Moving Map

The city of Las Vegas sucks.

I planned on writing a huge rant about how creepy the city is, and that it reminded me of Pyongyang, North Korea… blah blah blah. I will save you and me the time and cut to the chase, it’s not my kind of city. I have some good friends there and they are the only reason I will ever go again. The End.

One of the highlights of my stay in Las Vegas was a Saturday afternoon trip out to the Valley of Fire State Park. Its just under an hour North East of Vegas. It is a boring drive to see some dramatic landscapes.

Bright patches of red rock jutting out of a valley plain, it was beautiful driving into the park. At first we drove around to the normal tourist spots, weird old drawings on the rocks, cool arch formations and such. They were interesting but not that captivating so we drove around the campground a bit. Wow, what a place to camp! I am sure it fills up fast, some very dramatic spots in between giant rocks and boulders.

The hiking urge overcame me and so I dragged Anthony down a trail and up one of the largest rock formations in the area. It had a steep but walkable incline on one side so we were able to scramble up the side pretty easily. It doesn’t matter how high, when you reach summit its exciting. We stayed up there for a while just taking in the views and watching the sunset. I even got to see the sunset twice by jumping up as soon as it dipped below the mountains! Overall it was a great afternoon and I hope I can stay out there longer in the future.

I made it to Las Vegas! It was a short drive that was broken up by a crossing of the Hoover Dam.

Getting from Skull Valley, AZ to the interstate was a fun drive through the mountains. Made a little detour to see Bagdad, AZ because it’s a mining town that my family lived in for many years. After that it was straight on to Nevada.

I wanted to stop and check out the Hoover Dam as I made my way over it. Traffic was very light coming from my direction happily. I later found out it takes hours to get through security coming from the Nevada side, so many people! This will all be made alot easier once they have the bypass done. After 9/11 they realized what a huge target the dam was with so many people driving over it so they stepped up security and made plans for a bypass route. This is a huge project that is going to be finished in 2010, you will see the photos of it.

I made it through and happily paid for parking, its a nice garage with some decent views of its own. Decided I wasn’t going to pay and wait for a tour so I just walked around, took some pictures, and headed on to Vegas.

I made it to Las Vegas Nevada in good time. I must say that it was creepy driving into the Las Vegas and being able to see the entire city. The whole city creeped me out, but I will go into that later.

I was able to see my friend Brenden and his wife Lacy and alot of their friends and family on Tuesday night. We drove out to Red Rock Park and hiked around, went back to his place for homemade pizza and watched the new Star Trek (which is sooooo good!).