Nonimmigrant: Sinless city

Ever since a visit there with his Grandparents, Las Vegas has held a mythical place in Pete's mind. It's his answer when we ask "where would you like to go on holiday?" and any hotel we stay at he compares to The Bellagio. This is entirely healthy for a six-yr-old, so we enabled him further with a surprise end to our trip in Sin City.

The drive from Bakersfield is a fabulous one, skirting the Mojave and rising slowly into the high desert, past Joshua trees and cacti, along roads that make you wonder how places like New York City, San Francisco, and our own Houston can exist in the same country as all this arid emptiness (answer: you may have noticed from the political situation that it's tricky.)

And then you crest a ridge and look down at a desert plateau where someone thought it would be a great idea to build casinos. Maybe it was to keep the sin far away from right-minded people, but given the number of cars and planes heading the same way as us it didn't work.

Being right-minded people also, we weren't staying at a casino but had chosen a little family-friendly hotel called the Desert Rose Resort. Still, this is Vegas, so the place was full of overheard conversations from people claiming to be millionaire entrepreneurs or professional gamblers dating models.

On our first day we wandered up and down the Strip, home of the Luxor, Excalibur, etc, looking for free entertainment. If you count people dressed up as showgirls, and others accosting you to buy timeshares, we found it, but it's also fun to wander into each of the huge gaming floors to see if you can spot the differences from one casino to another. It's tough in the low lighting, brown carpets, and no windows.

After this urban hike we decided to treat Pete to his favourite thing in the world: unlimited food! A little research showed that The Palms - off the Strip - serves the best all-you-can-eat buffet. After twenty minutes queuing we were shown to our table and the feasting began. Pete only made six trips to the buffet, four of which were for dessert. Quite restrained really, and cheaper than feeding him at home.

But enough was enough! The next day we got out of Vegas for a proper hike. The best thing about being a city in a desert is that you're surrounded by it, and only 30 minutes from the roulette tables is Red Rock Canyon, a national conservation area full of canyons and red rocks, as well as wild donkeys and antelope ground squirrels and not too many rattlesnakes.

We picked a hike up Ice Box Canyon, which was rated as "difficult" (of course!) Slightly too difficult when trying to push a six-yr-old over 12-foot boulders, but the views were stunning and the air somewhat brighter and cleaner than on the gaming floors.

From there it was a short trip back to the airport, where we finally succumbed to the banks of fruit machines by each boarding gate and gave Hannah a dollar to drop in one. She lost all but 26c so she won't be covering our holiday expenses, but when she has a husband and son like me and Pete some might say she's already won the jackpot.