Our Whirlwind Tour of the Southwest

First off on our speed through of the southwest was the Grand Canyon. Teddy Roosevelt said that every American should visit the Grand Canyon in his lifetime, if he is able, and he is totally right. The Grand Canyon is majestic. We were able to drive up and down the south rim, do some hiking and see a ranger bellow and yell about how the Canyon is big and pretty. Good times. Our hike took us down part way to the Colorado River, near Santa Maria Spring and back up, which was way harder than going down. Our original plan was to get to the bottom and hike back up in one day, but there were numerous signs warning us not to and we each had reasons not to go. Mine was I didn't want to be sore for the next couple days (or get injured), Ben didn't want to further aggravate his foot and Austin didn't want to get up in the cold, because we would have had to leave before dawn. We would have done it anyway (well they might have, I was still unsure), but we came to a consensus that it would be better to go on a short hike and come back another time and conquer the Canyon.

Austin's looking at you.

View from the top of the Canyon.

Another view of awesomeness.

This is a view of where we stopped for lunch on our hike.

Austin's animal companion.

Next on our tour was Zion National Park, which was nothing short of incredibly immaculate. Just after the entrance, there's a cave that takes you through a mountain. Every so often, there are huge windows which offer you all too brief glimpses of red and orange rock monoliths rising out the ground. Upon exiting the tunnel, the monoliths surround you and demand that you gaze upon their epic visages. After that, it never stops. Everywhere you look, huge striped cliffs rise up and slot canyons carve their way below them. We did a short hike to the Emerald Pools, which was fantastic. After a break for lunch (cat food stew), we did some rappelling down into a slot canyon and explored around the area. I think Teddy would have also said (if he didn't already) that every American should also visit Zion, because it's not too far from the Grand Canyon and it's immensely beautiful.

Just after the tunnel.


Two views from the Emerald Pools hike.

Not the one we rappelled down, but still cool.

The view from near where we rappelled.

Las Vegas paled in comparison to what we saw previously, but we had to go because it's on our way and it's there. (And so we can say we've been there.) Fremont Street was what I pictured Vegas as being, mainly that it had neon signs, including that smoking cowboy. I'm fairly certain I pictured the Vegas from the 1950s in my head, so Freemont was perfect. We got some (slightly) cheap, but delicious, western burgers and set off to explore the Strip. On foot. For those of you who have never been to Vegas, or have never walked there, I will let you know that this was not a good idea. We ended up walking a couple miles that night and got back to the car way too late, not to mention that we felt like it was an hour later because of the time zone shift. On a positive note, we got to see several wedding chapels, including one with people getting married and several of the more famous casinos, like Caesar's Palace and Circus Circus. It's too bad that the inside of the casinos don't reflect the outside, because we went inside of Treasure Island and I didn't see any pirates, which was kinda disappointing. We also missed the last pirate fight show thingy by an hour, which was sad.

Neon is in this year.

We woke up outside Vegas in an empty lot/trash dump/construction site and made our way to Death Valley. Death Valley was nice in its own way, although it's pretty much desert and barren everywhere. The most interesting thing there was the fact that we were below sea level for quite some time.

Below sea level in the desert.

Barren and kinda beautiful.

That covers our previous adventures and brings us to our current one, which is taking us the long way around Yosemite Park. Snow is supposedly blocking several roads into and through the park. This same snow will prevent us from seeing the park, so we'll just have to come back next time. For now, we're staying with Austin's dad in Galt.