Las Vegas Nights and Sights

 We visited Paris to pick up our tickets for the show Jersey Boys and here are a few shots. Later we met friends downtown at the "D" and had dinner. Afterward we went out side and viewed the lights and took an excursion into the Golden Nugget. Check out the short video from the laser show that they do on the hour. The sky was covered from building to building with a soaring canopy where the light show took place. It was pretty impressive with street performers, music, and people zip-lining overhead. The place was seething with a crowd of people and was quite lively - an enlightening introduction to Vegas nightlife .

Wednesday night we will be going to the Palazzo for the America's Got Talent live show where one of my college classmates is performing. His name is Joe Castillo and he is a sand artist. He made it into the finals ending up in fifth place. He is amazing.

Grand Canyon North Rim Gallery

Sin City

Our Las Vegas Home

Yes, we are in Las Vegas. Yesterday we drove from Kanab, UT into Arizona, back into Utah and then into Nevada. Needless to say we were in the tri-state region and our route caused us to transverse Utah twice where the corner of Arizona intruded into our path. The distance travel was 205 miles but to us flatlanders from Florida it was like being on a different planet. We crossed mountains, deserts and plains. Much of our way followed the path of the Virgin River as its canyon was the only practical place to build a road through the mountains. Beautiful!

Our campsite is pure Las Vegas. We are parked at Arizona Charlie’s RV Park which is a part of the casino property here. You might wonder why we are camping at a casino. Simply, $$$$$$$$$$$. When we checked out the local KOA Campground we discovered that their rates were $77 a night – ouch. Here we are only paying $27 a night and this location comes with perks. Signing up for a casino Players Card was a no brainer as this entitles us to breaks on food, and certain promotional gifts. This morning I had steak and eggs for breakfast and it only set me back $3.99 less a 10% discount for our Players Card. Not too shabby.

Last evening we dined with longtime friends of Kathy Lou, Diane, Palma, and Peter at the Tuscany. Diane and Lou, now living here, had coupons so again we benefited from the casino scene. I had a delicious prime rib for $10.99 but with the coupon, dinner was two for one. I guess this is one place where we can eat out cheaper than eating at home. We had a nice visit.

This morning Kathy rode over to their local residence and spent some time with her friends while I stayed at the coach with the puppies. We had clothes in the wash so I was there to transfer them to the dryer. It is surely convenient traveling with a washer/dryer combo in our motorhome. Kathy always hated looking for laundry opportunities in our previous travels, especially with the onus of sitting around in a Laundromat waiting for our clothes to finish.

Tonight I presume we will meet up with the gang again and do dinner somewhere. After all, we are in Vegas, why not? 

P.S. One of the programs that Kathy and I watch on TV is America's Got Talent. This year one of my college mates was a contestant and actually made the finals. His name is Joe Castillo. We just got tickets for AGT opening night of the live show in Vegas at the Venetian Palazzo on September 26th and Joe will be performing. How exciting. We hope to meet up with Joe and his wife, Cindy, for lunch one day if his busy schedule will allow.

Grand Canyon North Rim

Early this morning Auntie Pat, dog sitter extraordinaire picked the girls up early and Kathy and I got off about 8:00 on our run to the North Rim. The transition from canyon, to prairie, to mountain, to upper flats and meadows, to upper forests made the eighty mile ride both scenic and interesting. Upon arriving we immediately went to the Lodge and enjoyed breakfast looking out the plate glass windows at the Grand Canyon.

Most of my life I have viewed photos of the canyon and have been impressed with its grandeur. I often wondered if I would ever see it for myself so this trip is somewhat a wish come true. The day was a lovely one with the temperatures in the high sixties and low seventies with a bright blue sky. However, there was more haze that I would have liked but you can’t choose the weather, only the destination. This always seems to be the plight of the traveling photographer. You are captive to the elements that exist at the particular time that you arrive. I read stories of Ansel Adams and how he would sit in one place waiting for the lighting and conditions he wanted for a specific shot. Few of us have that luxury, or that dedication to the photographic art. My resolution has become to make the best of prevailing conditions to produce the best product possible under the constraints presented me. Sometimes I am happy with the result but many times I just shrug my shoulders and think, oh well.

Kathy and I spent a good number of hours at the North Rim, and other viewpoints, eying the magnificent view and then headed back to Kanab. Knowing that we had a little extra time, and that the girls were provided for, we decided to take in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park on the way back. It was a circuitous route and involved about twenty miles on what was labeled “Primitive Road Not Maintained” but we made it. It was interesting to see but l don’t think either of us would have minded missing this one. It did indeed look like what one might envision the Egyptian landscape to be, but it was much smaller than we imagined. In fact, I was curious how the movies that were shot there managed keeping the obvious southwestern red cliffs out of the background when shooting.

We picked up the girls and found that they had a wonderful day playing with the sitters three pampered pooches. It was a good opportunity to socialize the pups as they are still young and needed the interaction with other animals and humans.

King of Parks

Yesterday morning we made our way to Zion National Park. It is an interesting choice of a name as Zion is a biblical name usually identified with the city of Jerusalem and is quite Jewish in nature. However, when one also understands the biblical association with Zion is also one of refuge, it is easy to perceive why this stalwart location was given this name.

The thirteen mile drive into the canyon is impressive enough in its own right but the canyon itself is practically beyond belief. Before the final descent into Zion’s floor we entered through an engineering marvel built in the 1930’s – a tunnel that was 1.1 miles long carved through the rock wall of Zion. It is an amazing testament to the ingenuity of man but after we emerged from the tunnel and traveled the switchback road down into Zion, witnessing the natural wonders, man’s accomplishment is dwarfed by the awesome creative work of God that is Zion National Park.

There are numerous pullouts on the main road through Zion (Route 9) but in order to see the heart of the canyon one must find parking and ride a shuttle. We learned this after we had driven through the park and found ourselves being instructed to drive to the neighboring town of Springdale to locate parking and obtain a shuttle back into Zion. We opted not to do this and by circling like vultures in the park shuttle parking lots we finally procured a spot.

I did not care for the shuttle ride into the scenic drive area. Not only could we not see much, but it was almost impossible to photograph any of the sites from the bus, and it was completely impossible to hear the narration due to the buses crowded and noisy environment. However, when we exited the shuttle it was easy to view the grandeur of Zion. We did several hikes, which our bodies paid for later, that got us up close and personal with this natural wonder. Zion is indeed a King of Parks.

This morning we moved from Glendale to Kanab, UT. Our reasoning for this is that Kanab is twenty-five miles closer to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I say closer, but we are still eighty miles from the North Rim Visitor Center. This is as close as we can get in having a place to park our Winnebago. The campground at Grand Canyon is full despite the fact that school is now in session and it is late in the season (North Rim closes in mid-October). There is a primitive campground about forty miles from the North Rim but it is also full and doesn’t really have the facilities that we are accustomed to

So, on Tuesday I will finally see the grandest canyon of them all. We have located a dog sitter to look after Mitzi and Fiona which will afford us the time to make this side-trip. If possible (but not likely), we might stay overnight if there is a cancellation at the North Rim Lodge. This is the only way that we can spend a full day seeing the sights there.