We flew into Las Vegas on the 4th of July, loving the complete lack
of traffic and relatively light crowds at the airport. Vegas was a
launching point for the real objective of the vacation, Zion National
Park, Bryce National Park, and Hoover Dam, but we spent the first and
the last few evenings there (the first to avoid having to drive to Zion
after a latish arrival, the last few because it’s easy to get to Hoover
Dam from there, and Alison wanted to see a cirque du soleil show for her
birthday).
Las Vegas, July 4th and July 12-14
In the airport in Vegas |
We stayed at the Venetian our arrival night, and the Bellagio on the back half of the trip.
Between the two, the Venetian was the winner, although the Bellagio seemed a bit higher end… more marble,
a Chihuly glass ceiling, nicer carpets, and a giant outdoor pool with synchronized water jets
that put on a show at the top of every hour.
|
|
|
|
| Above, the Venetian, below, the Bellagio |
 |
|
|
|
|
In both places, the casinos smelled of stale cigarette smoke and desperation, full of
grimacing emptied eyed loners mechanically pulling at the levers of slot machines while tired women in short dresses and high heels brought drinks and smokes to them.
It’s weird because the slot machines themselves are all glitz and high tech, a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors with large LCD screens where animated dragons, bulls, elves, horses, and a variety of other creatures and people pranced happily, letting you know that this slot machine offers a triple extra mega bonus to any lucky patron that wanted to give it a shot.
The machines where cheerful, the people were not. Skynet is here
in a different form.
The Venetian also offered a an indoor mall that was designed to make it look like you are in Venice in the early evening, gondolas gliding by beneath bridges, beside cafes, under balconies, and through the vibrant Venetian streetscape as a singing gondolier swept people down the Grand Canal that ran the length of the mall. The shops themselves were mostly designer clothing and jewelry, with a few art shops and eateries thrown in. There were a surprising number of families there, with small to teen age children, which seemed a little inappropriate given the constant bombardment of messages about gambling, sex and drinking, but who did make the place seem more generically vacation-y.
|
Yes, the Venetian has a canal with
gondolas and singing gondoliers running through it
|
The Bellagio had a harsher, more serious edge. People go to the Bellagio to gamble, pure and simple. The lighting is dimmer, making the place look more down to business. There are a few shops, all expensive and generally empty (everything at the Bellagio was expensive… I’ve never been charged $27 for a cocktail before). There were restaurants… a necessary part of the ecosystem. But mostly, there were slot machines and gaming tables.
All the casino restaurants were meticulously and artfully constructed, elegant and classy, the eatery version of haute couture. We only visited one at the Venetian, Mott 32, with high end Chinese / Hong Kong cuisine, and it was fabulous, from the waiter that not only knew what an Aviation cocktail was but had Aviation Gin to make it with, to the quiet private booth we were seated in that made it easier to converse with each other.
At the Bellagio we tried three places. The first was Harvest (good food, poor
TWENTY SEVEN DOLLAR cocktails). The next night, we tried Prime, a steakhouse that featured a $720 Japanese Kobe steak (which we did not order). Saturday night, Alison’s birthday, we tried Spago’s, the Wolfgang Puck restaurant.
Spago’s was actually great; we sat out on the patio overlooking the water show outside the Bellagio, had cocktails with hand-chipped crystal clear big ice, and ate fanciful dishes that were both attractive and tasty,
while the fusion powered water jets made water dance like angels on a
hot tin roof in the pool below.
|
|
|
|
After Spago’s, we went to see the Circe De Soiel show “O,” sitting just outside the splash zone. It was beautifully and artfully incomprehensible, featuring a stage that would turn into a pool deep enough for sixty foot high dives and, as it turns out, fifteen underwater scuba divers that make sure the cast doesn’t drown.
|
|
|
|
|
Zion – July 5th through 7th
We drove from Las Vegas to Zion in our “Nissan Pathfinder or equivalent,” which was National Car Rental’s way of making it sound like you are going to get a Pathfinder instead of a cheap Hyundai Pathfinder wannabe. We stopped in Saint George along the way to visit the Dinosaur museum, a hill where a large number of dinosaur tracks were found and which was subsequently covered with a museum, leaving the bedrock with tracks untouched.
From there, it was a fairly straight shot to Zion. We arrived late enough that we just drove through to settle in for the night. We stayed at the Tripadvisor recommended Zion Mountain Ranch, in a rustic cabin that looked out over a field full of wild buffalo and ducks. It was on the east edge of Zion, which turned out to be a thirty or forty minute ride from the visitor center where most of the tours start, but the drive was through the park and it was spectacular enough the time passed quickly.
The Zion Mountain Ranch |
Bison in the distance |
The ducks, marching in order |
our cabin |
|
 |
Zion was awesome, but crowded; we heard a couple of park rangers saying the weekend would set a new record for number of visitors. We spent one day doing the hikes in the central canyon that Zion was famous for, and the second day on the east rim trail, which starts from the east side of the park we were already on.
Hiking the central canyon, where the Virgin river flows, included the Temple of Sinawava riverside walk up to the narrows (where you have to wade in the river to go further, which we were not dressed for), the west rim trail (up to but not including Angel’s Landing, which had a two hour wait), Weeping Rock and the Lower Emerald pool. The upper emerald pools, hidden valley, and observation point were all closed off by rockslides. Between all those hikes, we covered over ten miles and somewhere around 1500-2000 feet in elevation change. The views were amazing, and we were tired but happy at the end of the day.
Good thing we got up early to get to
the shuttle bus stop right when it opened... |
Weeping caves |
|
|
The river walk
up to the narrows
 |
The narrows
West rim trail to Angle's Landing |
 |
|
|
A long way down... |
Looking out over Angel's Landing from
Scouts Lookout |
Day two, we did the east rim trail, with some hope that we might get to observation point from the back side of the park. However, the east rim trail was also around 2000 feet in elevation change and we were averaging about 45 minute miles, so we turned around at the just over five mile mark. With a few stops, it was an eight hour, ten mile hike that we didn’t have quite enough water for. It wasn’t as continuously amazing as the main canyon in Zion, but it had its fair share of stunning views and amazing scenery. Plus, a surprising number of wildflowers, butterflies, and other fauna.
|
|
|
Below, some of the flowers, birds and butterflies at Zion and Bryce
|
Below, an odd thing we saw in Bryce; the lizard was getting
harassed the the funny looking wasp, which seemed odd until the
lizard ran into a hole and the wasp landed on a dead (or
paralyzed) caterpillar, picked it up and laboriously started to
airlift it to some unknown destination. Suddenly, the
lizard popped out of his hole, jumped up and grabbed the
caterpillar away from the wasp, and ran back into it's hole.
The wasp was kind of angry so we decided at that point that it
was time to move on.
|
|
|
Bryce Canyon, July 7th-July 11th
We continued on to Bryce Canyon the next day. The drive from the east side of Zion was short. We stopped once, to visit the Maynard Dixon house, the preserved home of an artist that focused on the southwest that still hosts aspiring artists today.
We were staying at the lodge in the national park itself this time, the accommodations spacious and basic, within walking distance of the trails we wanted to do.
We arrived in time to do the rim hike from sunset point to Bryce point. The rim hike is not very well named, like Bryce Canyon itself, which is not a canyon. It’s an amphitheater, connected to a bunch of other amphitheaters. The rim walk, on the other hand does follow the rim of those amphitheaters. However, there’s a general notion that a rim is flat. As it turns out, hiking from Sunset Point to Bryce point, you gain about a thousand vertical feet, which makes it a much tougher hike than you’d think. We did finish it, but it took a few hours.
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
This little guy was out sunning himself on a rock over a 1000
foot drop |
The next day, we did the Peekaboo trail to the Navajo trail, including wall street, which was another six mile hike with about 1500 feet of elevation change.
Candy Cane Tree |
 |
We learned to despise switchbacks during our many hikes |
|
We had to share some of the trails with horses |
The Cicadas were numerous and noisy, not just the
standard buzz; you could hear them eating a bush from
yards away |
Alison and I had a lot of discussions about whether the deep blue
sky in Mongolia was more
intense or not |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The mossy cave was a bit of a bust but there was a
waterfall, the result of the "Tropic ditch" irrigation
system, dug by Mormons by hand over a two year period |
The natural stone bridge, a bit of a disappointment
because you couldn't drive over it. It's not
really a bridge at all, it's just an arch |
|
The vista from Rainbow Point |
The final day, we did the Fairyland loop, an eight mile, 1870 foot elevation change hike that’s the hardest hike you can do from the lodge. It was a fine ending to a six day period where we covered forty miles and 5000 feet of elevation change, which is a bit more than you would do if you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
|
 |
The trails we covered over the three day period |
 |
On the way back we stopped in Cedar City and visited the Souther Utah Museum of Art at
Southern Utah University and saw an exhibit of paintings by Kate Starling.
Hoover Dam, July 12th
On Friday, we toured the Hoover dam, still one of the most amazing engineering feats in the history of mankind. Interesting facts about the Hoover dam:
- It was called the “Boulder Canyon project” while it was being built, although it is actually located in
Black Canyon; it was originally supposed to be built in Boulder Canyon but the
location changed and it was too hard to rename the project, since it had
already been sold to Congress.
- The dam contains over three million tons
of concrete, enough to pave a standard highway 16 feet wide, from San
Francisco to New York City.
- It is not the tallest dam, not the biggest
dam, and did not create the largest manmade lake in the world (although
it was all three when it was first built).
|
|
|
|
|
Lake Meade |
 |
We spent a few more days in Las Vegas (covered at the top), and flew
back to Boston on Sunday, tired but happy.
|
