Road Trip Day #5 - Bryce Canyon to Las Vegas

DAY 5 - Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Day Five was intense. Bryce Canyon National Park in the morning, Las Vegas at night!

We woke up at 8:30am, packed up, checked out, and headed to the canyon! Originally, we had signed up for a horseback trail ride of Bryce Canyon, but when we saw on TV Tuesday night that the temperature was only going to be 30 degrees the next day, we called and cancelled. Too bad, that would have been fun!

Instead, we drove from one view point to the next and walked around a little at each. Here's us being dorks at the park entrance.
Coming up on the canyon...
Hoodoos are what Bryce Canyon is all about. There are more hoodoos in Bryce Canyon than anywhere else in the world. The spindly spires are formed from constant freezing and thawing, causing rock to crack and fall, leaving the hoodoo formations behind.
With all that red rock, Bryce Canyon looks like it'd be a warm desert, but looks are definitely deceiving. As the sign in the pic above says, Bryce Canyon has more than 200 days with freezing temperatures a year. That's way more than Cleveland. Yikes!
Michelle took all of the amazing panoramic shots. I'm glad one of us had a camera with that function, because it's really hard to capture in a picture the massive, overwhelming canyon and its hoodoos. Panoramic pictures do a slightly better job of capturing it than a regular pic, but really no picture can compare to actually being there.
We were surprised by the number of European tourists at Bryce Canyon. We felt like we were the only Americans there. We talked to some people visiting from Italy and another couple from the Netherlands. And there was a big group of people speaking in French. It's interesting how Bryce Canyon attracts Europeans and Niagara Falls seems to attract mostly Asian tourists. I wonder why that is.
This is called the Wall of Windows:
Amazing...
Just to give a frame of reference... Cleveland's elevation is 653 feet. We could tell the air was thinner because we got out of breath so easily from just walking around. I'm glad we didn't decide to go on any strenuous hikes!
We "hiked" a little bit down a trail and took the following three pictures. Walking down was a breeze, but we had to stop ourselves because we knew walking up wasn't going to be nearly as easy. And it sure wasn't. We even had to take rest breaks. It wasn't a really steep or tough climb... it was the elevation and thin air that got us.
Then, it was time to head to VEGAS! This is a cool tunnel in Red Canyon that we had to go through on our way to/from Bryce.
We could tell on the map that the GPS was going to take us through Zion National Park, but we had no idea what that actually meant until we got there. At first, we were kind of angry when we found out there was going to be a $25 fee to drive through the park and that there was no alternate route.

The drive through Bryce Canyon National Park is at the top of the canyon, so if you don't park your car and walk to the rim, you'll never see any hoodoos and you'll think you're just driving through a forest. We kind of expected Zion to be similar in that respect... and so we were annoyed that we were going to have to pay $25 for nothing OR pay $25 and be late getting into Vegas because we'd have to stop a few times in Zion to get out and take pictures to make it worth our money.

WELL, turns out the road through Zion is through the bottom of the canyon! We didn't even have to get out of the car to capture all these amazing pictures. It was breathtaking (and well worth $25!).
We saw our first cactus in Zion! See it? Right in the middle of the pic.
Holy gigantic WOW.
One of the roads we had to take between Zion and Vegas tended to go from fast highway to normal town road pretty quickly and annoyingly often. It happened to have done this while Shea was driving through the small city of Hurricane, Utah... and to make matters worse, we were all pretty hungry and desperately looking for a Taco Bell. So it was really no surprise when we got pulled over for "going a little fast". 56 in a 40. Whoops. Shea told the cute young cop, "Sorry, we're not from around here. I'm moving to Los Angeles," and he let us off with just a warning! Yayyy. But seriously, that's a little ridiculous that a highway can turn into a middle-of-nowhere city street so quickly.

I'm not sure where this next picture is from... must be somewhere between Zion and Vegas!
We got to Vegas around 4pm... but after parking and standing in the Flamingo's check-in line (which was seriously longer than an airport check-in line), we finally got to our room a little after 5pm.

We showered and got ready and then met up with my cousin Tara who lives in Vegas. It was so great to see her! She drove us up and down the Strip and was a very good tour guide! :) I couldn't believe how much new construction there is going on in Vegas. There were so many cranes! I can't believe there's enough demand for even MORE casinos and hotels. Wow.
Shea, Michelle, Tara, and I went to dinner at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba... a Spanish restaurant in Fashion Show Mall. We got tapas and sangria and ate outside. So yummy and as Michelle and Shea vouched, very authentic.

Tara and I in the parking garage (haha) after dinner:
After dinner, we walked around with Tara, explored the Wynn, and then she dropped us off in front of the Bellagio where we watched the fountain show (which really IS as impressive as everyone makes it out to be!).
Then, Shea, Michelle, and I walked around for awhile. We went in the Bellagio, Monte Carlo, and Caesar's Palace- where we ended up in The Forum Shops and were told we had to walk back through the entire casino (we're talking at least half a mile) to get back outside. So we said screw that and went out a service exit and had to walk on the street (no sidewalks) and dodge taxis to get back to the Strip. Quite an adventure.
We played penny slots at a couple of the casinos. I can see how they could get addicting! All in all, Michelle and I lost like $4 each and Shea won around $10!
We finished the night with margaritas at Margaritaville and then went up to our hotel room. The room service guide said they could bring you drinks, but when we called for room service margaritas, they said they were out of them. What?! So we walked all the way back down to Margaritaville (which is attached to the Flamingo), got more margaritas, and brought them back to our room.

Michelle and Shea in the elevator on the way down to get more margaritas (sad):
Michelle and Shea in the elevator on the way back up to the hotel room, margaritas obtained!:
While we finished our margaritas in the room, we watched TV and played gin rummy. And that was it for the night! Kind of lame for a night in Vegas, but we were all super pooped from travelling and none of us really felt like going crazy. It was still fun though and I'm glad we stopped!

Told you Day Five was intense!