Freedom and Red (hot as fire) Rocks

Day 3: Monday July 19, 2010  Freedom and Red (hot as fire) Rocks
We dropped off my darling son at the airport for his flight home.  Then... freedom!!! We had breakfast at an Atlanta Bread Co. near the airport.  We drove out to Red Rock.  I think they are red because it is as hot as FIRE out there.  The ranger said no hiking, too hot.  Darn, I so wanted to hike out into the desert and die of heat exhaustion...  We toured the exhibit area, which was really nicely put together, very informative.  It's a fairly new exhibit with lookouts over the desert and red rocks.  Then we took the drive through the red rocks.  It was a nice drive through the desert.  We then headed back to Las Vegas and more touristy sightseeing. Lunch at the Mandalay Bay buffet.  Not as large as some of the other buffets, but the food was very good. After lunch we took the monorail and went to Luxor (pyramid shaped) and then to Excalbur.  It was very interesting walking through these hotels.  We then took the shuttle back to the Mandalay Bay where our car was parked. We went back to our hotel and went to the famous Flamingo hotel pool.  It's a pool and it's famous and we did swim in it.  After our refreshing swim we washed up and went down to the Venetian.  We walked through the mall area and had dinner at a quaint, family run Italian restaurant.  Very nice.  We then walked around the Venetian some more and then went to Walgreens... Oooh, Walgreens... bought a couple of things we needed and 1 souvenir.  Oooh, souvenir!!!  Then we walked across the bridge over Las Vegas Blvd.  We could see the Treasure Island show from the bridge and the Mirage volcano a little from the bridge.  We walked down to the Mirage and walked through the hotel.  We tried to find the volcano, but couldn't (no, I don't know how we could have missed a volcano, but we did) and we were too tired to keep looking.  We walked back to the Flamingo and that is the end of day 3.  Oh, by the way.  If you are wondering if we gambled. Yes we did.  When we were tired, we would look for some place to sit.  But, Las Vegas has no place to sit.  So we would sit at the penny slots and play for a little while and rest and cool off.  We didn't win anything.   We didn't spend too much money on our "sit and cool off fee"  People have told me that they bring you free drinks when you sit at the slots, but I was never offered any and didn't see anyone else get one either.  I guess we didn't sit and play long enough in one spot to partake of the free drinks.