Tuesday in Vegas and it is raining again!!!!!!! Bloody Hell!!!! The annual rainfall is just over 4 inches (100mm) and we have had more than that in the past two days, so we have been dead set unlucky! 
Set out for a days exploring about mid - morning and had a look at the Aria Resort which is a couple of blocks down the Strip from where we are staying. Very flash and ultra modern, it makes some of the older places look pretty crappy but the very "top end" brand name stores had very few customers, whereas the older ones on the other side of the boulevade were pretty busy! Says to me that while the tourists were spending, there is still not much money floating around here in the USA.
We walked on down the strip to MGM where we had a coffee and then caught the bus all the way north to the Factory Outlets which are in the old part of Vegas. The trip took us through some of the very seediest areas of the city, including Freemont Street and some of the residential areas, which really opened our eyes up!
We spent a couple of hours in the outlet shops - Mumsie and Katie looking for bargains, Jase and I just filling in time like men do!!!!! We eventually got the shopping done and caught the bus back to a huge new shopping mall called the Fashion Show opposite Wynns Casino where Jase and I finally got to look at the Apple Store with a view to getting iPhones. Unfortunately all iPhones sold in the USA are locked into the AT&T network and are virtually useless outside the country unless some serious unlocking is done to them! So we put that idea on the back burner and tried to get a sim card that would allow us cheap texting and calls back to Oz. But because most calls inside the USA are cheap anyway and the yanks couldn't care less about anyone else, there are very few of these sim cards sold and we were out of luck again! Oh well, maybe in Washington! 
After finding a food court and getting something to eat, it was back on the bus and a very slow trip back to our part of the Strip through extremely heavy traffic and still more rain! We went back to Fat Tuesdays and had another potent slushy to kickstart the body again - boy are these things good - and then we went looking looking for some sneakers for Katie. While she was looking Mumsie and I wandered into a Footlocker store and I found a great pair of Nike "sneakers" at about half what we would pay in Australia so I bought them - my first shopping!
By this time it was after 9pm so we headed home to the and got stuff organised for our  big trip to the Canyon tomorrow. At least we hope we are going - the weather forecast is crap - rain, low cloud and the possibilty of snow!!! Guess there's a big chance it will be cancelled, we have to call the company about an hour before our pickup to find out! We will all be seriously pissed off if we miss out because as well as being Jase's birthday present, we are all looking forward to it greatly!