The day we left for Vegas we decided to go early and try standby. The first flight had one seat available, so we missed that one. After waiting another hour and a half we got the last two seats on the next flight. After landing we headed to our resort, dumped our bags, and went out exploring. We headed to Hoover Dam where we took the tour that went all the way to the bottom of the dam. By the way there are no people buried in the dam. That place is one incredible feat of engineering and construction. The most interesting part of the tour is the story of how the dam was built. From there we went north and west to Red Rocks Canyon. The road makes a loop through the canyon and ends back in Vegas.
On Saturday, we spent the day with grandson, Mike. We stayed in town and rode the great roller coaster on top of NY. We went to the top of the Stratosphere, and went to the Freemont Experience, which is an absolutely incredible light show.
Sunday and Monday we were off to Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Cedar Breaks National Monument, and Kobol Canyons, which are part of Zion. Incredible and spectacular can only begin to describe the beauty and magnificence of these places. Although all are canyons each was very unique in color and in the rock formations. At Bryce we experienced a 50-degree change in temperature downward. We were prepared. At Cedar Breaks, which is almost 10,000 feet, there was snow. The next morning we took an 8-mile run down the Vegas strip. The rest of the day we took it easy, walked the strip, did a little gambling and lost a little money.
Wednesday and Thursday it was off to the Grand Canyon. It's so big that it seems almost unreal. We rode and hiked the East and West sides of the south rim and stopped at every overlook to take pictures. The next morning we got up very early to hike down the canyon to Plateau Point, which is almost 4000 feet below the South rim but still 2000 ft above the river. We could see our destination from the rim 6.5 miles away. The hike supposedly takes 8--12 hours and the return back up is supposed to take twice as long as the trip down. We made the trip in 4.5 hours, 2 hours and 15 minutes down and 2 hours and 15 minutes up. We brought our lunch with us but were finished before noon. We were quite proud of our time. On the way back to Vegas we stopped at another rock shop and Zach loaded up more rocks so that we carried back almost 50 pounds of rock home on the plane.
Our last day in Vegas we again spent with Mike. We went to the water show at Sam's Town, the Pirate show at Treasure Island, the roller coaster at the Adventure dome at Circus Circus, and Star Trek the Experience at the Hilton, which was great. We actually felt like we were on the Enterprise with the crew. We left at 130am Atlanta time. Arrived in Atlanta at 530am. Raced home and changed for a race. Zach ran a half marathon and Cathy ran a 10K taking third place in her age group and adding another trophy to her ever-growing collection.
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