I'm glad to be back home where people are normal...or just a little less crazy. :) We did enjoy our time out west very much. I think I could live there. Not Vegas...but I loved Arizona. It's so beautiful. Brown...but beautiful. I'm sure I would get tired of all the brown and the absence of green leafy trees but it might be a good place to go for the summer whenever we retire....WAY in the future. I'm gonna break this down into days I guess and try not to get too detailed...but since I'm not keeping a written journal, this will be what I have to look back on...so hopefully you won't be too bored.
We flew out to Vegas the butt crack of dawn on Thursday February 26th. It was a little over a 4 hour flight...we got there before lunch. Jeff and I had to wait to get our room...it wasn't ready till 3 so we left our bags with the hotel and explored a little. Jeff and I have never been to Vegas and we don't know anything about slot machines, poker, craps, or roulette. So we decided to try at least the slots. There are some easy 3 button machines that are pretty self explanatory and everything else was completely over our heads. We stayed at the Stratosphere which is at the end of the up town strip. We walked over to the Sahara to check out the roller coaster that runs from the inside to the outside of the casino. It also had a Nascar Cafe...so had to check that out for Jeff. The coaster was awesome. I definitely wasn't expecting much from it since it came out of the casino but it was super fast with a complete upside down loop and then straight up. Then it shoots you backward to do it all over again. The weather was awesome...lower 70's. We got our room, which we booked online well in advance. We got a great deal on it. I asked for a mountain view and I was so glad. The view was awesome and the room was large and nice.
Friday we had plans to rent a car and drive over the Hoover dam and on to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. No such luck. All the Nascar fans had rented all the cars in Vegas. We didn't think about that. The company I work for has a Vegas office so I got in touch with my supervisor to see if there was a company car and sure enough...there was. They let me use it so we got a cab to get it and then we drove from there. We lost some day workin' all this out so we were in sort of a hurry. I wanted to stop at the Hoover Dam visitor center to take pictures but we didn't have enough time. The sun would be setting in a matter of hours. So...the pictures you see were all taken while driving except for the ones of the back of the dam. There was a small lot people could pull into to take pictures on the Arizona side so I did. Only got the back of the dam though. They are building a bridge high up above the dam so eventually...no one will be allowed to drive across the dam anymore. It was cool to drive across while possible.
The trip to the West Rim took about 2 1/2 hours. Being in Vegas you don't really notice you're in a desert. Once you get past the city, you roll through a mountainous region and then to the open flat desert which was so stinkin' SWEET! On a whim of course...I believe I could live there. There's no rational thought put into that statement...just based off shear beauty. Of course, people who live there would probably think Tennessee is the greenest most beautiful place ever. It's always greener on the other side. :) We went through a small town called Dolan Springs that makes Westmoreland look like a metropolis. From there you go on to a dirt gravel road for about 15 miles at 20mph onto an Indian Reservation. The scenery was still amazing. Each side of the road was lined with Joshua Trees. They grow at a very very slow pace so the taller trees you see can be hundreds of years old...some actually reaching over a thousand years old. Google Joshua Trees for some pretty interesting facts.
We made it to the reservation outpost and parked. We had to ride a bus to the Skywalk. My first reaction to seeing the Canyon was pretty much a gasp of air. It was so beautiful. My immediate thought was to pretty much praise God for creating something so beautiful. We all unloaded and immediately started snapping pictures. I took some with my digital camera and my SLR using film. Sometimes...nothing looks better than pictures from film. I wanted to capture it both ways. There was a group from Germany and they were talking 90mph. I enjoyed listening to them.
Jeff does not like heights. He fell off a roof once and ever since then he's just had an extreme fear of heights. He can't even look at people who are on ladders or close to high edges. So of course I'm walkin' toward the edge to get some shots and he is pacing back and forth asking me to please be carefully. I laughed it off. When I turned around he was gone. Later on, he said he couldn't even watch me. Ha! From where he was standing it looked like I was right on the edge. I'm not deathly afraid of heights but I'm not stupid enough to get so close to the edge that if I tripped I'd be gone. There were no rails or warning signs. It was pretty much at your own risk.
Unfortunately the Skywalk was not included in the original bus package from where we parked. We saved hundreds of dollars driving ourselves out there but ended up having to still pay for a bus ride to the Skywalk (no one can drive there on their own...that's how they get ya) and then tickets to walk on the Skywalk were seperate. 30 bucks to walk on the Skywalk...and Jeff only lasted a few minutes. HA! He did it...so I was proud of him. He was white as a ghost. If you go to the website you can see pictures of it. It's a glass platform that extends out over the side of the Canyon. You can look down and see to the Canyon floor. It's over 4000ft. to the bottom. It was freaky being that high up and walking on glass. They won't let you take pictures out there so I couldn't document Jeff's defiance of fear. :)
From there we went on to Guano point by bus. The bus drops you off at a part of the Canyon that extends far out and you are surrounded on 3 sides by the West Rim. At the end of that is Guano point...a large hill. I hiked up half way thinking I had reached the top. Jeff didn't go. The trail wound around the hill where there was just enough room to walk and then a complete drop to the abyss. It was freaky. I walked very carefully because there was no where to trip and fall but down the side of the Canyon. We watched the sun set and because I took so long hiking up and back down the point, we missed the last bus. We had to ride the worker's van back to where we parked our car. Friday was my favorite part of the trip by far. I want to go back and go to the South Rim. I had no idea how big the Grand Canyon was. It goes on for miles and miles. We flew by plane beside it for 20 minutes.
Saturday we got up and walked the strip which takes FOREVER. Everything looks close but because that area is completely flat...you can walk forever toward a building and it'll take you an hour. I wanted to go back to the hoover dam but we had a show to catch that evening and didn't want to be in such a hurry to get back. We had slept in late so it was already mid morning. We went in several of the casinos and played a few slots. All in all we spent $20 on slots the entire time we were there. It was pretty much put your money in...maybe win a dollar...and then loose it. It just seemed pointless to me. Jeff walked by a man in our hotel lobby that was laying over on a slot machine crying. It really is sad. We walked around and watched people spending enormous amounts of money and loosing it in an instant.
Saturday night we went to the original Vegas show, Cirque Du Soleil Mystere. Took me awhile to learn how to pronounce that. In the South you hear..."Circus Olay." Close but not really. There are various Cirque Du Soleil shows...some being more sexual in nature...but the one we went to was more family friendly. We ate at a nice restaurant in Treasure Island that was sort of like the Rain Forrest Cafe.
After the show we walked the strip more and encountered some interesting things which are not surprising in Vegas. Prostitution is of course legal there. There is a LOT of advertisement for it. There are moving billboards...as in...trucks that pull billboards with "Hot Babes" along with a number you can call. On the street you look down and there are baseball cards of naked women all over the place. Someone on the bus we rode up and down the strip was reading the back of the card which happened to be the hooker's stats. Besides that, there are, what I assume to be, illegal immigrants wearing "Hot Babes" t-shirts with piles of those baseball cards of women in hand. They stand in a line...bout 10 to 15 people long on the sidewalk and push the cards at you while you walk by. There are several groups of them up and down the strip on the weekends. They take two cards and flip them together to make a clicking noise. Apparently they get trained for this. You'll see one of them walking along and just throwing the cards all over the ground. At every corner of every street and along the side walks are news paper stands. They are free and they are all of prostitutes or erotic ads. Most people don't take the cards or the news papers. I was happy to see that. You learn to just ignore it. We walked by one casino on the way back to our hotel and there was an open portion with no doors and there right inside the opening were two strippers dancing around poles. I'm not surprised.
Sunday was the race so we got up, took the bus to pick up the company vehicle and then drove to the speedway. It was very warm. I drank tons of water and Jeff and I actually got a sun burn. The race was pretty cool to watch. Jeff said Vegas is one of the most boring races to watch during the season but he quickly changed his mind once seeing it in person. Apparently TV doesn't do the race justice. We could see the entire track and there were plenty of wrecks. One happened in our turn and debris hit me in the eye. Pretty cool. I still have my eye. HA! I enjoyed it and I don't like Nascar. After the race we sat in the parking lot for literally 2 1/2 hours. After getting back to the room, we walked the strip again and it wasn't as bad. The prostitution pushers weren't out in force and a lot of the cards were cleaned up. The streets weren't as crowded either.
Monday we got up, packed and took our bags down for them to keep after check out. The Stratosphere has a lot goin' on up in the needle point tower. One being a restaurant called Top of the World. You eat in a fine dining atmosphere while the dining room revolves around. Cool. After eating lunch there we went up to the observation deck. I have 3 rolls of film that I took with my SLR camera but haven't developed them yet. I broke my digital camera on Saturday by dropping it on the side walk. I was so stinkin' sad but Jeff wouldn't let me pout about it. HA! Once I get those developed I'll post them on here.
Below is the slide show of our trip from my digital camera. Enjoy or be bored.
