Guigon Travels

Today was primarily our Voyager and Enterprise day. We started off going to Hash House again for breakfast, this time going with the basic breakfast. That was absolutely the best choice! Nice, simple, eggs, sausages, and a biscuit, reasonably portioned. There was even a little fruit on the side. Mmmmmm.

Photo op with the Enterprise cast: Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer), Dominic Keating (Lt. Malcolm Reid), Connor Trinear (Trip Tucker), Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather), and John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox). This may be starting to sound redundant, but these guys were so nice and friendly, they all took time to actually shake our hands before the picture was taken. And as a personal bonus, the photo was ready in time to get all of them to sign it! The wait in line for Scott was really long, but worth it. Dominic, Anthony, and Connor were easy to talk to, and John was part of this evening’s Gold autograph session. The panel with these guys was interesting because John was amusingly self-deprecating, Scott had to playfully remind the other guys to be gentlemen and not talk about the women when they aren’t present, and the other three kept harassing Scott about his personal fame. (sigh…love Scott…)

Second photo op with the Voyager cast: Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway), Garret Wang (Henry Kim), Tim Russ (Tuvok), and Ethan Phillips (Neelix). Yet another great group, very inviting and inclusive. Their panel was interesting because of how powerful Kate is, she’s obviously the leader but never seems to fail at including her ‘crew’. Apparently she and Jeri Ryan (Seven-of-Nine/Annika) did not become friends, but when asked about that relationship and how it was on the set she answered very diplomatically and professionally.

Jessica attended the Rom and Nog panel, which consisted of Aren Eisenberg and Max Grodenchik in costume. She said it was totally worth it because these two were funny! I had to miss it; I think I was in one of my photo op lines…

Jessica also managed to get Cirroc Lofton’s autograph today, which was an unplanned personal bonus for her. My unplanned personal bonus was getting an autograph and photo with Lee Arenberg. For those who don’t know, Lee played two different Ferengi on TNG (Bok and Prak) and an alien on Voyager, but also plays Pintel on Pirates of the Caribbean and Leroy/Grumpy on Once Upon a Time. He was wonderful! Such a sweet guy.

And I got to meet and speak briefly with Ethan Phillips when I asked him to sign my Star Trek cook book (which he co-wrote). He pointed out his favourite dish (baked beans). And he expressed an interest in visiting the North. I encouraged that, but warned him off for a couple years due to the extraordinary number of wildfires we’re experiencing this year.

The last stage visit of the day was with Simon Pegg, whom we had seen earlier in the week at the Craig Ferguson show. He was funny and endearing, and forthcoming with answering the questions posed to him. Great show.

We finally had time to go to the seafood buffet for supper tonight, which was really good; almost worth the exorbitant amount of money we paid for it. Afterwards we went to the Star Trek Concert performed by the Nevada Pops 45-piece orchestra. That was fabulous! It is so much more inspiring to hear an orchestra play live. I can’t even describe it.

The dessert party came next, but Jessica and I failed to completely read the description of this event. We went expecting, you know, a selection of desserts befitting the title of ‘Dessert Party;’ what we got was an ice cream party. By this point we were pooped anyway, so we decided to just turn in after taking a browse through the props collection they had on display.

Grumpy! (Lee Arenberg)

The last day of the convention was the slowest, but still entertaining. We saw William Shatner live — who came in on crutches having just fallen off an ornery horse the week before. We saw Martok and Gowron, played by J.G.Hertzger and Robert O’Reilly in costume — with sarongs; another in-costume gem of a performance. And got the last of the Gold level autographs. We watched the final auction while getting autographs; the amounts some people will pay for things is wild!

Supper tonight was at the Carnival Buffet, which was better priced than the seafood buffet yet just as good. We followed this by attending the Star Trek Rat Pack performance. The Rat Pack is comprised of Jeffrey Combs, Casey Biggs, Vaughn Armstrong, and Max Grodenchuk, and usually  Armin Shimmerman (Quark) as the fifth member; Armin was unavailable this evening, so James Darren (Vic Fontaine) graciously stepped in. These guys are priceless. It turns out Max started the group and writes all the lyrics, which are Star Trek references based, and they are hilarious! Vaughn is a real showman. Casey’s got a great musical performer side to him. Jeffery is a wonderful acoustic guitarist and composer. And James Darren is, well, an original Rat Packer; his voice is so smooth and classic, dreamy. This was a perfect end to the convention.

Today we checked out of the Rio and checked into the MGM for our final few days in Vegas. Nothing particularly special planned today, other than doing laundry and visiting a rare book store (Bauman’s). The book store was impressively pretentious and had fascinating collections ranging in price as high as $45,000 or more. If I had been allowed time to read the books I could have been there all day. Spent the rest of the day just wandering back up the Strip to our hotel. Vegas is hot.

Neiman Marcus Went for the cookie but found our recipe version is better.

Coca-Cola Flavour Shots We tried 16 soda flavours supposedly from around the world. Not bad, some interesting, Italy was disgusting.

Our New Accommodations

Our Unfortunate View

It’s horseback riding day! But that’s later. We’ve got all day to get through first. Finally we were able to sleep in a little bit, which was so nice! Or at least it would have been. Five o’clock in the morning my cell phone rang, waking me up; it was one of those fraudulent automated calls trying to tell me my debit card had been deactivated for security purposes and to enter the card number if I want to re-activate it. I was still half-asleep, but not that out of it. I was annoyed though. I hung up and called my credit card company directly to let them know about the call. Turns out they had just gotten another call minutes before mine from another card holder about the same thing. They confirmed it was a fraudulent call and after a few appropriate security questions confirmed my bank cards were just fine and I could go back to sleep. Which I did — until another number I didn’t recognize tried to call me again at 7:30; I ignored it that time. Then I got up for an appointment I thought I had at 8:45 a.m. I didn’t realize until after I got there that I forgot to set the time zone in my calendar when I entered the appointment so it didn’t adjust when we changed time zones, so I was an hour early for my appointment. Had a little nap poolside while I waited for that, which actually was kind of nice.

Jessica and I finally managed to go for breakfast and then made our way to Luxor to go see the Titanic Exhibit — which is fantastic! I highly recommend seeing it if you’re ever in town. It is so poignant at the end to see the lists of survivors versus losses divided by classes.

Late lunch before getting ready for our sunset horseback riding adventure. Jeff from Wild West Adventures picked us up about 4:00 that afternoon — exactly when they said they would. We had a group of 13 people representing three commonwealth nations — Great Britain, New Zealand, and Canada –and Wyoming and Florida. A 45-minute drive out of town brought us to the working ranch from whence Caesar and Himey saddled us up and guided us on a hour-and-a-half ride through a dry Nevada valley. For such a desolate place it is remarkably beautiful, and we were not disappointed with the sunset!

We were also not disappointed with our guides, who were very amenable and informative. Himey is Caesar’s dad, and he was the strong, silent type, who chatted just fine when approached but otherwise led the pack. Caesar rode up and down the line talking with each of us, very outgoing. Jeff stayed behind at the ranch cooking supper: steak, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, baked beans, and Apple pie for dessert…it was wonderful! We ended the night with learning how to rope a metal stationary steer. It took some doing, but most of us did eventually get it a few times before we were driven back to our respective hotels. So glad Jessica found this activity! Nevada is hot.

Jessica on Hope

The Beginning

The Middle

The End

After the Ride

BBQ Steak Dinner

Learning to Rope

Finally got our decent sleep-in day today. Woohoo! Somewhat late breakfast followed by going to the Bodies Exhibit, which is another remarkable exhibit, just fascinating! After seeing that we made our way down the Strip and I took her to see Caesar’s Palace and The Forum Shops. Sure enough, we were able to finally get our Penny on at the Cheesescake Factory in the shops for lunch. Of course, Penny’s Cheesecake Factory is not remotely as elaborate as this place. We managed to stuff ourselves pretty good, anyway, before heading out for a further walkabout in search of Madame Tussaude’s, which we were certain we had seen on Monday during our first walkabout. We did eventually come across it and partook of the exhibits. It’s really quite remarkable how realistic the statues are. Those artists are fantastic.

Yesterday on our way out of town Jessica noticed there is a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant on the Strip, so we had to make our pilgrimage. We’ve been to the Bubba Gump in Orlando, New York, and now Las Vegas. As usual the food was fabulous and we stuffed ourselves silly. Managed to pick up two more Bubba Gump glasses, too; shakers this time instead of the flashy light ones.

You’re probably wondering at this point if we got to see any of the shows. Well, yes, we managed to sneak one in tonight. We went to see Vegas! The Show, which gave us a historical accounting of the rise and fall of the classic Vegas casino’s, shows, and entertainment. It was really enjoyable and while all the cast was fun to watch, the two headliners were fantastic.

We returned to our hotel, stopping at Bellagio on the way to watch the fountain and get the obligatory photograph for Monique. Vegas is hot.

Leaning Towers of Vegas

Liberace’s Car

The Cheesecake Factory

Holding Jon Bon Jovi’s Hand

Life is like a box of chocolates.

Jessica’s Favourite Store

Bellagio

Our last day in Vegas required the Tetrising of our suitcases, checking out of our room, and baggage checking our luggage so we could go shopping at the discount mall unencumbered. We spent most of midday at the Las Vegas Premium Outlet Mall South browsing the stores and picking up a few wardrobe items for Jessica to have at university. Really fantastic dresses that Jessica just looks amazing in. Mid-afternoon we were done though and decided to try and find Ben and Jerry’s again on the Strip before getting our bags and going to the airport. Unfortunately we guessed incorrectly where we thought we had seen it and turned in the wrong direction from Planet Hollywood. By the time we realized it we were already more than half way to MGM and out of time. We just kept going, said goodbye to Vegas, and caught the first leg of our flight home. Vegas is hot.

We are finally on our way to Las Vegas! So excited, Jessica promptly fell asleep on my shoulder between Yellowknife and Edmonton…

Arrived in Edmonton after the first leg of our flight with no issues. Jessica had a good nap and I got through a little more than half of the convention schedule.

We grabbed a few Cookies by George and a milk before heading to the US Quick Express to get to customs. The cookies were fabulous and the lady at the Quick Express was very nice. I’ve never been through there before, so it was interesting having to wait for our luggage to be transferred in the cargo area from one plane to another and get photographed along the way; we had to identify our luggage by the photograph on the lady’s computer screen before we were allowed to go through to the customs gate.

The line up at the customs gate was maybe four people long, including Jessica and I. We go individually to different officers and I can hear Jessica answering his questions:”Where are you going? Why are you going there? You got your hair cut since your passport photo? Yeah, you look a little like Ezri Dax now. Live long and prosper.” I turn to smile at that and he looks at me and says she didn’t respond to his farewell. I looked at Jess and she’s day dreaming, and I ask her what kind of Trek fan are you? Turns out she hadn’t heard the customs officer’s live long and prosper. Hehe…she was embarrassed.

Anyway, we got through customs and proceeded down the hall to the gates. Along the way the designers of this area commissioned this fantastic aerial view mosaic mural of the city of Edmonton that I thought was just fantastic. See photo.

While waiting to board we browsed in the stores and at one there was this book cover that made me laugh. I nodded Jessica’s attention to it. At least, I thought I did. She laughed at the shadow puppet on the book next to the one I wanted her to see first. Can you tell which is which? See photo. Oiy.

When we were checking our bags in Yellowknife the flight attendant commented that we might have gotten a seat upgrade for the Las Vegas leg of our trip. Alas, that was not the case — we were seated directly behind the last row of Plus seating — but due to our plane not having any seat back TVs our fantastic flight attendants decided to compensate us another way. In order to ‘win’ a free meal or a free drink or a free upgrade to Plus seating (the plane was obviously not full) we had to correctly answer various trivia questions. Jessica managed to pull one off by correctly answering that there were eight emergency exits on the plane. Bonus! Free meals for both of us.

In Las Vegas we got our car from Enterprise –yes, appropriate, I know — and checked into Luxor for the night. Got a free room upgrade from the pyramid to the tower. Only downside so far here is the only internet access in the rooms is with an Ethernet cable. If we want to use the free wifi (like, say, on our iPhones or iPads) we have to go into the public spaces. Annoying, but true. Unfortunately, it also means my travel blog posts aren’t likely to get uploaded until I get to a reliable, free wifi connection.

The first leg of our flight home got us into Edmonton at around 12:30 am and through customs without any issues by 1:30. We knew this would be the case and with our flight to Yellowknife departing at 11:30 am decided we’d just sleep in the airport. What we didn’t anticipate is that we wouldn’t be able to check our bags and go through security until 6:30 am. The plan was to get through security right away so that we could just settle down right by our gate. But noooo…they don’t want to hold luggage for more than five hours prior to scheduled flight departures. Something about the ridiculous number of bags they have to transport and the increased likelihood of losing luggage in the chaos. All very reasonable when one is well rested; I was not well rested so I regretfully admit I was not a very happy camper sleeping on the cold, hard floor of the pre-security departures level of the Edmonton International Airport for five hours. Remind me not to book my flights like that again; it’s either get home in one day or have more than a 12-hour lay over so as to justify staying in a hotel. But we did get home, catching more naps, breakfast, and an episode of DS9 post-security, and sleeping on the plane.

Jessica and I had a wonderful trip and thoroughly enjoyed the Star Trek Convention, seeing Craig and Geoff, and Vegas in general. We both admitted that two weeks in Vegas without the convention would be just too much, for future reference. It was nice to get home and see the boys.

Now to begin preparing for the university road trip…