Funny stories. travel details & Las Vegas

 Ryan likes ONE and only one kind of Cheesehead string cheese sticks.  He likes the swirl ones that have gotten nicknamed "squirrels" at our house.  For some reason, probably shipping/COVID related we had not been able to find them in our area in MONTHS.  I had looked in Atlanta, Blue Ridge, Asheville, and even Raleigh and Blacksburg, Virginia when we were doing college visits and found NO cheesehead swirls.  However, we stopped at a walmart just outside Las Vegas to buy water bottles and a cooler and I found some!!!!  Ryan was very happy!  Then we bought more in Flagstaff, Arizona too and brought them all home in our checked luggage!

We met some people from South Carolina and MANY from Texas and laughed about Southerners being the people who would talk to each other on the hiking trails!

I did not know that there were Chick Fil A and Kohl's stores out west.  We saw a giant Target in Las Vegas and there were Subway and Arby's restaurants EVERYWHERE it seemed.

For those who have asked about detail of where we stayed/visited:

We flew in/out of Las Vegas because that's where we could find best plane ticket prices on Delta.

We stayed at the Grand Canyon Plaza Hotel.

Our helicopter tour was with Maverick Helicopters.  They were GREAT!

We rented bikes from Bright Angel Bicycles at Grand Canyon and they were great to deal with also.

We stayed at Holiday Inn and Suites in Moab, Utah.

We stayed at the Best Western Plus in Bryce Canyon City, Utah.  They had large rooms compared to other hotels we had been in.

We stayed at Holiday Inn Express in Springdale, Utah.

We stayed in Springhill Suites Las Vegas North Speedway-it was a nice hotel in a nice quiet area.

All Trails is a great app with information about hiking trails and I found this blog to be a great resource of information too about parks and hiking trails.  They also had some hotel, restaurant, and other information.

https://www.earthtrekkers.com/

There was SO much to see-I think you really could spend months in that part of the country and still not see it all!

We drove through Las Vegas and got out on the strip to walk around and see some of the famous hotels from the outside before our flight home.  It was CRAZY hot there that morning and I was sad that the Bellagio fountains were not running but the hotels were neat to see in person-after having seen so many in movies or on tv.

Ashley wants to visit Paris and see the Eiffel tower so I took her picture with it when we could first see it.

I took the above picture because I thought it was funny that there was a McDonalds on the strip in Las Vegas

We saw a boat out of the Bellagio fountains doing cleaning work

This sign made me laugh-guess they do have people who want to swim in their fountains!

There were slot machines everywhere!  These were in a mall we walked inside.  They had them all over at the airport too.

Lots of cool New York things

Lots of neat sculptures, cactus, and unusual trees and flowers that we don't have back here on the east coast.

The pyramid at the Luxor that lights up crazily at night.

They even have beautiful views of the mountains from in the city.  This was one of the last pictures I took as we left the strip to go back to the airport.