Taking on New Adventures

After our great experiences seeing the Eagles and No Doubt at The Sphere, Chuck and I were intrigued by the videos we had been seeing of the Kenny Chesney concerts. So we started looking at dates and ticket prices, and booked tickets for the last night of his residency.

We also found a great deal on both the flight and hotel so figured it was fate to head out there to not only check out some music, but also see some of the newcomers to the NBA. While planning our trip, we figured now was as good a time as any to finally rent a car and venture out to Hoover Dam.

Here’s the recap:

Saturday started off with a 8am ET flight to Vegas and we landed a little earlier than planned. We cabbed it to the hotel and were able to check in early. After a brief rest, we made our way to the Arts District to hit up a few breweries and eat some lunch. It was pretty chill and we were able to check out a new (to us) brewery as well.

We headed back to the hotel to get ready and walk to the Venetian to do our pre-concert food and drinks and Smith & Wollensky. Then we made our way to The Sphere and grabbed our seats to settle in for the show.

Kenny Chesney is as good, if not better than, I remembered. It has been about 20 years or so since I’d seen him in concert and he was absolutely excellent. He played 30 songs and while there were a few early ones I wish he had on his set list, he really did play everything I loved. Tons of energy, great band and the visuals were the best I’d seen at The Sphere of the 3 shows we’ve gone to!

Sunday: We did our normal wake up and walk to grab breakfast and coffee before getting ready and taking a cab to UNLV to go to the Pelicans’ Summer League game. It was a blast and I ran into an old CNN colleague there. We also saw another game and enjoyed checking out the various displays of trophies and photos the NBA had out. It’s just a well run event for the fans. Kudos to the NBA.

On Monday, we got up early and got ready to get our rental car and head east to the Hoover Dam. It was a shorter drive than expected (about 45 minutes) and we spent about an hour and a half walking around the area. It was super cool and I’m glad we did it early, before the heat of the day settled in.

On the way back, we stopped at a few overlooks along Lake Mead, drove through Boulder City and then made our way to Red Rock Canyon. We spent a lot of time in the Visitor’s Center there before doing the 13 mile scenic drive there. We stopped a lot to take photos and check out the trails. It was too hot to try and hike but we definitely want to try those out at some point.

Tuesday was a pool and relax day, which was nice. We walked around some as well and checked out the Bellagio Conservatory and some other sites we enjoy along the way.

We got to eat at Eataly a couple of times, once for dinner and once for breakfast, as well as grabbing a drink at the Chandelier Bar at Cosmo, which is a fave. Gordon Ramsey’s Steakhouse in Paris Casino was a new experience for us and really great and we always love Bavette’s in ParkMGM.

Overall, this was a great trip to start off the month and we really enjoyed some of the new experiences we were able to have.