Between June 5th and June 15th I went on a road trip from Nevada to Utah, then going into Arizona before returning to Las Vegas at the end.
I landed in Las Vegas on June 5th. My plane between Detroit and Las Vegas had been delayed for an hour on the ground, but they upgraded me to business class, so they kept pouring me drinks all through the four hour flight.
I checked into the Circus Circus casino/hotel waiting for my friend Diana to show up. She was supposed to show up a few hours after me, so I explored the casino and found the horse-around bar (you know...the merry-go-round bar they used in the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"-movie). I had this master plan of having a bunch of drinks in this thing and then try to get off, but unfortunately it was not open.
I spent a couple of hours waiting in the lobby for Diana. Being jet lagged, and having screaming kids all around (this was a "family casino", whatever the hell that is...) , I was having a fairly unpleasant time. To top it off, I was worried, because she didn't show up when she was supposed to. After an hour or so waiting I returned to my room to find a message on the hotel phone that she'd been delayed for one hour. I waited another hour. Still no-show. When calling her, I could only get answering machine. I started wondering what I would do if she was unable to make it. Just before 11PM she called me, saying she had just landed. Crisis averted.
Friday we started out early, driving from Las Vegas into Utah. After driving for a couple of hours, we arrived at Zion NP. We parked the car, and got on the visitor's shuttle. These were fairly well-organized shuttles, with drivers guiding over the speakers on what was to be found at each shuttle stop. There were shuttles going all the way up the valley, every ten minutes or so. We got off at a couple of the stops, making short walks and snapping pictures. They didn't turn out that great, as it was late in the day (difficult light down in the valley).
We drove onwards through the rest of the park. This was a very interesting drive. Lots of strange formations and interesting patterns in the red sandstone. We stopped at a road junction where the road from the national park hit the highway. We parked the car and went to have dinner at a local diner. This turned out to be a very bad idea, because I ate something that upset my stomach. I spent the whole night in the bathroom, and was sick throughout the next day.
Saturday we drove on to Bryce Canyon. We drove to the major viewpoints, snapping pictures at each one, and walked the Navajo Loop to see the main formations. Afterwards, we had lunch at a lodge in the park, going on towards Grand Staircase/Escalante. We were planning to see an arch close to the main road, so we stopped at the Escalante visitor center for directions.
We followed a small road south until we hit an unpaved road. After a while, the road suddenly crossed a small stream. This looked to deep for our Toyota Corolla, so we decided to turn back. We continued on through Escalante, across the "million dollar road" to Boulder, with the tightrope section being the highlight. Next we crossed a 9000 ft mountain before going into the Capitol Reef National Park. We stopped for the night at a small junction called "Hanksville" at a curiously overpriced motel, where the owner assured us he had "the last two rooms in town".
Sunday we drove north to the Interstate, before turning south again towards Arches NP. There were lots of people at the park, so sometimes we had to fight to get a parking spot. I suppose we deserved that for trying to hit one of the most popular national parks in Utah in a weekend.
We stopped at Balanced Rock, and the Windows section before going to the trail head to get to Delicate Arch. We walked the trail to delicate arch, the last bit being on a narrow ledge. Delicate Arch itself was absolutely worth the trip, but it was quite annoying with all the people "arch-hogging" (that is, to sit and stand directly next the arch for extended periods of time, blocking people from making "pure" shots).
Next we went to Moab and checked into a motel before having lunch at a local Mexican place. Moab was quite colored by being so close to the national parks. It had lots of motels and restaurants to cater to the hordes of tourists straming into the national parks. In the afternoon we drove to Canyonlands NP, stopping at the canyon overlook points.
Monday we started early driving back up to Arches to hike the Double O trail. I was anxious about the trail, since the route description said that the route was very exposed and absolutely unsuited for people with agoraphobia. It turned out the park brochure was crying wolf. Only a very small bit was narrow, and there were still lots of room for two people to pass each other. We looked at lots of arches, doing a big loop to get back to the car. I made the mistake of not bringing enough water so it was very tiring at the end, being hot and dehydrated walking in the sand. We crashed at the motel room after that, exhausted from the hike.
Tuesday was a transport day, taking us from Utah into Arizona. We drove from Moab southwards, stopping for some pictures at Monument Valley, and having lunch at Kayenta before driving onwards to Flagstaff. We got stuck for an hour outside Tuba City because of a nasty traffic accident right before we arrived. We had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant in Flagstaff, before bedding down in a Travelodge motel.
Wednesday we got up early and drove north to the Grand Canyon (South Rim). We parked the car and took the shuttle down the Hermit Road. We walked the Rim Trail back to Angel lodge and took the shuttle back to the car to go see the Grand Canyon IMAX film. The film was very cheesy and not very informative. It was probably meant for kids. We drove back to the park and took the green shuttle to the east side of the park. From there we walked down the South Kaibab Trail, which was a very nice, if somewhat steep trail. We walked down to Cedar Ridge, about an hour's walk down before turning back to get to the rim in time for sunset. Overall it was a very nice hiking trail, the only problem was that it was also used by mules, so there were mule droppings in places. We stayed in the park until sunset and then drove back to flagstaff. The trip back was scary at times, because of the amount of deer along the roads. I had to keep my eyes peeled and brake hard from time to time to avoid hitting any. We counted 8 deer along the road. Pretty amazing.
Thursday we drove to Sedona. We had lunch downtown and did some shopping. I was pretty annoyed at all the timeshare-salesmen that were trying to pick us up everywhere we went. We drove out of town to a trailhead called "Fay Canyon". This turned out to be the most interesting hike of the whole trip. After a kilometer or so of regular, wide trail, the canyon turned, and the trail became much more primitive, hugging the canyonside. Finding the trail itself became more challenging, and we had to be careful to avoid cacti and loose rocks on the way. It was lots of fun.
Next, we drove to Tuzzugot National monument and looked at some pueblo ruins, before driving to Montezuma's Castle. We stayed overnight in a motel at the interstate junction at Camp Verde.
Friday was another transport day. We drove from Camp Verde in the morning, following the historic highway 89A. We got lost on the way, so we spent half an hour driving around some cattle ranches. We turned onto the historic route 66 and had lunch at the roadkill cafe in Seligman. I couldn't really figure out what was so special about route 66. Probably the length, but we didn't spend more than an hour or so on it. We spent the night in a motel at Kingman.
Saturday we drove back to Las Vegas. On the way we stopped at the Hoover Dam, which was distinctly unimpressive. We drove to Trump Tower to check in, and immediately hit trouble just trying to park the car. After a while, we discovered that Trump did not have parking, only paid valet parking. We managed to ditch the car temporarily, and went in to check in...only to discover that the hotel's booking systems insisted on that our reservation was for the night before. Instead of just giving us our room and clearing this offline, they instructed us to sit down and wait. 20 minutes later, the front desk guy came over and tried to make us pay for two nights. We refused...and five minutes later he came with a booking slip for the correct night.
Next we walked up to the room and discovered the second problem: The room was a suite, with only a single king size bed, rather than the normal two queen size beds. Diana walked down again to the front desk and explained that we were not a couple and would most certainly need two beds. Their response was that they just didn't have two-bed rooms available, and they could perhaps pull out the sofa to make a sofa-bed for one of us. At this point we were getting really frustrated. Two hours had passed since we entered the hotel, and we still weren't ready to go to the strip. I suggested we just cancel our reservation and walk out. On our way out we ran into a manager who seemed to be more clued than the rest of the hotel staff combined. He apologized profusely and walked us down to the lobby.
We were allowed to use their internet computer to look for new accommodation, so we made a quick list of hotels to check out. We drove from hotel to hotel until we found one that had a non-smoking room with two queen beds. The one we finally found was "Excalibur" - the cheesy medieval castle/casino.
We ditched the luggage and started walking the strip, visiting the big casinos like MGM, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, The Venetian, Paris before walking back to our hotel. We spent the evening in the Luxor and the Excalibur casino, celebrating the successful vacation.
Pictures are here
Diana's pictures are here
