days 15 & 16 - las vegas, nv

We had originally planned for Vegas to be the last stop on our trip before heading to LA. Currently, however, we have about 3 more days before we can get into our apartment, so we've planned a new itinerary for the next couple of days: Death Valley National Park tonight, Yosemite National Park tomorrow, and San Francisco the day after before heading to Los Angeles.

We decided to spend two nights in Vegas, and we were appreciative but lazy while here. On the drive over from the Grand Canyon, we passed by the Hoover Dam, but unfortunately only saw the crappy side of it. They were building a new bridge over it though, which was kind of cool.


We got to Las Vegas and checked in at our hotel. So the night before, we'd decided that for once we should try to get reservations for a hotel (we'd just been showing up to them throughout our whole trip). We tried to get a hotel on the Strip for the first night, and found what seemed to be a nice deal at the Palazzo, the newly-constructed sister hotel to the Venetian, for about $150 a night. Normally rooms here go for somewhere around $400-500, so we figured we'd gotten some cheap room.

Apparently, we'd gotten a "luxury king deluxe suite" for our $150, which looked like the following and also included $50 slot credit and a bunch of other dining coupons. Sweeeeet!





So first thing we did was of course, to hit the slots. With our non-cashable $50 in credit, we made about $30 in real cash.

Then we had dinner at Dos Caminos, a really nice Mexican restaurant in the Palazzo, before hitting the streets to soak in the sights of Vegas.

We happened to catch a show at Treasure Island across the street, about some sirens who torture some pirates. It was a somewhat awkward show with a lot of inneundos, probably inappropriate for the many children in the audience. It did feature some special effects, like explosions and fireworks.



Afterwards, we decided to tour some of the other big name hotels, like the Venetian and Caesar's Palace.









After exploring all these places, it had gotten dark, so we got our first views of Vegas lights:




We also encountered some street performers.
The streets themselves were littered with call girl cards. We also saw several ads for some hot babes - phone number was 696-9696.


The next day we had to move hotels, as a second night would have cost us $460 dollars.

We went for brunch at the Bellagio, which had a lovely conservatory with big animals made of flowers.




Because our next hotel was about half an hour off the Strip, we took the time to do some more exploring on Fremont Street.



We attempted to find a casino that would allow us to use actual pennies to play penny slots, but apparently those don't exist anymore. We did, however, use up several dollars' worth of nickels, but this was an entirely money-losing endeavor.

Finally, we went to our hotel, which was on a resort called Lake Las Vegas. They had managed to construct a lake right in the middle of the desert and put some high-end hotels and stores around it. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton, which was nice but nowhere near as nice as the Palazzo.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, looking for food, buying cheap souvenirs, and just hanging out. We tried some of the frozen custard at Luv It Frozen Custard, which was pretty tasty.

Wedding chapels by the side of the road:


Off to Death Valley today.

day 14 - cortez, co to grand canyon, az

Our first stop today was at Petrified Forest National Park.


The northern half of the park is actually a swath of colorful land that is part of the Painted Desert. The sand here is extremely strange and colorful, with various minerals contributing to the various colors you see. We'd expected the warmer tones, but certainly did not expect colors like green and yellow. You see them a lot both on the ground and on the hilly cones, which are striped:









The ancestral Puebloans also lived here, and left many rocks with petroglyphs on them:

Afterwards, we began to see more petrified wood. Millions of years ago, this land was once covered by a tropical forest. After flooding, they were buried in sandy ash, which prevented decomposition. Silicates from the ash accumulated in the cells of the wood, eventually hardening and turning to rock.

This is Agate Bridge, a natural petrified wood bridge that has since been reinforced by concrete.


Since the 1800s a lot of visitors and rock collectors have been coming to steal the wood. Now it's a federal offense, but regardless there is only a little left, mostly in the form of these stumps littered all over the place.



Close ups of the wood.


We stopped by the gift shop and bought a piece of our own, then headed out towards the Grand Canyon.

On the way, we passed the Wigwam Motel, a hotel in Holbrook where every room is a wigwam.

Partway across the I-40, we passed this sign for the Meteor Crater National Landmark, so we decided to go take a look. This is a crater that was left by a meteor 50,000 years ago. It's a pretty big crater; the first picture below shows what we show, but the second is a picture of an image that gives some size of its scale by depicting the building near it.



Here are also some facts about the crater.


After we left, we decided to get a car wash because our car looked like this:

We stopped in Flagstaff, AZ for a tasty lunch at Pato Thai, a local Thai restaurant.


Then we drove the remaining hour-and-a-half to the Grand Canyon, passing through some national forests filled with ponderosa pine. On the way, there was also a little campground inspired by the Flintstones:

The Grand Canyon is huge. It's about 4000 feet tall and an average of 10 miles across. It was carved by the Colorado River, which you can see in some of these pictures, and which is much smaller than the canyon it made.





It's also deadly!



These ravens kept hanging out near the viewing points, probably looking for food. They seemed pretty friendly and fearless.


The Grand Canyon is not only appreciated by people; this dog appeared to enjoy the view as well.


We took the Desert View drive from the central entrance on the South Rim to this historic watchtower in the east of the park.


Unfortunately we didn't have time for a mule ride (apparently those take a full day) and it had also started to rain a bit. So we got to our hotel, ate a somewhat mediocre buffet dinner at the Cafe Canyon, and called it for the night. Vegas tomorrow!