Pacific Chronicles, Part 3

Apologies across the board of directors of this blog for not updating for the last few days. We woke up too early to blog Tuesday morning, and got back too late to want to blog. Vegas made us pay for internet, which we refused. SO here we are on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, in the middle of a forest in the middle of a desert in the middle of Arizona. We realize that not updating and going through about a day of no cell phone service made many of our fans think we may have died, but we are fine and well and ready to report back some great stories to the east coast, and some friends we have made along the way.

Yesterday morning we woke up in Vegas. Now, its usually normal for people to go party in Vegas all night, find their friend on the roof of a casino, and adopt a baby waking up to remember none of it. Well we were too tired to do anything but take long showers and go to sleep. So there was no tiger in our bathroom in the morning, only the remnants of the beard I had grown since St. Louis.

Venetian

Grand Canal of The Venetian

Scary enormous bunny inside the Palazzo.

We spent the morning eating a hearty breakfast at Hash-house a gogo in the Imperial Palace. Then we walked around the various casinos on the strip, saw the inside of Paris, Bally's (where we were staying), the Venetian, the Palazzo, the Bellagio, (which we saw the water show from), and then met up with Kelly's high school friend Conor Hastings, and he showed us around the new strip casino, the Cosmopolitan. So shiny.

Shiny 3 floor spiraling bar inside the Cosmo. Bling Blang.

We watched the water show outside the Bellagio, and played some slots. I guided Regina and Eric through their first times on a slot machine, and we spent a few dollars playing the slots. Eric won $2, and I won $10. We bought some rum slushies with our winnings, and took off for the Hoover Dam, which we toured as the sun set over the desert.

Hoover Dam

Pat Tillman Bridge over the Dam.

We rolled some pennies down this thing.

Our drive to the Grand Canyon tonight was the darkest stretch of Earth I have ever been on. We stopped on a lonely stretch of Arizona highway 64, and got out to look up at a milky star-filled sky. There were so many stars and galactic bands that the classic constellations were hard to find since there was more light than dark, and the sheer number of stars caused the earth to actually be illuminated. Being an avid stargazer, this was one of the most amazing sights of my life.

Thank you for letting us leave Nevada.

Tomorrow, now that we are finally up to date, we will hike around the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, and make our way into Texas, stopping in El Paso tomorrow night.