Viva las Vegas

We left Heidi's bright and early - it was not a pleasant goodbye.  We don't get to see them often, so there were tears.  But, on we went.

The kids loved seeing the palm trees in California.  As they said, "it's like being in a movie!"  I explained about Hollywood and how lots of shows and movies ARE filmed in Southern California.

On this cross-country trip, I had pick and choose what we'd see.  We simply could NOT see everything.  I tried to make it mostly natural attractions.  Obviously, Disneyland was an exception, as was Las Vegas.  The kids REALLY wanted to see Las Vegas, so I agreed to drive through on our way to the Grand Canyon.  Peter turned on "Viva las Vegas" (Elvis) as we drove through and saw the casinos and then we drove on.

I had also decided that we should at least see the Hoover Dam, so we drove to that as well.  There has been a terrible drought in California for quite some time.  We had seen evidences of it in some dead groves of trees along the roadsides, and as we approached the dam, we could see that Lake Mead was QUITE low.  It was a good time to talk about drought and the effect on our food supply.

We drove over the dam and headed towards the Grand Canyon.  It is MUCH more populated than I remember.  There's a school there!!  Anyway, we found our campsite and started setting up.  As the boys got the tent up, I read the little pamphlet you always get as you enter a national park.  I rejoiced to see that we no longer had to worry about bears!!  And then had to tell the kids that the new threats were snakes and scorpions.  As I looked up to tell them this, Victoria was getting ready to move some rocks that were piled on one another....needless to say, those rocks stayed RIGHT there and everyone gave them a fairly wide berth.

I started dinner (after checking the weather - which forecast NOTHING) and the kids continued setting up the campsite.  Then we heard thunder.  Oh dear.  The tent went up VERY fast and then they started tossing things into the tent.  I finished dinner, grabbed the dinner and ran into the tent just as rain started to fall.  Good thing we could take food in there now!!

The rain didn't last long and we passed a very pleasant evening.  After packing up the following morning, we went to look at the "big ditch", as Tim calls it.  Beautiful.  Just beautiful.

Onward....