Indemnity83

[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552219904,j=l,s=s,l=i]We are staying at Circus Circus, which probably wasn’t the best plan since its such a long walk to the South Strip from here, and so darned hot. We picked up a bus pass yesterday to help make our travels easier. Anyway we made it in plenty of time on Tuesday to get our show tickets at Treasure Island last night, and Kerry and I spent a little bit of time gambling before the show started. We ate dinner at Kahunaville, actually the only thing we ordered were a couple of beers and their monstrosity of an appetizer. I didn’t have my camera with me, so excuse the poor cell phone pictures. The show we watched was Mystère by Cirque du Soleil. It was pretty cool. However, if there was some kind of story … I didn’t follow it. Mostly it was awesome acrobatics intermixed with small segments of comedic acting.
 
[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552457547,j=r,s=s,l=p]Kerry and I spent all of Wednesday making the rounds at all the casinos on the west side of the strip, all the way down to Mandalay Bay. We did some gambling along the way, but mostly we were there to see the sights and sounds of Vegas… and to sweat off about 30 pounds in the heat. We saw a couple of cool cars, including a Bentley Continental GT and a Custom Viper. We did make one last stop before going back to our room for the night, we stopped at a bar and I ordered an entire pitcher of Margarita for myself, and Kerry had 4 beers.
 
[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552223626,j=l,s=s,l=p]This morning we headed out of Vegas, and went for a quick visit to Hoover Dam. The lake was really low (from the pictures I’ve seen before) so I thought that the dam wasn’t quite as impressive, but it was still very cool to see it in person. There is also quite a bit of construction going on for what looks like a high bridge over the river, just down from the dam that I’m assuming will be the main route, to get traffic off the dam. As we left the dam a cop had pulled over this custom car, it looks familiar, and I’m sure I’ve seen it before on TV or something but I just can’t quite place it. As we headed to San Diego, we also beat the previous high temperature record, and based on where we will be the rest of the trip, I have a feeling this will be the peak. 107 degrees, just outside of Death Valley in Baker, CA.

[fa:p:a=6-12-zion-and-i15,id=550195579,j=r,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I woke up this morning somewhat early (for vacation), packed up all our stuff, grabbed some of the continental breakfast that the hotel offered and headed into the park. We wanted to go do a couple of short hikes in the park before it got hot, and before we had to leave for Vegas. Charlie Linkhart had recommended to me to do the Narrows Hike, although we didn’t have the time to do the full hike (which requires using the river as part of the trail), we did at least go as far as we could up the canyon which provided some really awesome views of massive cliff sides. We also did the very short walk to Weeping Rock, which is a rock edge that leached water drips off of from the core of the rock.
 
[fa:p:a=6-12-zion-and-i15,id=550034436,j=l,s=s,l=i]After our short visit to Zion (a visit I would like to repeat someday, with cooler weather and more time). We headed to Vegas. We needed to get into Vegas before 5PM so we could pick up our show tickets. As most people know, any road to Vegas leads through a desert, and as with any desert there wasn’t much to see except the rising temperature gauge in the car. It peaked at 102 during our drive, and Vegas wasn’t much cooler, but I’ll leave posting about Vegas until tomorrow.

[fa:p:a=6-11-red-canyons,id=543068905,j=l,s=s,l=i]We left early from Tanner’s place to make our drive down through Utah’s famous red rock canyons. So far this has been my favorite part of the trip. These things are amazing to look at. Pictures hardly do it justice. there are three places we went through. Starting with the simply named “Red Canyon“, which you can simply drive through. We also went and visited Bryce Canyon, which ended up being a $25 visit. I wish we had had more time to spend there, because I would have loved to do a hike in the canyon.
 
[fa:p:a=6-11-red-canyons,id=542967258,j=r,s=s,l=p]Lastly, we went to Zion. The drive into the base of Zion was really cool. They have a 1 mile tunnel carved right in the side of the mountain that leads to a switchbacked decent down the side of a mountain. We had planned on spending the night at one of the campgrounds in Zion, but it was close to 100 degrees, and neither of us wanted to spend half the day out in that sweltering heat. So we chickened out and went for a hotel. A quite nice place that looked brand new and had some great views. I spend some time down in the pool and trying to get an internet connection so that I could post up pictures and these blogs. With no success, so I’m keeping these in a word file for now.

[fa:p:a=6-10-utah-the-timpanogos-caves,id=542951506,j=l,s=s,l=i]We spent the whole day today in and around Provo, UT. With Tanner and his new family. I’ve known Tanner since High School sometime through Mike White. But it was the first time I’ve meet his new wife Brittney and his 11 month year old daughter Miranda. The night before Miranda was with Britney’s parents so Kerry, Brittney, Tanner & I went out to dinner at McGrath’s Fish House. A place that Tanner used to work. Kerry had a Halibut, and I had a Steak Dungenes (steak & crab).
 
[fa:p:a=6-10-utah-the-timpanogos-caves,id=542953268,j=r,s=s,l=p]After getting up sorta late Sunday morning, we all headed up to the Timpanogos Caves. The Timpanogos caves are WAY up in the mountains and to get to them requires a grueling hike a little over a mile long, but rising nearly half a mile in that time. The caves were pretty cool though, it was hard to take pictures so I don’t have many. But the ones I do have I think came out pretty well.
 
The last thing that we did was to head up to the Salt Lake Temple. It was a quick visit, as it was getting late. So I don’t have many pictures of that either, but it was still really cool to see. The entire location is gorgeous, and the temple itself is amazing.

[fa:p:a=6-09-folsom-to-utah,id=542940778,j=l,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I are going on a road trip! From Folsom, to Provo, UT, to Zion National Park, to Vegas and finally visits to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and Hollywood. Today was our longest driving day. We had almost 700 miles to travel so we got up at 5am. And even though that doesn’t sound extremely early, after the previous night it was… Kerry was cranky due to lack of sleep and stress over having to pay $700 to get her car ready for the trip, so packing took a while. We ended up going to the store at 9pm for last minute things for our trip and didn’t get to bed until around 11:30 pm.
 
[fa:p:a=6-09-folsom-to-utah,id=542940986,j=r,s=s,l=p]Kerry Drove most of the way and although there isn’t much to see on the long drive along Interstate 80, we captured a few interesting pictures (click on the image at the beginning of the post). Most interestingly to me, was the Salt Flats. At the rest stop of the rest stop is where Kerry found the oddest toilet in existance. If anybody can explain to me why this toilet is shaped the way it is… I’m very intersted to hear.

We brought with us a few things to keep us entertained. Most notably we brought with us a bunch of audio books, although I doubt we will get past the first one; Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. We brought an FM transmitter so that we could play the book off the computer, and listen to it through the cars radio. Its worked like a charm so far. We are also using Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS as our map on this road trip. To power all these toys, I picked up a really cool car power strip, that allows us to plug in three things at once to the cigarette lighter.

We meet up with Tanner and his new Wife, Brittney and Baby Girl Miranda. But I’ll write more on that tomorrow, when we are to spend the entire day with them.

[fa:p:a=caples-creek-2007,id=519448938,j=l,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I did a short, but fun little overnight backpacking trip this weekend. We had intended to stay two nights, but after hiking all the trails around, and since neither of us thought far enough ahead to actually bring some kind of entertainment, we sat around quite bored and decided to come back a day early. It was a fun trip, somewhat uneventful, but relaxing. I was glad to get all my backpacking gear out of boxes and back to good use. I’m hoping to plan and execute a longer trip towards the end of the summer. The exact destination isn’t really decided, but I have a few ideas and I am pushing to do a 50 mile trip (we’ve got 10 days). 50 miles requires quite a bit of planning and preparedness, so we’ll see what happens. But for now, thats the goal.

Otherwise, its late.. and I’m going to turn in.