We are sitting in the Nellie's Suite Hotel in Las Vegas thanks to a donation from my Aunt and are planning our lunch place for today. Before we found ourselves here, we were headed South on 163 from Utah headed toward Monument Valley which was awesome! It was everything like in all the films I had seen it in. We overheated once in the desert but we took advantage of our time stranded to do more face paintings, only this time Adam helped paint Kiss member's face artwork on myself and Andrew! We eventually left and made it through the valley and were making good time toward the Northern Rim of The Grand Canyon, after a few more hours of driving we made it. We are taking Rt. 67 to the northern entrance when we get out to stop and refill the fuel tank a bit, then we look over and see a bison... none of us knew there were bison there and come to find out they are non-native outside of the North Rim of The Grand Canyon and were brought there as a cattle enterprise in the early 20th century. The original goals of the people who brought the cattle realized the idea wouldn't work and they abandoned the operation and the bison remain there to this day! Neat fun fact! It was a nice drive in and once we reached the Grand Canyon and all of it's views to behold we were in awwwee! To our luck we made it in time to see another lighting storm inside the canyon and Adam managed to grab some photos of lighting shooting into the canyon after a lot of taken photos. We appreciated the Canyon for about an hour or so then we took back off to find camp outside of the park. There was a parcel of National Forest Land right outside of the park, so we found a nice level campsite, no fires though as there is still a fire band.
We woke the next morning packed up headed for Zion National Park and once we made it, it was another one of the those places that was just breathtaking, it's a scenic drive through the park and it was just incredible how they managed to blast tunnels out of mountains to make it possible to drive two thousand feet into this canyon. Once we got down in it was about 100 degrees so we weren't going to go hiking or anything but we went to the gift shop to grab some water and when we got back to the van the propane tank was leaking. Somewhere along the way we must have hit a bump that punctured the bottom of the tank so now we are cooking on a little Coleman stove from here on out. We took off toward Las Vegas after that stopping to grab oil and at other stores and stuff. We tried finding a body of water near a river but the river was dried up, so we found a reservoir to cool ourselves off in the desert, man was it refreshing! After sweating all day and driving, it was perfect. The three of us just waded in the water for an hour while the sun went down.
Afterwards we took off for Las Vegas, it was only about 66 miles from the reservoir we were swimming at. Adam who has already been to Las Vegas was not in as much shock to its size and magnitude as Andrew and I. You can never prepare someone for any site like Vegas or The Grand Canyon or Monument Valley. They just have to see it for themselves to really understand the majesty! We parked at the Bellagio and walked around strip. We went through Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Paris, New York New York, MGM Grand and the likes. We grabbed a slice of pizza in New York and then decided there is just too much to see and do and grabbed a cheap hotel off of the strip. After walking back to the Bellagio to retrieve Casper, and spending an hour in traffic, we found the hotel. We hit the sack around 3 or so.
Now as I said, we are off to the strip to grab some lunch. Next we venture towards California!
