Here's a short video clip of the volcano show that happens every 60 minutes nightly at The Mirage in Las Vegas. One of my YouTube friends from England, "Ajdpadbury" (Anthony), and I saw this   more...the other night.

The song I added is the circa 1967 hit "Fire!" by Arthur Brown . . . it's hard to believe it's already been 40 years!! since this song came out! GEEZ!, "tempus fugits"!! LOL  less

England YouTuber “Ajdpadbury” is my guest host on this video, about our visit to Hoover Dam, which sits on the border of Nevada and Arizona, not far from Las Vegas. The video also shows how construction   more...is progressing on the bypass highway that will one day speed motorists past Hoover Dam, instead of having to do the “snail paced” crawl across the dam that currently occurs on the narrow two lane road.

Hoover Dam was constructed between 1931 and 1936. It cost $165 million to build and took 4,400,000 CUBIC YARDS of CONCRETE!! The dam is 726.4 feet tall.

The Lake Mead water level “crests” at the dam at a height of 1,232 feet above sea level. The current water level is only at about 1,110 feet high. Rapidly expanding Las Vegas gets 90% of its water from Lake Mead. If the water level were to ever drop below 1,000 feet, then Vegas would be in HUGE trouble, since the water intakes for Vegas are set at that level. Here’s an interesting website that charts the water levels of Lake Mead: http://www.arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/index.html and here’s a website with more statistics about the dam: http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/dams/nv10122.htm

The song is “Trip Around the Sun” by Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride.  less

My England lady friend and I met up with YouTube friends Dominika (YTer "Nika441") and Anthony (YTer "Ajdpadbury") to ride on the London Eye, and wander around London for the day,   more...so we saw some great street performers at the Thames River area near the London Eye. It's also fun to look at the expressions of the people as they pass by this performer :)

The song is “Relax, Take It Easy” by Mika.  less

The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is located just a few miles west of Las Vegas and encompasses 197,000 acres within the Mojave Desert. Red Rock is an area of worldwide geologic interest   more...and beauty.

The most significant geologic feature of Red Rock Canyon is the Keystone Thrust Fault. A thrust fault is a fracture in the earth's crust where one rock plate is thrust horizontally over another. About 65 million years ago, it is believed that two of the earth's crustal plates collided with such force that part of one plate was shoved up and over younger sandstones. This thrust contact is clearly defined by the sharp contrast between the grey limestones and the red sandstones. The Keystone Thrust Fault extends from the Cottonwoood Fault (along the Pahrump Highway) 13 miles northward to the vicinity of La Madre Mountain, where it is obscured by more complex faulting.

Rock art within Red Rock comes in two varieties, petroglyphs and pictographs. The difference between the two types is the manner in which they were made. Petroglyphs were pecked into the surface of the rock. Pictographs were painted on the rock. In Red Rock Canyon a coating of dark "desert varnish" on lighter sandstone provides the perfect medium for petroglyphs, which are the most common of the two types of rock art found at Red Rock. If you want to discover some petroglyphs firsthand, the Red Spring area has a wide variety of different styles on the cliff faces and fallen boulders.

(The above information was taken from the following websites:
http://www.desertusa.com/redrock/ and
http://www.redrockcanyonlv.org/ )

The song is “Lost Highway” by Bon Jovi  less

YouTubers “LifeJourneyGuy” and England’s “Ajdpadbury” (aka Anthony) headed out from Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago to check out “Grand Canyon West” and the “Skywalk”. We had a GREAT time!!!! Here’s   more...the info on the skywalk from the official website (http://destinationgrandcanyon.com/skywalk.html):

“The Glass Bridge Construction of the Skywalk began March of 2004 and will open March 28, 2007.

“Upon completion, the Glass Bridge will be suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. On May 2005, the final test was conducted and the stucture passed engineering requirements by 400 percent, enabling it to withstand the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes (more than 71 million pounds). The bridge will be able to sustain winds in excess of 100 miles per hour from 8 different directions, as well as an 8.0 magnitude earthquake within 50 miles. More than one million pounds of steel will go into the construction of the Grand Canyon Skywalk.”

- - - - -

To get to and from the Skywalk, it requires you to drive on 28 miles of VERY dusty dirt road with sections of fairly deep gravel and “washboard” surfacing, so after again reaching the “land of paved roads”, I pulled over and wiped the dirt off my SUV, and we visited with two really adventurous Harley riders from Alaska who had done the dirt road on their big Harleys! I’ve been a motorcyclist for 38 years, but would only wanna do THAT road on a off-road type DIRT bike!!

No cameras of ANY kind are allowed ON the Skywalk, and it’s difficult (and becoming INCREASINGLY difficult) to even film the Skywalk while OFF the structure, so just be aware of that if you plan to visit this unique structure, because most of your memories of your visit will be IN your memory!! You can tho’ buy commemorative photos, taken by Skywalk employees, of yourself on the Skywalk, but, if I recall correctly, those photos start at around $26, so Anthony and I stood off to the side of the Skywalk, and used our camera zoom lenses instead! Also, it costs a minimum of $74.95 per person to walk on the Skywalk, so we considered it a “once in a lifetime” kinda experience, but the view FROM the Skywalk, and the view THROUGH the TOTALLY “SEE-THROUGH” type WALKWAY SURFACE of the Skywalk below your feet to the ground thousands of feet below was WELL worth it!, altho’ we noticed that quite a few people experienced a DEFINITE fear of heights once they’d look down and see “nothing” supporting them! LOL

The song is “You Can Go Your Own Way” by Chris Rea.  less

England YouTuber "AjdPadbury" (Anthony) and I went for a drive along the Las Vegas Strip the other night. I drove (and watched out for OTHER sightseein' motorists! LOL), as Anthony worked the   more...camcorder. Thanks Anthony for sending me the half hour or so of camcorder footage from that drive, so I could then edit it down and make a five minute LifeJourneyGuy video out of it.

The song is the ZZ Top version of "Viva Las Vegas".  less

I always enjoy knowing what goes on “behind the scenes”, so here is a video of the crew who do all the daily maintenance of the fountain jets and lighting for the “Fountains of Bellagio” shows, to assure   more...that everything is in perfect order for the wonderful water fountain shows, which please visitors from around the world.

The song is “Shiftwork” by Kenny Chesney and George Strait.  less

Here’s another video is my “Fountains of Bellagio” series. This water fountain show highlights the great Broadway classic “Overture / And All That Jazz”, sung by Catherine Zeta-Jones. The Bellagio’s   more...“extreme shooter” water cannons blast water columns 460 feet into the air!  less

One of the many things I love about visiting Europe over the years, is that many cities and towns have inviting, comfortable, open plaza areas where people hang around, or people watch, or play board   more...games like chess, or visit with friends, or eat in outdoor cafes, or, or, or.

As an architect, I was very happy when I first learned in 1997 that the owners of the $1.5 billion Venetian Hotel/Casino had made the wise decision to allow the project architects to incorporate a mini-version of such a user friendly environment inside the Venetian, with the construction of a piazza and gondola canal area. It’s easy to see that visitors to the Venetian really enjoy the ambiance of these areas, and tend to linger here to enjoy watching the performers and living statues, or to enjoy a meal there, so here is a short video showing some of these inviting communal areas of the Venetian, along with an opening video clip of some of the exterior of the Venetian property.

The song for the video is “Say” by John Mayer.  less

The music for this Bellagio, Las Vegas water fountain show is “This Kiss” by Faith Hill.

The music for this Bellagio, Las Vegas water fountain show is “Winter Games” by David Foster; the music was composed for the 1987 Winter Olympics.

Here is a lighthearted video highlighting the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to overnight lodging accommodations . . . well, at least in terms of those lodging facilities that provide running   more...water and electricity! LOL (In my life I’ve stayed at places WITHOUT running water and electricity as well, but those places AREN’T in this video :) )

The song used for the video is “Hotel California” by the Eagles.  less

This is a 4 minute, 8 second VERY condensed, “executive summary” type version of over forty-five minutes of video footage I took in Las Vegas last week on my most recent visit. The song I chose is “(You   more...Want To) Make a Memory” by Bon Jovi; there was just something about this poignant/haunting love song and its very distinct downbeats that seemed to fit the “clipped”/”jumpy” video style I chose to do for this vid. (This video style is sort of my “homage” to that amazingly filmed jumpy, jittery, creepy, scary creature in the horror movie “The Grudge” LOL). Thanks, as always, for watching my videos!

Please also check out this great five part Las Vegas video series by my England friend Anthony, aka YouTube user name “Ajdpadbury”, if you want to see a lot more of Vegas. You WON’T be disappointed!

Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klZhRCOJaCI

Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9yIIugdErY

Part Three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALQCIlloGhg

Part Four
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN4hBYd07C0

Part Five
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vtvFdYKs8  less

Meet "Bentley" and "Swifty", who are a pair of four and a half month old lion cub brothers. These cubs were playing in the lion habitat inside the MGM Grand Casino & Hotel in   more...Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, so I wanted to share them with you all. They were SOOO CUTE!!! . . . and GEEZ! they have large paws!!! LOL . . . I think they'll be very, very, very big cats when full grown!!

The music is "Bless the Beasts and the Children" by The Carpenters  less

I’m SO thankful that the Bellagio owners decided to include the artificial lake and wonderful water fountain shows in their design for the Bellagio Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Here’s a water fountain   more...show highlighting a Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman duet.

To see Sarah and Andrea singing this beautiful song, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLHq7rgHOLk  less

Here’s another video in my “Fountains of Bellagio” series, highlighting the fountain shows put on by The Bellagio Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” is another of   more...my favorite romantic songs, although, because the song has been heard around the world about a few trillion times by now, and has been used in numerous “Titanic” movie comedy parodies, the song no longer has the emotional impact it initially did for most people.

I also find it fascinating to read the background as to how the decisions are made by movie makers when it comes to whether or not this or that song will or won’t be used in a movie, so in this particular situation, Celine’s version almost DIDN’T make it into the movie, and Celine almost never even RECORDED it! As events turned out, this song went on to become Celine’s all-time biggest hit. It’s always fascinated me how seemingly fickle and random “Life” turns out to be, and how often gut instincts play such a huge role in achieving great success and/or fame in life. Here’s the background on this song from Wikipedia:

“James Horner had originally composed this song as an instrumental motif that is used in several scenes during Titanic. He then wanted to make a full vocal song out of it, for use in the end credits of the film. Director James Cameron did not want such a song, but Horner went ahead anyway and got Will Jennings to write the lyrics. Celine Dion was Horner's first choice to sing it, but when she heard the song, she did not want to record it. It was her manager and husband, René Angélil, who convinced her to record a demo version, which was something she hadn't done for many years. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song.

After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he might be criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie”.” {{As “They” say. . . the rest is history.}}  less

In Greek mythology, the “Sirens” were three dangerous bird-women, portrayed as seductresses, who lived on an island. Seamen who sailed near the island were decoyed by the Sirens’ enchanting music and   more...voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast. I tend to think, however, that the REAL causes of the shipwrecks were things like coral reefs and fog and rocks and uncharted shallows and prevalent use of alcohol, but that’s just MY opinion LOL

In researching for these vid notes I came across a really entertaining article ( http://www.gone-ta-pott.com/Pirate_Drinks.html ), about the use of alcohol aboard old sailing ships, and how “Rum would often be the downfall of many pirate crews. Unlike military and merchant ships where some kind of authority measured out the rum being consumed, a democratically run pirate ship, with its weakened code of discipline, sometimes led to a complete disregard for sobriety. There are several accounts of pirate ships easily being boarded because the pirates were too drunk to fight.” LOLOL

Anyway, back to THIS video! The video opens with video clips of the Sirens’ ship and Sirens’ cove, taken from my 35th floor room at the Treasure Island Hotel, now known simply as “T I”. The remainder of the video consists of video clips taken from the cordoned off V.I.P./hotel guests’ viewing area during the several times nightly “Sirens” show. The minimalist plot of the show is for the empowered Sirens to lure the Pirates’ “Bull Ship” (and no, I don’t make this stuff up! LOL) to a watery grave, whereupon the waterlogged, humiliated, defeated, ignoble pirates swim to the Sirens’ ship to apparently CELEBRATE the sinking of their precious pirate ship by dancing with the victorious Sirens LOL. The fireworks shot off at the end of the show would go WAYYYY above my room, which was fun to watch from the room, and I always cracked up laughing because it appeared as though my room was under ATTACK! LOL

The song I used for the opening video segments is “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper.  less

Here’s another video of one of the water fountain shows at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada. This one is “Fly Me To The Moon” by Frank Sinatra with Count Basie.

For me, there’s nothing more emotionally evocative in music than the soaring vocals of one of the great opera tenors such as Luciano Pavarotti, singing “Rondine Al Nido”, which provides the musical accompaniment   more...for this “Fountains of Bellagio” night presentation in Las Vegas. The vocal presentation is all the more powerful when you understand what the words are saying about the overpowering emptiness and sadness of lost love.

Sotto la gronda della torre antica
Under the eaves of the ancient tower
Una rondine amica,
A swallow friend
Allo sbocciar del mandorlo é tornata.
Has returned at almond blossom time
Ritorna tutti gli anni,
It comes back every year
Sempre alla stessa data;
Always on the same date;
Monti e mare essa varca per tornar.
It crosses mountains and sea to return.
Solo amore
Only love
Quando fugge e va lontano
When it flees and goes far away
Speri in vano e non torna piú.
Hopes in vain and returns no more.
Speri in vano e non torna piú.
Hopes in vain and returns no more.

Nella penombra dolce della sera
In the sweet shadow of the evening
passa la primavera.
it passes the spring.
Cinguettano le rondini nel volo,
The swallows in flight chirrup
Ebbre di luce e d'aria.
Drunk on light and air.
Ed io son triste e solo;
And I am sad and alone;
Monti e mare tu non varchi per tornar.
You do not cross mountains and sea to return
Mia piccina, fosti tutta la mia vita;
My little one, you were all my life
Sei fuggita e non torni piú.
You have fled and return no more.
Sei fuggita e non torni piú.
You have fled and return no more.  less

For me, there’s nothing more emotionally evocative in music than the soaring vocals of one of the great opera tenors such as Luciano Pavarotti, singing “Rondine Al Nido”, which provides the musical accompaniment   more...for this “Fountains of Bellagio” presentation in Las Vegas. The vocal presentation is all the more powerful when you understand what the words are saying about the overpowering emptiness and sadness of lost love.

Sotto la gronda della torre antica
Under the eaves of the ancient tower
Una rondine amica,
A swallow friend
Allo sbocciar del mandorlo é tornata.
Has returned at almond blossom time
Ritorna tutti gli anni,
It comes back every year
Sempre alla stessa data;
Always on the same date;
Monti e mare essa varca per tornar.
It crosses mountains and sea to return.
Solo amore
Only love
Quando fugge e va lontano
When it flees and goes far away
Speri in vano e non torna piú.
Hopes in vain and returns no more.
Speri in vano e non torna piú.
Hopes in vain and returns no more.

Nella penombra dolce della sera
In the sweet shadow of the evening
passa la primavera.
it passes the spring.
Cinguettano le rondini nel volo,
The swallows in flight chirrup
Ebbre di luce e d'aria.
Drunk on light and air.
Ed io son triste e solo;
And I am sad and alone;
Monti e mare tu non varchi per tornar.
You do not cross mountains and sea to return
Mia piccina, fosti tutta la mia vita;
My little one, you were all my life
Sei fuggita e non torni piú.
You have fled and return no more.
Sei fuggita e non torni piú.
You have fled and return no more.  less

TORTOISE TURMOIL!! within the Red Rock Canyon Desert Tortoise Habitat!! Watch this video and see how all the drama and tension unfolds!! LOL

(The Red Rock Canyon Tortoise Habitat is a short drive west   more...of "The Strip" in Las Vegas. England YouTuber "Ajdpadbury" (Anthony) and I visited Red Rock Canyon durin' a recent visit to Las Vegas.)

The song is the famous "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane.  less

I interviewed British vlogger Anthony Padbury to learn all about England over a couple of pints of porter in a San Francisco pub.

Thanks to Anthony:
http://uk.youtube.com/user/ajdpadbury
and to Cat:
http://uk.youtube.com/user/21stcenturycat

Please think twice before meeting up with your online friends, it doesn't always go to plan.

Featuring Anthony Padbury:
http://uk.youtube.com/user/ajdpadbury

las flores10