BlogPaws Las Vegas (Part One)

Last week, me and the dogs took a road trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for the BlogPaws conference taking place just outside the city. When I first got a ticket for the conference, I debated if I should drive the 16 hours down, or fly. If I flew, it would obviously be much faster, but I would have to leave the dogs at home, have to stay in a hotel, and would have limited space for bringing stuff home with me. By driving, I spent about the same amount on gas as I would have on a plane ticket, but was able to bring the dogs along with me for the trip. We also were able to camp, rather than staying at a hotel, which I really enjoyed. Lake Las Vegas Bay campground was only 10 minutes from the hotel where the conference took place.

The view from our campsite on Thursday morning.

Compared to Oregon, Nevada is dry. This shouldn't be a shock, and it wasn't one to me. But it was kind of amazing to me just exactly HOW dry Nevada was. Previously, my only time in Nevada was limited to a few hours in the Las Vegas airport between flights. Driving out of Oregon, through Northern California, then down the western edge of Nevada through the desert was a long, dry, windy trip. Luckily, the weather was clear and around 85 during the day, which isn't nearly as hot as it can get there.

I arrived at the BlogPaws conference on Wednesday evening before heading out to the campground. We arrived at the campground after dark and quickly set up the tent and went to bed. The conference didn't officially start until mid day on Thursday, so I spent Thursday morning hanging around the campsite with the dogs. I moved our tent to a different campsite (the one I picked the night before had no daytime shade trees) and we went on a few short walks and one short hike around the camping area. I tried to reach the river I could see in the distance, thinking we might at least be able to see some real greenery there. Unfortunately, there ended up being a cliff between the campground and the river, with no good trail options that I could find to get down there. The dogs stayed on leash, since it is a national park, and when I saw the cactus and other plant life, I was glad of it. My dogs aren't used to pointy plants and might have done something stupid if they were off leash. Not to mention the risk of snakes and scorpions if they were to stick their noses under rocks or into holes.

The dogs, playing with an empty water bottle, in front of our tent

As the day warmed up, me and the dogs set up a chair in the shade and spent most of the rest of the morning reading. The shade was actually quite pleasant, as it was windy enough to keep plenty cool. I did wet Koira down once, after getting back from our short hike to find the river, as she has more problems cooling down than Pallo. We did meet a fellow blogger who was also staying at the campground during the conference, and walked around the campsite with her for a little bit, looking for a third blogger who was supposed to be staying there as well.

Koira doesn't believe in getting up early in the morning during trips.

Of course, I had big intentions before heading down that I would see some sites on the way and while I was there. Full disclosure, I ended up driving down to the strip in Vegas once, Friday evening, driving down part of it, then returning to our campsite without even getting out of the car. And other than that, we saw gas stations and rest stops along our route. The petroglyphs I wanted to see ended up too far out of our way to be worth it once I decided not to stop at Crater Lake (where the weather was supposed to be 40 degrees and cloudy). I have to face facts- I would much rather just drive through without stopping places. Stops are work, no matter how neat the place is that I plan on stopping at.

Now, this post is already pretty long and I haven't even really gotten to the part about the conference yet! So I'll leave it here for now, and post the rest later.