Day Five

Ruby's Inn General Store

Day five started a little slower.  With four people and one bathroom, Lee's parents got ready first and then Lee and I got ready.  While we were taking our turn, Lee parents checked out the general store at the hotel.  We soon joined them and picked out breakfast for the morning.  The general store looked small, but it had everything in it from the tourist section to the grocery store to a restaurant.  After checking out, we headed down the road to Bryce Canyon.

Bryce Canyon

It was a short drive to the sign and we of course stopped for pictures.  We waited our turn with the other few families and once we got our picture, we headed to the canyon.  The canyon had many overlooks, but we only stopped at four or five.  The first and the last were my favorite.

The first had a beautiful view of the hoodoos.  I hate the word "hoodoo".  It just sounds dumb.  Even though I don't like the words, I think this place was my favorite from the entire trip.  The first viewpoint had a bit of a hike, so we saved it until we were done looking at everything.  We didn't want to wear ourselves out before we saw everything.  There were lots of people at this site, like the Grand Canyon, but luckily they weren't annoying like at the Grand Canyon.  Once we were done taking pictures at the first viewpoint, we headed to the next few.  Each viewpoint was amazing.  My brain was still on overload.  So many different beautiful sites in less than a week's time left my brain just overwhelmed.

Once we got to the last overlook, we all took our time walking around and down to the viewpoint.  One person got super close to the edge to take silly pictures.  It made me a nervous wreck.  I turned my camera on though in case I needed to take a video of them falling.  He didn't fall though, which is a good thing.  It's better than my friend who was at the Grand Canyon last month when someone was doing the same thing and actually fell in the Grand Canyon. Everyone gasped and half went running to the edge.  Luckily, the guy landed on a ledge about 8 feet down.  He was hurt, but he was okay.  That would have been terrible if someone got hurt like that.  But no one did, so it was good.  We saw a few squirrels running around, but not much other wildlife.

Once we were done with the last overlook, we headed back to the first to hike.  The hike was very steep the entire way down, so we knew it was going to be tough coming back up.  We were already sore from the arches, so we weren't looking forward to the walk down.  It was so steep it was difficult just walking down.

Lee's parents went a short way down before stopping to take pictures and then heading back.  Lee and I went down quite a bit further.  I was starting to get worried because I knew the trip back up would be extremely difficult already.I asked Lee how much further he planned on going. We turned the corner and saw the path get extremely winding.  We stopped there and headed back up.

Zion National Park

We paced ourselves, so the hike back up wasn't too terrible.  We got back in the car and headed to Zion National Park.  We stopped at the overlook to see everything and take pictures, and then we headed to the main part of the park.  We got to the top, took pictures, then hurried away so we didn't get stuck behind the slow car again.  Once we left Zion, we headed to Las Vegas.

Power Lines

It was a long trip to the city, but I finally had a phone signal so I could get a little work done.  Driving into the city, Lee and his parents were excited to see all the joshua trees.  I wasn't as excited, but it was cool.  The thing that was most impressive was the forest of power lines going into Vegas.  The power lines came from everywhere and every so often there was a substation.  It was pretty awesome.

Vegas at night

We got to the city just before sunset, so we could see everything in daylight and also at night.  We drove down the strip to our hotel (the Stratosphere) and checked in before going to our show.  We saw Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio.  It was amazing, as Cirque du Soleil normally is.  The show was performed with a 1.5 million gallon pool of water.  It was awesome.  It was nice to just sit for once on the trip and view something for a couple hours.  After the show, we went back to the hotel and went up in the stratosphere.  After viewing the strip from up above, we went back down to our room and crashed.  A link to the trailer of the show we saw is below:

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/o/default.aspx