Thursday, January 15, 2009

Day 4 - Zion's and Las Vegas

We woke up in this beautiful setting on Monday morning and after a quick breakfast, headed back to Zions for another hike.
Ever since we had first hiked the Narrows I had wanted to come back and hike Angel's Landing. Luckily for me one of the few trails that was opened was Angle's Landing although not all the way to the top. Here you can see the first switch backs we had to climb. We lost Garth before he got to this point.
As you can see, it was another beautiful day even though we were hiking in the snow it was warm. This was the point that we lost Rob, Jip and Preston.
These short and steep switch backs were amazing the way the snow covered them.
Maxim beat us all to this point but started down before we could get a picture of us all.
Here is another great shot of Anita and I. It almost looks as though we have be cropped into this picture.
At this point the trail narrowed and you had to use chains to pull yourself up with and when we got to the next small set of switch backs, I lost Anita, Wouter and Jeske.
I hiked up to another amazing point where I could tell that I still had a long way to go (when hiking it always seems as though you are almost there then you top out and realize you have further to go) and too many people waiting for me. So another hiker and I took pictures of each other and started the decent together. While the trail was definitely narrower up here, the snow gave you a false sense of security and I think it will be really interesting to hike it again when there is no snow.
Just a couple more photos of this beautiful canyon covered in white.

From Zions, we started our longest day of driving thus far as we headed to Las Vegas. Once we hit the city we hit traffic jams due to construction. Garth got off the freeway and when we got closer to the Strip we hit more traffic jams. Las Vegas is just one big traffic jam day and night!

We were staying at the Venetian and had quite a time just trying to find the entrance. Once we got out of the van and knew we didn't have to drive anymore we were thrilled. Then we walked into the hotel and looked around and we were even more thrilled.
Check out our room that looked down on to the swimming pool.
After a little rest we headed out on to the strip. Here is an outside photo of the Venetian.
Our first stop was the Mirage and we managed to get there just minutes before the volcano erupted so we stood around with all the other tourists to wait.
Here Maxim is pretending to be a Oriental tourist with his peace sign.
We were all rewarded and warmed when the volcano erupted.
From the Mirage, we went to see the pirate show at Treasure Island which has always been one of our favorites. We waited a half hour or so and we were so disappointed. It is longer the family entertainment it once was. The pirates now fight the sexy sirens who sink their ship and bewitch them. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
At that point we just walked down the strip looking at all the hotels. Earlier in the evening we had talked about getting some Italian ice, since it is a favorite of Rob's, and when we were in Caesar's Palace I saw a store so we headed over to have some. They had cups displayed of the various sizes and I chose the smallest size and Rob started ordering his family's in the next smallest size. There weren't any prices displayed and when I walked around the counter to pay for mine I couldn't believe that it was $14! And then I noticed that the size Rob was buying multiples of was $17!! I went and told him how much they were and he didn't order any more but he still ended up paying $92 for Italian ice! The price kind of took the sweetness out of the ice.
As I said before one of the nice things of going right after Christmas was seeing all the decorations still up in the hotels. The Bellagio's decorations were absolutely outstanding. Jeske is standing in front of just a few of the many huge presents and ornaments they had on display.

After checking out the inside of the hotel, we went and watched the wonderful fountain show in the frontand thought about the Ocean's Eleven movie.
From there we finished off with New York, New York and then headed back to the Venetian because our legs were tired and it was after 1:00 am.
As we were walking to our room Preston talked Garth and I into walking down to the Encore that had just opened the day before to get him a chip as a souvenir. He was sure that their chips would be really special. I can't remember when my legs and feet had been so tired but we decided to go. We walked though the Wynn which is connected to the Encore and then had to find the cashier cages to purchase a chip. While Garth was buying a chip I thought I'd take his picture for future blackmail threats, but as I was about to take the picture the security guard came up and I quickly took a picture of the beautiful mosaic floor - or so I told him. Actually they were very beautiful. The chip on the other hand wasn't special at all and the ones at the Venetian were much nicer. It was after 2:00 am that we finally drug ourselves back to our room where we slept in as late as possible.
We headed back to Mesa the next day and we were all very happy with all the sites we had seen. The trip had turned out perfectly.

1 comment:

The Longs said...

I am so amazed you guys ventured the Angel's Landing hike in the snow! Very daring! One of my favorite hikes though! You guys looked like you have a wonderful and fun road trip!
--shari