Yesterday we got on a big metal bird that moved through the sky. This was Bernard’s reaction:
Me? I just listened to this song over and over while reading a Richard Hammond book!
Of course we traveled west to Silicon Valley, where B & L make their home. The rest of the day was a bit of shopping and a lot of resting.
There’s something quite special I’d like to get done here in San Jose, but I think it’s waiting until the weekend. Stay tuned…
Here’s some Vegas strip at night shots I took last night:
To get those shots I had to risk my life by heading out onto mean streets full of criminals, deviants, beggars, mafioso and pirates! Luckily I survived to see another sunset.
That’s a carousel in The Palazzo made of real flowers! Today we explored this and other ritzy casinos on the northern half of the strip. This is a world of poker machines on which you can bet $1500 per spin, of shops where you can buy cellphones that cost five figures, and of bakeries where a bog-standard croissant costs $8.
Of course being high rollers ourselves we blended right in amongst the Russian oligarchs, bored trophy wives, Chinese nouveau riche and American octogenarians burning away their fortunes before they die.
I find it amusing that the world of poker machines is becoming dominated with licensed machines. Bernard’s playing a KISS machine in that shot, but he just as easily could have been playing a machine themed around ZZ Top, Michael Jackson or even Dolly Parton!
The most common licenses are movies (Avatar, Godfather, Lord Of The Rings), TV shows (Walking Dead, Sex And The City, Batman) and games (Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Deal Or No Deal). These licensed machines are massive splashy things, often with cooperative multiplayer modes. It’s amazing how much technology and innovation has gone into creating machines designed to take money from the player!
This is not to say the more simplistic type of machine has been abandoned. Quite the contrary: they still represent the majority of the 100,000+ slot machines in Vegas. It’s just the themes are perhaps a tad more modern:
Today we played a different type of game involving a giant mechanical spinning wheel:
If couldn’t have been simpler: guess what number the wheel lands on. It was extremely addictive, and stupidly easy to play (the user interface was a work of genius). It was a lot of fun losing money playing this one!
Much walking, many casinos and many machines on this last full day in Vegas. Tomorrow we leave for state #3 of this western-US tour. What awaits us there?
Wendy’s serves the full menu all day did you know? That’s how I had a spicy chicken sandwich at 7:30 am! This was my breakfast of course, and we had woken early since we had a busy day planned. On our way to our second Vegas hotel we had two stops to make. The first was this place, about an hour from the Grand Canyon:
Bearizona is a wildlife park with a three mile drive-through section and a more traditional zoo for smaller beasts. The focus is on wildlife of Arizona and it’s a very impressive park.
That’s a goat and a white bison. They also had buffalo, wolves, burros and other goats. The star attraction of course is these guys:
Look at that show off bear being cute in the water tub! The large bears roam free in 14 acres, not caring at all about the cars and people within! There are many of them wandering around, and in the zoo portion of the park there are many more in two enclosures divided by age. Here’s a shot of the cubs:
They look peaceful enough there, but 99% of the time they were play-fighting with each other like little fuzzy wrestlers! The little buggers were so cute!
In addition to bears the zoo has foxes, porcupines, otters, an American badger and a few other beasts. It’s laid out very well and we both enjoyed Bearizona quite a bit. If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit 🙂
A few hours later and we were back in Vegas. Only a few blocks from our next hotel was today’s second attraction: the Pinball Hall of Fame.
This is essentially a warehouse containing hundreds of pinball machines, almost all working and playable. They range from old EM games from the 1950s through to the last pinball made (so far) from 2013. They also have retro arcade games and a few other odds and ends.
It’s a pinball fans dreamworld, and I scurried around playing as many as I could. This included some landmark games like Black Knight, Fireball, Haunted House and Pinbot.
One of the appeals of pinball for me is the art. Many of the games on display were beautiful, especially restored as they are and lit up like they would have been when manufactured.
All the games had historical information on them. Impacto (look at that art!) was an oddity since the guy that owns the museum in 40 years of looking has found no info on the game or the (Spanish) company that created it.
Needless to say I loved this place. If I lived nearby I’d visit all the time 🙂
And then we arrived at our second Vegas hotel, Caesar’s Palace. It’s a bit posh and a bit expensive and a bit luxurious. Should be fun!
On a shuttle bus today, the driver said many visitors to the Grand Canyon initially have difficulty believing what they see is real. It’s an unusual statement, but after seeing if myself, I think I’ll have to agree.
The canyon was carved by a river over a period of 4500 million years. It’s thousands of feet deep and miles wide. It’s incredibly big and deep, and like nothing at all I’ve ever seen before.
We got up very early and headed to the canyon shortly after sunrise. As you can see, we were blessed with beautiful weather.
There are many miles of lookouts and viewing points along the south rim, and we spent a few hours walking along the edge admiring the views.
This is a very popular tourist destination, especially for foreign tourists, and as the day went on the paths became more and more populated. Everyone poses for photos at any convenient place, and all-too-often they get dangerously close to a fall that apparently kills a few every year.
You can descend into the canyon if you like, via one of several available trails. The most common takes up to 9 hours (to travel less than 1km!) and is quite popular despite its danger. The signs warn specifically of death for the unprepared. In this next shot you can see the path (which is also used by the famous pack mules) as it snakes down the side of the canyon:
The area is a national park, and at the top (an elevation of over 6000 feet) is mostly evergreen pine forest. There are many animals to be seen, including deer…
Lizards…
And very friendly rock squirrels:
I had no food for him, and wouldn’t have fed him anyway even if I did. But I did touch him briefly. Maybe I should have read this sign first:
We spent the entire morning at the canyon, and walked for hours. The afternoon was siesta time (during which I wrote 17 postcards) in which we recharged our batteries for the next few sure-to-be-busy days.
Oh, and we met Mike Rowe 😉
Here’s a nice shot of part of the Luxor pool complex:
I went for a splash yesterday, and quickly found the lack of shade to be murderous 🙂
Today we left Vegas for part two of our 3-state trip. We rented a car at the hotel, but the first one they gave us (an Elantra) had a tire warning light on the dash. A quick call got us a free upgrade to the only car they had left, a mustang:
And so we hit the road on a five hour drive east. At first the landscape (east of Vegas near the Hoover dam) was rocky and mountainous (and almost without plants!) but as we entered Arizona it became a flat featureless desert with scrubby plants and the occasional cactus for miles and miles.
The drive went quickly, with only a single brief stop in the first three hours. And then we needed food badly, and when we finally spied some Golden Arches from a mile or so away it was like the Star of David over the desert!
Less than an hour later we reached our destination: the Grand Hotel in Tusayan, just five miles south of the Grand Canyon! This town is tiny and obviously 100% tourist oriented. We’re here at peak season as well, which means this is the most I’ve ever paid for a hotel room! And here it is:
After checking in we headed up the road to the canyon visitors center, slowing briefly to pass some mule deer…
…but very shortly after we arrived a very powerful storm blew in and sent us (and the zillion other tourists) scurrying. Getting back to our car got us very wet 🙂
Turns out it rains in the afternoon every day here (more or less), so we’re having an early night and will head to the canyon in the early morning. I’m looking forward to this quite a bit!
It’s significantly cooler here than Vegas, with temperatures in the low 60s right now. Tusayan is at an elevation of 6500 feet and is the last stop (for lodging and food) before the canyon.
The thunder and lighting before the rains came was impressive, especially for Bernard since he almost never sees rain at home. He’s certainly seen enough today to last a while…
Don’t worry, we ate better than McDonald’s for dinner. We splurged on Wendy’s 🙂