Happy Birthday Month to these two!!!
They completed the Little Library
And it's all ready for visitors!
We even got our 'official' plaque
We had also had the final niece (and her family) from Virginia come stay with us for a weekend
We also took our bikes out for our first 2024 bike ride
And played lots of card games
We had to wait until the last week, but finally...it was BIRTHDAY TIME
Our little flower turned 13 and now we live we a teenager :)
And she even made us breakfast, so having a teenager seems pretty great :)
Next it was onto vacation!!!
Rose and I got some fresh toes...
We filled our bellies with our final meal before leaving Pennsylvania
And then we were off!!
And then we filled our bellies with more burgers as our first meal in Nevada!!
The Salt Flats are 282 feet below sea level and we found some water to splash our toes in
There a sign about 1/2 way up the rocks showing where sea level would be
We were really lucky that they had recently been some rain and so there were flowers and green plants everywhere
Look at that view :)
We also saw some wildlife
We had a great time and I hope Justin enjoyed his birthday :)
We stayed a little after dark to see the night sky...this picture doesn't nearly show all the stars we could see, is was amazing.
Rose also follows 'the Las Vegas Donut Lady' and really wanted to get some of her donuts.
Saturday we started on our first adventure: Death Valley National Park
Rose was a terrific hiker climbing sand dunes and even spotted a dust devil.
We also learned about borax mining
We traveled to the lowest place in North America
And Rose became a Junior Ranger!
After a little sleep we were off again, this time to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. This was kind of a happy accident. I had thought we could do something else, but this place is amazing. Honestly I could just picture dinosaurs walking around this place, it felt ancient.
They did not disappoint!!
In the afternoon we took a tour of the Hoover Dam.
That evening we went out to the best dinner of vacation. I had amazing lasagna, tiramisu, and wine!!
We saw a very large Blue Heron
We got up early the next morning to head down the Colorado River on a kayak tour.
And had some duck friends
But all the Bighorn Sheep were too shy to come out....
In the afternoon we went into Las Vegas
We rode the Wheel and saw the Sphere
We walked thru the Flamingo
And we went to the M&M Store
We were not prepared for how large Las Vegas is and we did so much walking thru casinos. Rose and I have now been in the same number of casinos :) We did enjoy checking out all the bathrooms and agreed that Paris was the best.
For our final day we took a road trip to Utah and visited Zion National Park.
Since Zion is so popular they have a tram system to get around.
We did the riverwalk hike out to the narrows
This has been a bucket list park for me and I am glad to share it with my family.
And we adopted this little guy since I didn't get to see any Bighorn Sheep, we adopted one :)
Then vacation was over...so we'll end the month with some of the cute Rose pictures I get from Justin when he drops her off for school
