Las Vegas

On Monday, July 5, after living and breathing the reverence of Zion, we drove to Las Vegas, the antithesis of any national park. It was pretty much a straight shot down route 15. We had been warned of a mountain pass by a man from Indiana who was traveling with his 83 year old mother and had just driven in from LV. We rode the Zion your bus with them, they heading later to the Grand Canyon.
That afternoon when we got the part that he had mentioned we chuckled, imagining him negotiating those hairpin turns out of the canyon, much trickier than this highway through the mountains.

We arrived in Las Vegas welcomed by the massive commercialism, crowds of people cocktails in hand roaming everywhere and traffic all to the tune of eight lane streets. Even Tom Tom couldn't get us to our hotel, or at least we couldn't move the car to the right spot fast enough. It was 104 degrees outside and quickly warming up inside. After about 15 minutes of effort, and me imagining just driving away without a visit, we finally maneuvered our way through the gates of the Signature at the MGM.



I immediately headed to the pool for sunbathing, but once there in the sweltering heat, decided the only way to survive was to sit on the edge of the pool. For about five minutes!

The highlight of Las Vegas was the David Copperfield Show. We had a quick drink and snack before the show at Wolfgang Puck Bar and then went into the land of illusions. The drink and the food was very good. About half the people in Puck's were alone. Eating a quick dinner and heading back into the casino, another drink in hand.


David Copperfield's tricks are pretty amazing, and his tongue is sharp. He uses people from the audience in every act and Ray kept yelling for him to pick me. I avoided eye contact at all costs and luckily he only picked pretty young things. After the show we spent a little while in the casino and Ray came out only 25 cents behind! As you can imagine, it was not a high stakes evening.

Even after the show, I was amazed at how many families were in the casinos. Strollers abounded and little ones tagged along. Honestly, I don't get it. Why aren't these people in the national parks or at the beach? Maybe the pools were the family attraction.

About the only thing the national parks and Las Vegas had in common was the sheer scale of what you were looking at. Everything was huge in Las Vegas, every building. The prices were huge too, the price of a half bottle of water was $6. You could only purchase large size coffees at the Starbucks in the lobby.You want small or medium, try another city.




Next morning we headed out around 10, along with the millions of others leaving fantasyland and bound for California. Maybe this was what the gold rush was like. We easily found our way to the highway and began the long crawl to San Diego. Traffic was bumper to bumper most of the 300 miles and we didn't pull into San Diego until 5 pm.