I'm back from my fantastic trip! Well, I've been back since Thursday morning, but I've worked 9-hour days at Target on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so I haven't had a lot of time to relax. I saw so many things on the trip, I'm not exactly sure where to begin.... Las Vegas is HUGE. Well, the strip is HUGE; hotels there are several blocks long, and not Raleigh-sized blocks. We're talking hotels that are a mile long, so even though you want to go "right next door" to visit the Bellagio or Caesar's Palace, it will take you 30 minutes to get there. The city was filled with people, especially since the first weekend we were there, the World Series of Poker was being held and it was Memorial Day weekend, so all those Californians had taken over the city. I was able to visit the Mirage and see their mini zoo; they have Siegfried and Roy's white lions and tigers and other assorted large cats and the hotel also has a dolphin exhibit, so that was neat :o) We visited Hoover Dam, which was much bigger than I thought it would be (for some reason). There was a tour that went down into the dam so you could see the power generators and things, so that was pretty cool also. I would post pictures, but there are so many that I'm just going to put them on Facebook (once I pick out which ones of the ~700 pictures are worthy to be posted).
We left Las Vegas after 2 nights and drove through the southern tip of California through a town called Needles just so I could say I'd been to California. Our final destination was Flagstaff, Arizona, where we stayed for 4 nights. From there we visited the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, the Meteor Crater, and the city of Sedona. We also made a side trip to New Mexico when we were in the Painted Desert ("We're only 40 miles away, what the hell?" said my Poppop). Even though I'm going to post pictures of all those places, I could never actually describe to someone how beautiful they were. There's nothing like standing at the edge of a canyon that's a mile deep and 18 miles wide (at least for some of the canyon) and trying to explain what it feels like; you'll just have to see it for yourself!
After leaving Flagstaff, we drove to Page, Arizona which is where Lake Powell is. The lake is formed by the Glen Canyon Dam, which is also on the Colorado River, north of the Grand Canyon; the lake is on the Arizona/Utah border. On the way to Page, we stopped in Tuba City to do some looking around in the trading posts. A huge portion of Arizona is Indian Reservations, so there were loooots of tiny stands by the side of the road where the natives were selling all of their crafts and jewelry. We also stopped at this little place where there were dinosaur tracks visible on the surface of the desert rocks, so that was pretty neat also (since they weren't in a museum!). Once in Page, we spent two nights there and went on a boat tour of the lake. It was beautiful, and the only place on the trip my grandparents hadn't already visited at one point or another, so I'm really glad they were able to see something new. Of course, we drove different routes than the ones they had taken on their other trips, and the scenery was always beautiful and breath-taking, I still felt a little bad that most of the things that amazed me had already amazed them 20 years ago. But my Poppop said that the best part of the trip for him was seeing how everything was exciting for me :o)
After Page, we drove up to Mount Carmel, Utah to spend the night; we toured Bryce Canyon National Park on that day also. I think Bryce had the most unusual features I've ever seen and the most unique on the trip. They're called hoodoos and they look like pillars of rock that used to be great plateaus where everything else eroded around them... I have to wonder what sorts of winds and other forces could create such things on the Earth's surface and if just one other minor thing had been different, there wouldn't have been anything to look at except some flat desert. We visited Zion National Park on the way to Las Vegas (for the second time).
Our last two nights were spent in Vegas at the Flamingo hotel, which is one of the older and more famous hotels. It was shaped like a giant U and on the inside part of the hotel was a huge courtyard filled with waterfalls and tropical birds including flocks of flamingos. Luckily for me, our room was on the 12th floor (of 28) and faced the courtyard, so I could look at it all the time in the evenings to see the lights of the strip also. And during the day I had views of the mountains that surround the city. We went to Fremont Street, which is where all the original casinos are and I got to gamble some ;-) I played roulette with my Poppop and I managed to win about $40 (but I was playing with his money, so I guess it didn't matter). But I must have been his good luck charm because he won $90. That's not a lot or anything, but it's a fair amount when you're playing with $.50 chips. We mainly just toured the city for the rest of the time. Poppop and I went in the Effiel Tower replica at the Paris hotel (my grandmom is afraid of heights) to see the city from above, and we ate a lot of nice food. One morning for breakfast I got this "standard" fruit bowl that had cantaloupe, honeydew, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, AND grapes in it. In the middle of the desert! One night we went to a nice buffet place with all sorts of seafood (which I don't like) so I ate off the dessert menu- I love trips with grandparents, because regular parents wouldn't allow that sort of thing :-P
Well, I guess keep your eyes peeled for pictures to be posted on Facebook... I'm going to hit the treadmill :o)
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