Thursday, July 17, 2008

Flagstaff, Sedona, Grand Canyon, and Vegas baby!

We had a late dinner at closing time at the Weatherford Hotel in Flagstaff. It's an old, distinguished hotel with much history. The next morning we drove south of Flagstaff, AZ to Sedona, AZ. If you have never been to Sedona, you owe it to yourself to find a way to make a trek out here. It has incredible scenery which our photos do not do it justice.

After a jaw dropping experience in Sedona, we traveled north to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park for more TMJ experience.

We took a quick drive along the South Rim drive and wasted more pixels trying to document the majesty of Grand Canyon. Unfortunately,the rain that had followed us all trip was right over our shoulder here too, so the light was not ideal for photographing the canyon.

We headed west to Hoover Dam and into Las Vegas. The experience of actually crossing atop the Hoover Dam at night was unique. They are in the process of creating a bypass for trucks to travel over the Colorado River at a nearby point. Truck traffic is barred from traveling over the dam since 9/11. The bypass they are building is a wonder of the world in itself with it's massive support columns based in carved out areas of the sheer rock cliffs. The bypass is in the upper left of this photo.

We proceeded into Las Vegas to stay at the Tropicana hotel. We walked along the world famous Vegas strip. Thanks to the value of the US dollar, we were in the minority speaking English as French, German and Spanish, along with the occasional Irish lilt or Scottish burr were heard.

We walked into O'Malleys casino along with others, but had a bit of a romance with lady luck as she decided to smile upon our endeavors to walk away with some of the casino's money.
We stayed out until the sun began to rise in the eastern sky competing with the glare of Vegas neon.

Getting up at the crack of noon, we headed over to Stripburger where we had an excellent lunch.So much so we returned for dinner. After lunch, I suggested a walk through the Fashion Show Mall. My suggestion was met with luke warm approval, but that soon changed when we spied the O2 bar. After about 45 minutes of shenanigans fueled by 90% oxygen, we went to Madam Tussauds wax museum.
I went in with an attitude of mentally rolling my eyes, but left laughing most of the time we were there. The wax museum encourages interaction with the wax figures. There's lots of funny (at least we think) photos we took during the tour of the museum.

We were having so much fun we decided to stay another day in Vegas. This was no small decision since we had planned to be back in Dallas sometime Friday. Staying another day in Vegas necessitated we make up that "lost day" on the road. I reworked the itinerary on the fly working out mileages so we could still maintain our terminus date. We hit O'Maleys again with the same result (at least for Dave) as the previous night (read: won money).

No comments: