Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Trip Report #1: Vegas/Grand Canyon

Tuesday night we only got a couple hours sleep after TK got home from work and packed, since we needed to be at the airport at about 8:30 am. We flew from SJC to Vegas and met our friends at Bally's, and spent the afternoon playing at Bally's, Paris, and Caesar's. Well, I went back to take a nap and they kept playing - and I guess TK did pretty well! We had dinner that night at the Aladdin for TK's birthday (happy birthday honey).

Here's a view from our room at night:

Thursday we spent most of the day playing at Bally's and Paris, since we were staying close to our friends who were playing poker at Bally's. That evening we met up with our friends' parents and saw:
George Carlin

at the Stardust.

That night we stayed at our friends' parents house in Henderson. We left bright and early Friday morning and drove to the Grand Canyon, a mere 5 hours away...

We hiked along the rim for a few hours and watched the sun go down. Here's TK and me at the Grand Canyon. The colors are so much more vibrant than in the photo.

That night we had a great steak dinner and stayed just outside the park. We had talked about hiking into the Canyon on Saturday morning, but decided to take a helicopter tour instead!

This is the helicopter we rode in - seats 8, including the pilot, and the 4 of us sat across the back.

Approaching the grand canyon via helicopter - we had to go out of the way of the touristy areas, so about half the flight was this kind of view over the forest.


Everything's so green on the north rim!

We flew over a formation called The Dragon - here's the head and part of the back of the Dragon - you can see his nose on the left.

After the helicopter tour we piled back in the minivan and headed back to Vegas - with a stop on the way:
Lunch Break!

One last sight on our way home: Hoover Dam, taken from the car window as we crawled through traffic. Apparently this is a high security area so they did random car checks. We were fine, however - none of us looked like terrorists...

Saturday night we played at a local casino, and I hit it big! I was almost out of money and borrowed some from TK, and won back everything I'd lost plus everything he'd lent me - and then it was time to go back to the parents' house and sleep.

Our friends had an early flight Sunday morning, so we got dropped off at the Strip where we checked out the new Wynn Casino:
and worked our way through other casinos between there and Caesar's, managing to spend everything we'd won in the last few days.

We did manage to earn enough comps by playing Paris, Bally's, Flamingo, and Caesar's (all on the same player's club) to have dinner at:
SO YUMMY! But spendy - lucky we had the comps.

Then we got picked up by the parents and taken to the airport, where we spent every last dime in our pockets before our midnight flight home. We sat in the back of the plane (50 seats) and I think the couple across the aisle joined the Mile High Club on the way home.

Monday TK had the day off work so we saw Star Wars Ep. III. A very nice, crazy, relaxing, fun-filled 6 days. And I needed a vacation at the end of it.


I'm at the Hotel Nikko in SF visiting my sister C overnight - I should go to bed now so we can play tomorrow after her conference. And I'm probably keeping her awake.

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