Vegas Baby!!

I was in dire need of some kind of vacation after school was over. I tried to convince Brandon that we "needed" to go to Hawaii, but we just couldn't make that one work with the finances. We decided on Vegas because it would be warm and there were a few other sites close by that I wanted to see.

Right after graduation my body decided to attack itself and I was not feeling well. We still hadn't put together any real trip plans and so from the couch I took care of details (hotel, car rental) and we left Thursday afternoon and headed to Utah. We didn't make it to Tricia's as early as we had hoped, but that is the beauty of last minute travel, no deadlines! We stayed up late talking and catching up. We got up the next morning, ate, waited for Dorothy to come home from school and Tricia to come home from running the two younger kids around and then headed off for Vegas. We stopped in St. George for a pit stop, supplies and figured we would check out the St. George temple while we were there. BEAUTIFUL! We walked around the grounds and headed back on our way.



We stayed in the South Pointe hotel which was clear down at the south end of the strip. It was nice, minus the really smokey casino downstairs, and close to a freeway entrance for easy access to get where we needed to go.

We've decided that Vegas must have some deal with the GPS companies because we could have taken freeway all the way to our hotel, but no, GPS detoured us right down the Vegas strip, which probably tacked on 20-30 minutes to our trip. We learned our lesson.

It's hard traveling when you don't feel well and I think all the pregnancy symptoms decided to hit right then too. I was exhausted the whole time, nauseous the whole time, always hungry, but nothing sounded good, taking a shower wore me out, it was kind of rough.


We still had fun though. This was Brandon's first trip to Vegas, so he was curious about all the sites and was blown away by all the little old grandmas peddling porn on the street corners.






{Bellagio botanical gardens}

We spent one day walking down the strip, looking in some of the casinos, eating at Serendipity 3, walking up and over and down and up and over and down all the walkways over the streets, in awe with the massive hotels with room after room after room. We walked through Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar's bar) as well as M&M world and the Coke place. I also bought some caramacs at an ABC store (huge souvenir store in Hawaii, on every corner).


{Brandon was so excited about this Best Buy vending machine, such a funny thing}

We wanted to see some of the exhibits and shows, but the shows we wanted to see were so expensive and I wasn't feeling up to it anyway so we decided to try some exhibits. We talked to these people at a booth who "wheel and deal" ya. They gave us each tickets to three exhibits (Bodies, Titanic & Aquarium) as well as $50 in dining vouchers, if we listened to someone's timeshare spiel. It was worth it, we spent a couple of hours with this lady going on about this and that and then told her at the end that we're really not the kind of people that can rush into things, got our ticket vouchers and went on our marry way. The exhibits were really neat and the Titanic was amazing. I was really impressed, probably because I went in with really low expectations, but they did a spectacular job. I think this is the second year of 10 they will spend in Vegas and they have this huge piece of the ship that has been pulled up and preserved. Really cool, see it if you have the chance.




{This little starfish wanted to say "HI"}{Brandon loved the faces on the rays}


{Petting the rays, Brandon got yelled at in the first picture for using more than one finger}




We drove up the Zion National Park one day. Of course we got a late start (read earlier where I felt crummy), but we were still able to get some great pictures and hike around and see the beauty that is Zion's. We decided that next time we took a trip down that way we would stay near Zion's and then if we felt like it, take a day trip into Vegas. It was so beautiful and some great little towns right outside of the park. I wish we had taken more time there.


{Beautiful Zion}





{my husband is all about taking a serious picture}



We spent about five days there, probably more than we needed in Vegas, but we had fun, ate at In N Out (multiple times), hit Cafe Rio in Utah, spent time with one of my best friends and her family, so all in all, worth it!



In hind-site we would have taken more time to plan things out a little better, but with finishing up school, family, graduation, there just wasn't a lot of time. We got Vegas out of our system though. I remember the first time going I was so in awe with it all and this time, it just didn't do it for me.

It was a long trip and bless Brandon's heart for doing ALL the driving. We are glad to be back home.