic beverage + walk outside with it. We ended up going to Taco Bell on the Strip and had the BEST meal lol. We both ordered our food and alcoholic slushies, ate, and then walked around the strip with our slushies. It was such a small, but fun thing to do! This was also the night we stopped to watched the fountain show at The Bellagio. They played Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and put on such a cool show. People get kinda territorial, though, and claim their spot early for the fountain shows. It’s a little silly, but to each their own, I guess.
We rented a car for our trip, so that allowed for us to get around super easily. We wanted so badly to go to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, but when we arrived, it started to storm annnnnd we found out we would have had to pay like $100/person to get to the actual rim. Sure, we were a little bummed, but we ultimately decided that we would rather plan a whole other trip to the South Rim, the more popular rim, sometime in the near future, and see it for real then. Still SUPER COOL, though. The drive was beautiful, I snapped a cool rainbow ^, and on top of it all, we cannot wait for it to really blow our minds.
We also ventured out to Lake Meade and The Hoover Dam. This part was really fun/cool/mind-blowing/crazy/all the things massive. It’s such a huge structure and it kinda takes a minute to take it all in. (I‘ve heard this about the Grand Canyon, too.) We loved stopping here for a while and would love to go back again!
While out in Las Vegas, we ended up shooting our friends’ engagement photos in Red Rock Canyon. I believe it’s less than a half-hour away from the strip, but it is oh, so gorgeous and worth the drive anyways! You can see their desert engagement session here.
If you’re not convinced, Las Vegas is a pretty cool place. It’s more than drunk people and casinos, but it does have those things, too. Haha. There are actually tons of things to do for people of all ages!