Dennis was in the mood for another field trip, and I told him one of the places I wanted to hit was my new job site.  Even the idea of going to my new office excited him since he said it involved showing me a "secret" shortcut through the downtown area to get there.  I'm not sure how secret the route really is, but it does involve taking a tunnel underneath the airport runways.

After hitting my office, we went through North Las Vegas, a.k.a. the rough side of town.  Parts of it are blighted and I have heard on the local news about the crime that goes on there, but it looks about a thousand times nicer than 38th Street in Indy, let alone East Chicago.  "Oh, well there are bad areas of town, but they aren't as bad as THAT," Pam and Dennis reassured me.  Northeast of North Las Vegas is Nellis Air Force Base.  You can't seen a lot of it from the road, but we did see the fighter jets flying in formation, presumably doing training exercises.  We pulled off of the road at one point to watch them, and even at a significant distance those are some loud planes.

From Nellis we circled back south through Lake Mead and on to Boulder City.  Yes, they've shown me Boulder City before, but it is a very pleasant place to hang out just because.  We ducked into a surfer-themed restaurant called The Coffee Cup.

The place has a sizeable breakfast menu.  The "Hangover Breakfast" intrigued me on paper.  It intrigued me on my plate as well.  

Let me tell you how it's done!  The layers, from bottom to top, go something like this:

Gravy

Two biscuits, open-faced

Two sausage patties

Two fried eggs, over medium

Cheddar cheese

It was disgustingly good.  

After lunch, we went to Hemenway Park in search of the indigenous bighorn sheep.  In Indiana you see deer crossing signs.  In Wisconsin you see cow crossing signs.  In Nevada you see oodles of bighorn sheep crossing signs.  They wander down from the mountains and foolishly try to cross the highways, or so I'm told.  I'd never actually seen any until today.  I wouldn't have recognized them if I had seen them anyway--they look like big goats rather than sheep.

There was a conservation officer on duty, presumably to keep us from doing anything stupid like taunting the sheep.  Apparently, they can get pretty feisty.  (The sheep that is, not the conservation officers.)  Ergo, the photos above were taken at a good distance.  If you zoom out, you get a fuller picture of the area overall.  Lake Mead is in the background to the left, and the outskirts of Boulder City are to the right.  

Boulder City boasts some spectacular views of both Lake Mead and the mountains, and I'm told the property values reflect it.  New lots with a view are valued in the millions, and small bungalows without a view from the 1930s (when the dam was being built) start in the high six figures.  The bighorn sheep and hangover breakfasts are but an added local bonus.