We had the longest days in Vegas (April 10-14). Everyone was so certain that 4 days was enough. The commonly heard message was that a week was too long. 3 nights, 4 days flew like crazy and we filled so much into our days!
Monday, after a morning and afternoon with Logan, we dropped him off at his Nana and Dziadek's around 4 so we could make our 8:30 flight from Toronto. It was delayed so we got into Vegas about 30 minutes later than expected.
11pm instead of 10:30pm actually makes such a huge difference! After we were scammed by the cab driver who did a few loops around the airport to jack up the cost, we didnt get to the hotel until midnightish. Never use ACE cabs. Jerk. We learned this the next day when we were driving the same way in our rental! This is our hotel room! After not eating anything since the muffin on the way to the airport at 6, I was starving and hangry. Really should have bought food on the plane! We headed to hit up the subway across the street and found the convenience store beside and bought some beers and mini wines (my fav!). We decided not to go out and instead get some sleep since we were picking up the rental at 6:30am the next morning for the Grand Canyon and it was already so late. We had our subs and giant Coronas in our room and rushing everything still didn't get to sleep until 2am!
We followed through and woke up as planned at 6am on Tuesday and went down to the lobby to pick up our car. On the way to the parking garage, I saw bananas for sale and was pretty excited. I like some healthy food options. Went to the cashier and she told us $3 per banana!! Heathy eating made impossible. Thwe hotel stores are ridiculously priced. We still got our gold bananas to hold us over until the first stop about a hour and a half later.
Our convertible mustang! Although this was a cold day driving through the motnains and I couldnt stand the top down. Aleksy was really happy about that.
We made a couple stops along the way - the first at the dunkin donuts down the street for coffees and in a town about an hour and a half from Vegas at the Wal Mart for lunch, drinks for the next few days and snacks.
Got there around noon (ish - there was another time change when in Arizona and I lost all track of time), drove around looking for parking for a while then our first stop was lunch overlooking the canyon. How fortunate are we!? This is my kind of lunch.
After lunch we headed to the shuttle that takes us to the beginning of our trail down the canyon.
Starting our trail off, finding some cactuses. On the drive up, I realized that I hadn't seen a cactus growing in a field naturally before (I don't remember this in Mexico but maybe..). The park ranger walked by when we were taking this and said that this is pear cactus - the ones we see at the store!
You can see the trails under me with all the people - I'm above them all! It was all down hill on the way out, and all up hill on the way back.
Our final point of the trail was Cedar Rudge (in my sign below!) This was 2 miles down. Because we didnt start our hike until later afternoon, we wanted to make sure we had enough time to get back up and head back for our 4 1/2 hour drive back. They estimated to double the time it took to get down to get back up. We took 50 minutes down (with lots of stops for pictures).
Nothing like fresh spring water to refresh you after running up the grand canyon.
The best views!! This was from Cedar ridge too. This point was a 2 miles hike (4 miles to and from the start).
I couldn't keep my fitness intensity under wraps when we started back up to the start point. I was determined to get a workout and do it in good time. We pretty much ran back up... it took us only 35 minutes and we passed a million people!
These guys were hanging out by the side of the road on the way out of the park!
On our way back, we stopped in the same town as the Wal Mart we hit for gas and some supper. Gave the In N Out burger a shot sicne people seem to love it. It was pretty good - we loved the lettuce wrapped option! Other than the lettuce wrapped, it was a pretty standard burger joint.. but great prices! $10 for supper.. ok.
Back from the Grand Canyon, showered the red dirt off and ready for a night adventure! This is the bottle I drank to start the night (why share when you can have one to yourself?). A fine $5 Wal Mart bottle of sparking. Only the best,
The key mirror by the elevators are such a great photo opp on the way out!!
Our plan was to explore some of the strip by foot on this night - it was late when we left. Like midnight. Just a late night adventure. We had nothing planned but pool, general exploring of the strip and old vegas the next day, so why not.
This is our pretty Mandalay Bay hotel!
We learned later that there was a free tram that ran from Mandalay Bay to Excalibur. But on this night we walked..a lot. The Luxor is right beside our hotel (ours is the last on the strip!).
We made it to the Bellagio (for the first time!!). This was after a pit stop at WalGreens for beer, a bar by the bellagio for wine, and some random conversation with some awesome guys who worked at the Bubba Gump who were from Mexico.
Such a fun random night exploring. But the plan was not to go so far! I was not equipped with comfy footwear, so I needed to get band aids and as they proved to be ineffective to stop the discomfort, I walked barefoot from the MGM back to our hotel (and Aleksy.. in solidarity). We got back at the timely 4:15am hour.
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