After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 3

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A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll. The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. What is your next big thing in sports? There's a lot on the horizon. As much as January and the first two weeks of February are some of the most listened to shows of our entire calendar year. And certainly the audiences, they essentially top most any audience that we have throughout the rest of the year.

It doesn't mean isolated shows here or there don't have large audiences like when we crown champions. Of course, when there's some major news that breaks. Anytime there is one of those curve balls that come out of left field in sports that we didn't see coming.

Well yeah, a lot of times when it comes from the police blotter or it's just some huge free agent deal, money involved, I mean there are exceptions every year. But the six weeks that we do in sports radio to start a calendar year generally have more eyeballs and ear balls as I call them. More traffic on our podcast and social media and YouTube channel and all that jazz. Now you all were gracious enough to care so much about my wedding and my wedding plans going back to last fall and last winter, pre-Christmas. That we got a ton of traffic on our YouTube channel. More than anything else we've ever done were the three episodes of Ask Amy Walks Down the Aisle.

We still have not had a chance to get to Ask Amy Walks Down the Aisle and answer not your wedding questions but your marriage questions and maybe we'll save that for the first quarter or three months in or something along those lines. But the six weeks to start the year because it's the NFL and because it's the center ring of the circus and because of the interest, if you have not seen the numbers from Super Bowl 58, they are off the freaking charts. Now keeping in mind that the way Nielsen calculates viewership now has changed. It's become much more technical, much more exact, there's less of a margin for error and they now count more specifically the number of viewers that are not home. Right, that are in places where they're watching the game maybe in a sports bar or at a party or so they're not at their own home but they're taking into account out of home viewers. And it used to be that there are more extrapolation done with the numbers now that they're including out of home viewers in their ratings in all 50 states.

Well of course the numbers are going to be inflated some because that wasn't included in the past, at least not as specifically. And then you have the various streaming platforms too and the more streaming platforms we have, the more options we have, the more the viewers will add up. But by far the longest Super Bowl in NFL history is also the most watched program in TV history. And when you think about the power of the NFL and how it continues to grow, it just blows me away. The average 123.4 million viewers across TV and streaming, 123.5 million viewers which is more than a third of our nation's population.

We agree on nothing in this country except football. A third of our nation's population watching this game on Sunday. That's the average. Last year's Super Bowl, which was Philadelphia and Kansas City and went down to a Harrison Butler field goal with the final few seconds, was 115 million average viewers. And this is a 7% increase. And no, it's not all because of Taylor Swift, though certainly there are people who watched that would have zero interest otherwise.

How about this? I've never heard of this in my entire freaking life. Over 202 million people watched at least part of the game on all the various platforms. 202.4 million people. That is essentially two thirds of our nation's population. 202 million people. That's insane. And yet the power of the NFL. Right? And again, Nielsen is now counting more out of home viewers more specifically and there are digital platforms.

But 202 million people in a nation of 330 million roughly. Let that sink in for a second. Sean McManus is the chairman of CBS Sports. And he says, I was managing my expectations. But I was hoping this would be the result. And then you have an exciting finish, the second ever overtime Super Bowl. Not to mention it was tight in the final couple minutes.

What was it? 153 left when Patrick Holmes and the Chiefs got the ball back on offense. The numbers are astronomical.

They really are. Even Spanish language, up to 2.2 million viewers, which is the highest Super Bowl on record for a Spanish language network. Every weekend of the playoffs, up, up, up, up, up. The regular season. Highest rated. Highest rated of, I can't remember exactly the span.

Second highest rated since they started tracking the averages and that goes back to the mid 90s. Last time the Niners won a Super Bowl. And so we're seeing the power and the reach and the the draw of the NFL continue to grow. So these past six weeks, the pressure, the interest, certainly the the volume of material that we've had to manage. And yet I'm really proud of the work that we've done.

Definitely excited for the reaction that we got in Las Vegas. It makes the long hours. I'm pretty sure I lost weight while I was there even though I ate like crap for the first three days. My gosh, the first 72 hours, I don't recall eating anything healthy except for a couple apples.

Maybe. And then Jay and I struck out looking for dirt dogs on Wednesday afternoon and thankfully was able to find a target where I could get some fruit and a wrap. And I'm trying to think what else. I think I got a small salad that I took with us to our Odyssey affiliate there in Las Vegas. So it was a little bit easier when Bob showed up on the scene Thursday evening. He insisted on going and getting dinner from the food court, which is funny. But it was a true meal. It wasn't the only meal, but it was the first real meal in more than 48 hours after arriving in Las Vegas. So it was a lot.

There were a lot of great things about Vegas as the host city, and I agree with people like Tom Brady, not to mention the guests that we've had. Arash Markazi, who joined us from Allegiant Stadium in the wake of Super Bowl 58, and he talked about how everything is within walking distance. Now it's a long walk, no joke, the first day not realizing how far we had to go from our hotel through the malls and the casinos into Mandalay Bay.

And then the process, it was an exhaustive process of getting credentials and then back through security to get into Radio Row. I mean, I'm pretty sure on Tuesday I walked, we walked, sorry, Jay and I walked at least five miles and I was in three inch heels. It was amazing. No, it wasn't. I still have blisters.

I'm wearing sneakers and now snow boots for the next week. So, yeah, it's a walkable city, but it's a lot of walking. And I think it's designed this way. The casinos, the hotels, they try to keep you on site, keep you on property.

They don't want you to have to go anywhere else. Everything was jacked up in terms of its price. Even the couple of meals we did have, I think they were expecting that there would be an influx of people.

And so, oh, here's a good example. The cab ride was a flat fare from the airport to the hotel. And when we took cabs early, I think it was Thursday evening into Friday morning. There were a couple of cab rides that we took that were, we thought, pretty affordable. And then on Friday evening, we got into a cab to go to Cirque du Soleil at Treasure Island. And they had added a flat fee of $10 to every cab ride. Why? Because it was Super Bowl weekend.

That's it. Just because it was Super Bowl weekend, every single ride you took was an extra 10 bucks. So instead of starting at the flat rate of 21 bucks, you jumped up. Well, that was for the airport.

You jumped up to $31 instantly. We got in the car, as they say, to go to Cirque du Soleil. And while the initial base fare was $585, we watched it go to $1585 before we ever left the hotel driveway. So it was nutso, the expense. I don't think I ever need to go back, at least not to the strip.

But I'm glad we did the tourist thing for at least one day while we were there. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio, 855-212-4227 on Twitter, ALawRadio. And then also on our Facebook page. What's your next big thing in sports? Because football season is over, though I got to say off season is a misnomer. It's misleading. Because as we talk about, the NFL is brilliant at strategically dropping events that require our attention almost every month, every few weeks. There'll be news routinely over the next four months, and then we're right back to training camps. What?

Knock it off. And we'll still take your reaction to Super Bowl 58. Usher on roller skates was definitely one of my favorite combos. So on Twitter or our Facebook page, what's your next big thing? Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel. We've got a montage of some of our adventures coming up from producer Jay.

He was working on it Monday evening and let me know that it's just about ready. As for Jay's birthday brunch, he ended up picking the Bellagio. And so after the Mobb Museum, which was awesome.

I'll have a few more words about the Mobb Museum in Chicago, Johnny, before we break. But after the Mobb Museum, we took a car and got down to the Bellagio where it was already pretty crazy, except we had been warned. We didn't have to make reservations, but we had been warned that there would be at least a 15 minute wait.

There was no wait whatsoever. Now, the hotel and the casino and the lobby were wall to wall bodies. Walking through the area with the shops at the Bellagio. So from the second we got in the door, it was crazy.

But when we walked to brunch and it was quite a hike to get into the Bellagio to find the brunch place. When we got inside, it was wide open, probably half full. And so we were really thankful for that because we were hungry, Jay was on a tight schedule. And we just wanted to sit down and eat. And we were enamored of the setup.

Oh, my goodness. A dozen different stations, maybe everything from breakfast, make your own omelet, omelet bar, pancakes. Oh, my gosh, a colossal pancake, French toast, every kind of breakfast food that you could possibly think of.

Oatmeal and grits and all the trimmings. And then from there, a huge salad bar, a fruit bar. There were fresh seafoods and fishes of all kinds. A carving station with prime rib and brisket. Not to mention chimichurri sauce and horseradish, which are two of my favorites.

Not only beef, but ham and turkey made a variety of different ways. You had all kinds of vegetables and side dishes. There were some ethnic dishes, too. And then in the center, because they have to put it in the center of the whole buffet, you end up with this wraparound dessert bar. Starts with ice cream, moves to gelato. All the toppings, by the way. And then cakes and pies and cookies and pastries and crepes. And oh, my goodness, it was incredible.

I want you all to know as much as Jay was really excited about it, he employed the wrong strategy. I told him, don't start with pancakes. You're going to fill yourself up. Don't start with breakfast. I waited until the end. Now, the pancakes were delicious. I could have eaten an entire breakfast slash brunch of just pancakes. But I started, I actually skipped the salad.

I eat salad a lot, but I skipped the salad because I didn't want to fill up on salad. And I went straight to seafood and fish, which was awesome. The Mongolian beef, delicious. The salmon, amazing. There was crab, there was lobster, there was shrimp.

It was so good. But after that seafood plate, I went to the carving station and did beef, prime rib, brisket, some of the other, oh, gosh, there were caramelized carrots, which are delicious. Baba and I were laughing because we didn't get to eat that at our wedding. So we had it instead at the brunch at Bellagio. So I went straight meals, no desserts or pancakes. I really didn't go breakfast either until the end. I went up for pancakes.

That was awesome. One piece of French toast wasn't great. And so anything that I didn't like, I skipped because I didn't want to fill up on something that I didn't think was terrific because there were so many fantastic options. Jay started with pancakes and pizza.

Like you don't eat pizza once a week. I just saw it. So I had to grab one. Yeah, he was hungry. So he just started grabbing things, but it started with pancakes and really slowed down after that. And I'm not kidding. I lost a lot of respect for producer Jay. He fills up an entire plate with dessert and left half of it on his plate.

He got up and had to go because he had to get back to the hotel for his flight. And when you left, I realized half of your dessert was still on your plate. Yeah, I was just trying a whole bunch of them out really was the goal there. That was my couple macaroon cookies and took a bite out of one and didn't even touch the other one. Yeah, by that point I had gotten into the cheesecake a little more and that was filling.

And then, but yeah, I really just want to try a couple of the other things. So I ate the whole donut, I think, too. But those donuts were my favorite part. The donuts were delicious. There were all kinds of donuts, too.

Yeah, it was awesome. The shrimp, the other seafood, the salmon, the fish. Gosh, the prime rib with the chimichurri and the horseradish, the brisket, the veggies. Bob and I ended up doing ice. He had a big bowl of ice cream. I had a big bowl of gelato and we shared. And then we did the Oreo cookie cheesecake, which was more like a pudding, but it was so tasty. Trying to think what else we did from dessert.

I think that might have been it. One little cake, maybe. They had some pies. Yeah, we didn't do any of the pies, I don't think. Oh, we tried the carrot cake.

It wasn't that good. So we ended up just doing the Oreo cheesecake, the gelato and the ice cream. But yeah, the pancakes themselves could have been dessert because they were the softest and fluffiest and tastiest.

So what was your favorite then? The pancakes were so good. But you know what I really enjoyed so much was the bacon. I love bacon and it was just so perfectly made the way I like it.

And I must have had at least 12 pieces of bacon. It was tremendous. So Jay really enjoyed his breakfast options and it was worth every penny and it wasn't crowded.

Just delicious food. Really hope that you are happy with your birthday brunch selection. I loved it. And also what I'm still thinking about is the short rib. I've been thinking about it ever since. I love that. It was amazing. So good. Well, I'm glad you shared that with us because I think Bob went up and got some short ribs.

It's always delicious. And we had fun. And after that, Jay departed. Bob and I then walked the strip. We went from the Bellagio to the Venetian where we took a gondola ride. And I am not kidding when I tell you, we had a real Italian dude. His family from Sicily, Severino, he serenaded us.

He apparently is a professional singer in a band in his other walk of life. And so as we were getting into our gondola at the Venetian and we did the indoor, as we're getting into it, a couple of the people who were kind of taking tickets and putting us in boats were whispering to us, oh, you got Severino. He's an actual Italian.

You're going to love this. And so we, yeah, he had the great accent and he sang to us. And as we're coasting through the canals there inside the Venetian and he's singing, it's echoing off the walls because it's enclosed and the ceilings are painted to look like they're open sky. But we were actually on the second floor of the Venetian. Apparently we were over, shoot, we were, oh, we were over the casino. We were underneath the pools that were outdoors. So we were on the second floor, but it was designed to look as though you were outside in the canals in Venice.

I'm going to do a blog post and show a lot of my pictures because we got so many fun pictures. He was serenading us and his songs were echoing off the walls and people could hear him all over the place. And so all of these various mall walkers and tourists were stopping to take videos of Bob and I in the gondola with Severino serenading us and standing above us with, it's not, it's a stick, right?

It's not a paddle. So that was kind of fun. And then he did this song.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. But that was the second one. We had fun with that one. The first one was this really romantic ballad in Italian. It was phenomenal.

I'm telling you, his voice, oh, and so that was a really cool piece of our tourist experience. Then we went, we walked from there back to the Bellagio so we could see the fountains. It took 30 minutes for the fountains to come on.

You want to know why? Because CBS had a drone in the air and they had to wait for the drone to show up to be in place to get footage because this was right behind. If you saw the fountains at the Bellagio, they were right behind the CBS TV set until they moved to the stadium.

That's where they were, the NFL and CBS. And so we were waiting for the drone to get in position, but also really enjoyed the display and the show. The lights were already on. Took some great photos.

If you haven't seen them, they're on my Twitter, A-Law Radio. Then it was back to our hotel at the Luxor. We walked through the Titanic exhibit, which is posted up at the Luxor because we're both big history buffs.

That was awesome. No kidding, all of these different artifacts they pulled out of the crash site. But the thing I didn't know about was the big piece of the hole. There was a gigantic piece of the Titanic's hole that they have pulled from the crash site. And they also have these new sonar created 3D photos that actually show you.

Yeah, I've never seen this before. If you Google it, maybe it's online, but it's in the museum. These photos, and this is a particular organization that has paid for all of the equipment to get these photos of the crash site. You can actually see, again, it's more like a sonogram, but you can see the outline and the hull of the Titanic.

Both pieces, actually. And the wreckage area was three square miles. But these photographs and these incredible pieces of technology that can now show you where they are on the ocean floor 300 miles down, 300 feet down.

I mean, it's incredible how specific and detailed these photos are. And so we learned a lot. We had a lot of fun. And then it was Cirque du Soleil after that.

We went to see Mystere at Treasure Island. We got dressed up. And that was also incredible. The athletes, the acrobats.

We did not understand the story at all. Something about a baby and her dreams. And it was a little bit kooky, but there were clowns. But the acrobats and the acts were the trapeze, especially. Just awesome. Everything that you expect from Cirque du Soleil. So really good. All right, coming up. Well, there was the Mob Museum experience that many of you have asked about. And so we want to tell you a little more about that, but also just to wrap up. Saturday was actually my favorite day in Nevada.

And I'll tell you why. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on says it'll be here in a few minutes. Instacart for the win. Make this Valentine's Day one she'll remember forever with an engagement ring from JamesAllen.com. James Allen knows each love story is unique. That's why they make it easy to custom design engagement rings at up to half the price of a traditional jeweler.

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This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. For those of you who love you too, they were playing at the sphere right before it got Super Bowl crazy in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is the kind of city that can absorb plenty of star power all at once. We know Tom Brady was there for a good portion of the week, as was pretty much anyone who's anyone in the NFL world. You'll hear Brady's assessment coming up and also his advice to the Niners, his boyhood team, his favorite team when he was growing up as a kid in the Bay Area.

But it wasn't just that. For instance, Adele was doing her weekend concerts there. Jason Kelsey attended one and drew her ire because he was shouting out Eagles when she was asking if there were Chiefs and Niners fans in the house. It's a city that is well built to absorb major events, and yet friends of mine have still told me that it's generally not that crazy, that the Super Bowl took it to the next level.

For those of you who were there, I'd love to hear from you if you have pictures or photos or experiences to share. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio, on Twitter, ALawRadio, and then on our Facebook page. It's named after the show. Same thing with our YouTube channel. Even as we are thinking about the ratings and the viewership that are off the charts, it's worth noting that we added Nickelodeon to the mix, right? And that there are other outlets besides just the standard CBS. Everything from Paramount Plus to Spanish language TV to bars and restaurants that were carrying the game where in the past they haven't accounted for all of those out of the home viewers specifically. The NFL also has digital platforms where the game was being streamed. So yes, the numbers do include a lot more options. But still, 202 million people at some point watched the Super Bowl. That's two-thirds of our country, which blows me away.

A 10% increase over last year's figure. So there, you're comparing apples and apples. What's your next big thing now that the NFL is done and over with? Ha ha ha ha ha. Yes, I'm being tongue-in-cheek.

It's not really. There will be plenty of news between now through the draft. And even after that, somehow there's still news. At some point, we'll do a show about the major offseason questions. We'll ask you about your teams and their major offseason questions. But tonight, we're asking you what is your next big thing in sports with the Super Bowl in the rearview mirror? David says baseball is next.

This is on Facebook. Guy the Tigers at spring training. Michael agrees with baseball. Matt says baseball in Daytona. Jackie goes with NHL playoffs baseball season with a little go Blue Jays go. Brian Smith opening day. And so you know, other than Dodgers and Padres in South Korea, which is March 20th, opening day is March 28th. Richard says March Madness.

David, probably the NBA playoffs and the first two weekends of March Madness. Tom says the Masters. Ooh, now it even means more to me because I did my weekend in Augusta and got to drive by and look down Magnolia Lane multiple times. That was sweet.

I could feel the peace and the class emanating. The French Open is another one for Tom. WrestleMania says Jim on Facebook.

Christopher agrees. WrestleMania in April and the Red Sox. Ben goes with March Madness. Matt has a unique answer. Waiting to see where Trevor Bauer lands.

I wonder. I wonder if there will be a baseball team who gives him another opportunity. Justin on Facebook. March Madness. Jeff always the Masters. Joe is thinking about a summer day watching Braves baseball. Tommy goes with March Madness and Braves baseball.

Got the Atlanta contingent reppin'. Andy. March Madness spring training Chicago Cubs fan. There we go. Kyle says the UFL.

He's the only one who's answered that way so far. Waiting to see the new league format and the potential new stars. Bruce March Madness go UConn and baseball. He's a Yankees fan in Seattle. Terry says I'm counting the days 201 until my Washington Huskies kick off their season. She's referring to college football. I also like March Madness and Seattle Sounders football. Robert says March Madness without a doubt.

Patrick goes with the summer and baseball and then Mark on Facebook. I'm ready for baseball. Maybe Tigers can win the Central Division. I think our pitching is going to be great. Now see Hope Springs Eternal. Every time we approach the start of a new season in a different sport, Hope Springs Eternal. And we should be joyful with that hope until it's dashed and that it's painful.

Kind of like the Niners and their contingent right now. All right. We're going to get to some of your calls.

855-212-4227. Plus my favorite day in Vegas actually was outside of Vegas. But if you know me, you shouldn't believe it's a surprise. So I got to share a couple of pretty epic experiences with you from Saturday before we flew home on a red eye. On Twitter, ALawRadio.

If you're looking for photos or videos from last week, same thing on our Facebook page. We appreciate all the compliments and certainly all of the time that you spent listening and downloading the podcast last week. You are listening to the After Hours.

A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter. But you're on a roll.

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Podcast. It's the best place I could have ended up. I mean, with Coach Reed, I think he lets you be you. That's the biggest thing. If he doesn't try to change the way I play, he just refines it. And he just keeps making me better and keeps preaching the fundamentals at the same time, letting me go out there and to play the game the way I play it.

And so it was the best place for me. And even more than that, he makes me a better person every single day. And that just speaks to the coach that he is. And he's made me the best quarterback I could possibly be.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Patrick Mahomes from Disney World, where he was seen waving and enjoying himself on a float going down the main drag. NFL Total Access had an interview with him that's part of his responsibility as the Super Bowl MVP. And he says, I had to get drafted by Kansas City.

This is the perfect place for me. And remember, he was not the first quarterback taken in that draft. He wasn't the second quarterback taken in that draft.

He was actually a guy that the Chiefs moved up to get. But shoot, was he selected ninth or tenth? Twelfth? Twelfth is the number that kind of comes to mind. I always feel like I remember it wrong and the other quarterbacks that were taken.

But there were certainly other teams. Tenth? Okay, always. Always. I got it right there in the middle.

Always go with your second answer. This was the right place for him. And I'm not saying he wouldn't be as talented.

I'm not saying that we wouldn't still be talking about Patrick Mahomes as potentially a two-time Super Bowl MVP. But the fact is, the fit is perfect with Andy Reid. The fit is perfect because of the mind of Reid, the relationship with Reid, and the ability to utilize his skills. And I like what Patrick says. He lets me be me. He doesn't try to fit me into a box or a formula that doesn't fit who I am and what I do.

And I know it's a completely different scale. But I felt the same way about the bosses who hired me at CBS Sports Radio. When Mark and Eric brought me on board for this startup network in 2013, they just wanted me to be Amy. Not like one of the guys, not anyone else. And in giving me that confidence that I had the tools, the skills, the abilities to succeed as me, not trying to be someone else or someone I'm not, it gave me incredible confidence to be me. And so for Patrick, it's the same thing. And that's just human nature. When someone believes in us, it doesn't try to change us. Not that we can't all be accountable and make changes for the better. He's grown, he's improved, he's matured.

All of those things are true. But Andy doesn't want him to be somebody else. He just wants him to be Patrick and be the best at what Patrick is equipped to be and to do. And we all need people who believe in us and who are willing to work with us in that respect. Again, it's like the wind beneath your wings. Or as Dan Campbell says, the wind beneath our freaking wings, something like that. I miss Dan Campbell. It's been a while. But it won't be forever because the NFL monopolizes the offseason with all these different events. And coming up, you know the combine is like another NFL convention and it's on the horizon. But what's your next big thing? Brandon on Twitter, ALawRadio, the Masters and the Kentucky Derby.

Oh, I forgot about the Derby. 855-212-4227. We'll get to your calls here coming up. But really quickly, Saturday, the best day. The entire trip, as much as I appreciated the work and was willing to go without sleep and without food for three straight days to make sure we brought you the best of radio row in Super Bowl week. Saturday, when Bob and I checked out of our hotel, with coffee of course, went to the airport, paid the extra fee, got our own rental car, got the heck out of Dodge. We went straight up to Boulder City.

And for those of you who are familiar with the area, these were a lot of your recommendations. We had breakfast just quickly, drive through breakfast in Boulder City. We went to the Hoover Dam. We got there.

There were maybe two other cars in the parking garage. It was unbelievable. But even before we went on to the Hoover Dam site, for those of you who don't know, there's a new bridge that was constructed in 2010. And it was supposed to alleviate traffic that honestly, between Arizona and Nevada, all of it, even semis, were directed over the top of the Hoover Dam.

And it was becoming too much. It was a traffic jam all the time. The dam wasn't made for semis to be constantly driving over it. So they built a brand new bridge that is, I think, 900 feet up in the air. It's phenomenal. And the views from there over to the Hoover Dam were breathtaking. They just blew me away. I was so giddy.

My husband was laughing just at me. So we took pictures on, it's called the Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, so we took pictures on the bridge and then went down to the dam where we had the whole place to ourselves. It was crazy. We didn't just go on the dam, we went in the dam. We took one of those tours where you descend down into the boiler room, you see the generators, you see the pipes that pump all the water in. We crawled through an air vent and got to take pictures from inside the dam looking out. Oh my gosh, you guys, it was so cool.

And so, yeah, there were ten of us on this tour. We all crawled through a vent one by one to be able to take photos. Then we got to see the staircases that go top to bottom. The inspections are done a lot of times with these different people who have to climb these stairs. They're called the Stairway to Heaven and the Stairway to Hell.

They literally go straight up and straight down. We got to ride the original elevators from the 1930s. We heard all about the history. We had a tour guide who had been there for 16 years and he answered all the questions. My favorite question that was asked of him, because he said the Hoover Dam was built to survive or to last for 2,000 years. And one of the guys on the tour, an older gentleman had tons of questions, it was great. He said to our tour guide, what happens after 2,000 years? And Eric, the tour guide, said, I asked the engineers once and their response was, we don't care. It's just wrong and yet it's so fantastic.

We don't care because we won't be here. It's just so goofy. So the dam was built in four years in the 1930s and it really did help a lot of families pull out of the Great Depression. It is a marvel.

It's a marvel. After the tour, crawling around on the inside and taking photos, we were allowed to take photos of anything we wanted. We took an elevator to the top and walked over to Arizona and then back to the Nevada side. It was a gorgeous day, temps in the 50s, blue skies, some beautiful clouds.

Just took all kinds of photos and people offered to take our photo too, which is great. So from the Hoover Dam then, we got in our car and we drove 60 miles through Lake Mead National Park. You guys, snow covered mountains, wild horses on the side of the road.

I almost lost it. Wild horses. I was crying.

I was taking pictures of wild horses and I was crying. Then we went up to not Red Rock Canyon. We went to Valley of Fire. We had a couple late recommendations from people who are local and they said, yeah, Red Rock is great, but it'll be super crowded.

And instead, the Valley of Fire is actually better and not nearly as accessible and there won't be a lot of people there. So we drove the 60 miles to Valley of Fire State Park. Incredible.

Absolutely incredible. The colors, the striations and the rock. We hiked about three, four miles up and over, did some rock scrambling. It was so pretty and it was such a fun experience. And then, you know, stopped to take pictures of their elephant rock, which actually does look like an elephant with a trunk hanging down.

And the Seven Sisters, which are these huge rock formations, seven of them all grouped together. Awesome. From that point, we drove back through Lake Mead National Park and got to see a sunset while we were driving through. So we're heading back to the south and the west and it was perfect. The sky was purple. That was my wedding color, so I'll probably share a photo of that.

But I'm going to do a blog post to share all these photos because there's so many that I want you to see. Finally, we got back to Henderson. Again, for those of you who are familiar, we got back to Henderson. We looked online and we found an Italian place called El Chianti. It was authentic Italian.

It was a hole in the wall. It was delicious. They had a Valentine's special. They had the pasta special. We just had a really good time.

Ate dinner and yeah, happy. Just happy to be out of Vegas. We could see the lights of Vegas from there, of course.

They were lighting up the clouds even from Henderson. And then we went to the airport and got checked in for our red-eye flight and promptly fell asleep. I fell asleep even before the plane took off. I don't remember the plane taking off and that's a big deal because I do not sleep on planes. But after getting up early, I did all the driving. So 200 plus miles in a rental car, hiking, rock scrambling, eating a great Italian dinner.

We were out. And so we both slept fairly well on the plane to get back home. So Saturday was the best day. Thank you Nevada and Arizona for the gorgeous weather.

I highly recommend the Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire now that I've been there and I've seen it with my own eyes. One hour to go is after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Hyundai. There's joy in every journey. 2024 Santa Fe available early 2024.

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