Just in case you didn’t know you could….. you CAN leave comments! Wed love to hear from you! Just keep them nice as this blog is on business domain :) Nothing dirty or flirty :) LOL
I think I should get off to bed, I cant wait until tomorrow, we have COOL plans in store but you have to wait till then to find out what they are :)
Well today we got up early after a fantastic night’s sleep and we headed out in our little vibe to explore the desert around vegas. We threw the GPS system on and ended up at Hoover Dam. We skipped the dam tour but brought our cameras to shoot some photos. I won’t post too many here, but they will be show eventually (I promise!)
After that we went for a little scenic hike to check out some view of lake Meade. It was a hot sunny day with beautiful clear blue skies. A perfect day for a walk in the desert! We found some cute lizards and chipmunks and birds, and of course we snapped a few shots :)
When our desert trip ended we headed back down to the famous Las Vegas Strip to register for the WPPI convention at Bally’s. Afterall, that IS what we came here for ;O) It was a bit of a gong show finding the registartion room as they don’t like to label things very well in the WPPI organization, lol, But after we grabbed our convention gear and passes we felt official. There are a TON of photographers here and everyone in Bally’s and Paris seemed to be wearing the nifty blue name tag lanyards.
Bally’s is across the street from the Flamingo, which just happens to be where we got married, so we headed over there to visit our wedding site. Upon poking my head into the indoor chapel to be nosey, I saw the minister tha married us standing there behind the counter! LOL. I asked him to come outside and take a photo with us and explained to him that he married us 5 years ago, he was super friendly (just as I remembered him) and he gladly popped outside for a photo! I only had my 20D on me so I threw it into autopilot mode and grabbed the nearest stranger, instructed her to just point the camera and push the button and away we went! Not the best photo, but still a great snapshot of a very cool moment for us!
After a night with very little sleep on a couch, a very early morning, and two airplanes, we have arrived!
Our first flight was on a rather small 50 seater jet that when boarding seemed VERY tight a bit scary, however, it turned out to be an awesome flight that was quick, smooth and quiet! We flew in to Salt Lake City around 10:30am and headed through a really packed airport over to another terminal to catch our connecting flight to vegas.
What I have realized is that the weather is always beautiful when you are above the clouds!
We flew into vegas on a larger plane, it was less smooth, but my nerves were all gone after the first flight so it was still great! We landed at noon and the sun was shining away, the palm trees and hot air were a welcome sight after a good week of Lethbridge wind and dirt.
After grabbing our luggage, we headed off to the car rental lot and picked up a sporty black pontiac vibe equipped with a neato GPS system, we drove to out condo and dropped off our stuff.
We eneded up heading over to the Mandalay Bay resort and Casino on the strip and visited the Shark Reef there, it was sweet, it took us about 40 minutes to walk through and we were really wishing we had the Canon 20D with us instead of the little point and shoot pentax optio :) I snapped lots of fun pix but I will post only one for now of the jellyfish, they were one of my favorite things to see. Did you know Jellyfish have no brains or hearts?
Hope
Well we are just in the final stages of packing and planning for our trip to the WPPI convention in Las Vegas.
We are driving to Calgary tomorrow and our flight leaves Calgary international airport at 8:30 on Friday morning, come noon we will be in Las Vegas and our fun will begin.
The wonderful thing about this trip is that not only are we going to learn all sort fo great new things, but we are going with the intention on upgrading a lot of our gear, including a new Canon 5D DSLR camera and a new Canon 30D DSLR camera. I am also looking at some new lenses including the 70-200mm 2.8L IS lens :) I have wanted that baby forever!
We will be updating this blog daily (well, that’s the plan!) and filling everyone in on the happenings of WPPI! We have 3 prints entered into the 16×20 print competition, judging is on the weekend when we arrive so Im quite excited to see what the outcome of that will be for us. We will definately post news and pix as things happen, we have a rental car so we plan on doing a bit of exploring (and shopping).
Stay tuned!
Hope