Sailing Tarka: Visitors Welcome

We're running a new incentive program that may very well be the most exciting thing since Willy Wonka hid five golden tickets among his tasty chocolate bars. Even though I didn't find one of those golden tickets, good 'ol Willy called me up and invited me on the tour anyway because he knew having a celebrity like me at his factory would be good for business. You would have seen me in the movies but I was busy on a personal tour guided by the Umpalumpas of their chocolate making process (clue: the secret ingredient shares its name with an Eric Clapton song and rhymes with lo mien).

But you don't need to find any tickets to be a winner in our contest. All you need to do is come find us; by plane, train or automobile. You will be awarded by being given the opportunity to bask in our radiant awesomeness and if we really think you're hot stuff, we might even award you with the ultimate prize: the opportunity to buy us drinks and dinner. I've already hired a team of young communications interns to staff our phone and email address as I suspect the interest in this opportunity will be overwhelming. I pre-emptively called Verizon and Gmail and told them that they better beef up their bandwidth and storage capacities or else risk a complete infrastructure meltdown.

If you're still reading these self-absorbed stylings, despite all the other things you could be doing on the internet (seriously, there's way more productive things you could be doing), then I guess it's okay to tell you that there is no contest, but that we would love to have friends and family come visit us anyway. You might as well do it soon because our trip can't last forever.

We were extremely excited when we got a text message from Clint who told us that he and Veronica were 24 hours out from Las Vegas. We spent a couple nights meeting them down on the Las Vegas strip as they were staying at the Hard Rock Casino. We explored several of the casinos in the area, went to the Ghost Bar at the Palms, and Veronica and Juliet even got to pet a baby lion at the MGM Grand.

Veronica and Clint then moved out to the Red Rocks campground and we spent several night sleeping out under the stars with them. During the days we would go explore the Calico Basin and Kraft Mountain areas. We gave them a quick lesson in anchor building and trad climbing. Veronica and I climbed the 3 pitch sport route, “Big Bad Wolf,” and Clint and Juliet climbed the neighboring 2 pitch trad route, “Physical Graffiti.” We rendezvoused at the top and soaked up the sun before beginning our decent. We then visited the aggressive sport crag of Sunny and Steep. Veronica led up a challenging chimney route and Clint led up a low-angle (read: don't fall), but thin arete.

Dinners at camp were consistently awesome and always cooked over the fire. Entertainment was never far away and our downtime consisted of going to the Red Rocks Casino, only about five miles away, which offers great dining, pool, bowling, and a movie theater. The intersection of Charleston Blvd and Desert Foothills Rd is truly a collision of two very different worlds.

Cheers Clint and Veronica, you've been blogged about and are therefore basically famous! Thanks for finding us and sharing a great week in Vegas!