Spring Break 2008...part 3 (Grand Canyon, AZ -> Las Vegas, NV : 02/27/2008 - 02/29/2008)

Part 3:

Day 6(02/27/2008):

So, the day started early, really early, because we needed to reach the airport at 9ish for Keng Yang's flight at 11.30am flight. Not too bad that the flight's at 11.30am. But too bad that we were 200+ miles away from Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. So, to be safe, very safe, we decided to take off from Grand Canyon, AZ at 4am. YES, 4 AM (Mountain timezone). So, we have more than 6 hours to make sure we make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.


Also, it was a really cold morning. Checkout the snowflakes on my windshield.

Somehow, we managed to make it in slightly less than 5 hours because we didn't have to stop for anything, other than a little bit of gas. Because of driving, I missed the star-filled skies! As it was there wasn't much light pollution driving from Grand Canyon, AZ to Las Vegas, NV, star gazing must be great, and the sky was clear too. KENG YANG, I blamed you for this. And all this while, you were sleeping at the back. ;-) Just kidding.

So, we made it to the airport at 7.45am. So, it will be too long a wait for our friend, and we were pretty hungry, so we decided to go for breakfast and come back later. At first, we were thinking about some breakfast buffet, then, I remembered most of us have never been to IHOP, so, I decided to go to IHOP instead. And, after some turning around, we found one right next to the hotel we will be staying at for the next 2 nights, Stratosphere. So, after 4/5 cups of coffee, a huge omelet and a stack of pancakes, I'm all recharged. And others too had their stack of pancakes and whatnot, at about 9.30am, we went back to the airport to drop our 'burden' down. Did I mention where he is going? Oh, for a job interview. All the best!
Stratosphere tower.

Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard. MGM Grand.
New York, New York.
Bellagio, with the infamous fountain.

So, after that, we went back to our hotel and try our luck on getting an early check-in. After standing in-line for awhile, (I tried to self-check-in kiosk, but it didn't give me the non-smoking room option); hence, the waiting in-line. So, we got our room at about 11am.
Me, waiting in line.

SWEET! After some rest, we went to check out the casino. It was alright, but I don't like the 2nd-hand smoke. My throat was irritated. The reason we chose this hotel, north of the Las Vegas boulevard, was because of the great price for the promotion I found. Not only it was free 2nd night, there were 2 free show tickets and a bunch of coupons in the package. So, we got tickets for the show at night, and then, a couple of us started playing slots. At first, it was just some random slots that I played, then, I discovered the video poker and that was it, before we knew it, we spent like 3 hours playing it in a trance.

Then, it was about time for us to go to the show. It was American Superstars. A show tributes to some of America's best stars: Elvis Presley(wasn't there for our show), Michael Jackson, Tim McGraw, Rod Steward, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, impersonated by some rather talented people. Especially, the Michael Jackson, the moves of the impersonator was amazing. The singing of Christina Aguilera and Tim McGraw impersonators were great too. The Britney Spears' wasn't bad at all. Rod Stewart too was alright.

After that, we decided to walk to Sahara to try out their buffet there because I saw it on an advertisement in the in-flight magazine and it was cheap or something. So, we went. It was like dorm food. (SO, never trust in-flight magazines.)! :P

Then, we went back to our hotel to call it a night. I guessed most of us were so tired that we fell asleep without taking shower. I managed to be the first one among us to fall asleep, quite an achievement for me since I had been having trouble to sleep early and sleep much.


Day 7(02/28/2008):

But, I woke up at 6am, after a shower, I went to play some slots again so that I can accumulate enough points to get a t-shirt. :-P I mean, it's a free t-shirt, and I was only like 10-15 points from getting it. So, $10 later and an hour later, I got the t-shirt. After that, I went to the gym to run off the carbs I'd been piling on from the buffets. And, we were planning to go to a few more buffets before the end of the trip. So, 3 miles later, I went back to our room and others were up and about. We went to the Stratosphere tower as planned. (We got free tickets as hotel guests get to access the tower between 10am - 2pm for free).
Some crazy rides on top of the tower.
View from the top of the tower.

After that, when it was time for lunch, we went out to the central of Las Vegas boulevard, with all the cool hotels and stuff to do all the touristy stuff. From my friends' recommendation, we went to this Japanese Restaurant, Todai for what we considered to be the best buffet of our trip. We enjoyed the sushi and stuff a lot.

The weather was great. Mid 70s in the afternoon.

We concluded that people here loves to read, as most of these magazines racks were empty.

Paris!More of Paris!
And Paris at Night. Viewing from Bellagio.

Then, we walked more. Because of the amount of food we store in our stomach, we were worn off easily. We went back to our hotel for a siesta. Then, Siew Gee and I decided to explore some stuff around Stratosphere. First, because we walked past these aqua-massage machines many times and were tempted by it. So, we finally gave it a try (we had those coupons too). In my opinion, it was not shabby, but, somehow, too noisy for my liking, one suggestion, prolly providing us a pair of headphones with some sort of relaxing music will be great. Then, on the way back, we passed by this oxygen bar, and out of curiosity, and didn't want to go back to our room and rot yet, we decided to give a try as well. The package was a neck and head massage and 30 minutes of inhaling pure oxygen. It was rather corny, having to inhale it through some special tubes, and stuff. Not sure whether it's a psychological effect or physical effect, but I did feel fresher after the session, not to mention $20 poorer, and also, sore from the massage.
From Bellagio, looking to the North of Las Vegas Boulevard.

Poooooofffffffff... The climax of the fountain show. (I had the entire video, but it's 300+ mb, can't seem to get anywhere to host it for me, and I'm too lazy to resize a video.... it takes forever.)
Siew Gee missed her show at Cirque Du Soleil...

Ahhhhhhh!!! The city of Lights...

But, it was rather fun. At night, we went to Bellagio, damn, the hotel was magnificent. We went there for the water fountain show. Then, for some reasons, we decided to walk from there to Excalibur, a good 20-minute walk, with a bunch of Latinos(nothing racist here, but that's who they are...) handing out call-girl cards and promise us a girl in 20 minutes. DAMN, that's even faster than Domino's delivering a pizza. Come on, Domino's, pick up your game.

Luxor... Love the architecture.
So, from Excalibur, we took a tram to Luxor, where we walked around a bit. As we couldn't stomach another buffet (pun intended). We decided to call it a night.

Day 8(02/29/2008):

Last day at Las Vegas, NV. Woke up at 7ish, and went running and soaked up some sun. Well, the weather was great, in the 60-70s. Then, we checked out at about 10.45am from our room, and then, went for the lunch buffet. It was rather good. Ranked 2nd among all the buffets we had on the trip.
Soaking up some sun. That was me.

So, we left for the airport at about 1pm. Because of some rather heavy traffic (Nascar weekend at Vegas I supposed), we arrived at the airport at about 1.30pm. So, for the entire trip, we(I) drove more than 1500 miles. Yup fifteen hundred plus miles.

We were kinda rushed but made it through the security and all for our 3pm flight with 15 minutes to spare. So, I managed to buy a shot glass and a deck of cards as souvenirs. I thing amazes me of this Las Vegas airport is there are slot machines right beside the boarding gates.
Amazing, isn't it?

The flight wasn't bad at all, even though I sat between a huge guy and a big guy. One's a student from U of Michigan - Dearborn, while the other is a Marine on leave, and will be a free man in a month. We had quite a lot to talk about, and it was eye opening to talk to a Marine. Hats off to you, man. He was only a few months older than I am, but, he already served 4 years in the Marines Corp. To make such a huge decision fresh out of high school, and to undergo all the trainings and all. Good man. We talked about a lot of stuff, joked a lot too. And finally, bid each other best of luck once we reach St. Louis, MO. We had a connecting at St. Louis, MO, just a 45 minutes layover.

We reached Ann Arbor at about midnight. Due to the heavy snow storm just before that, the drive back was INSANE. Everybody was going really slow because the condition was extremely bad. I was talking about 25-30 miles/hr slow. And even at that speed, I was having quite some hard time controlling the car. It took us about an hour and a half to drive from the airport to Ann Arbor. Along the way, we saw more than 5 cars skidded off the road, making some 180/270/360 degrees spins. I was so afraid driving, not that I was afraid that I will crash into another car (I was keeping a really safe distance from the car ahead of me), but more so that other cars will rear-end or side-swipe me.

Fortunately, we got back to Ann Arbor without any incident. Got back to my apartment at about 2am. Called home, and called it a night at 3ish. After transferring more than 3Gbs of photos and videos onto my computer.

Overall, it was a great trip! Within my budget, great memories, great companies, and great experience.

What's next? Skiing, skydiving and many more.

Spring Break 2008...part 2 (Yosemite, CA --> Grand Canyon, AZ : 02/24/2008 - 02/26/2008)

Part 2:

Day 3 (02/24/2008)
So, after another complimentary Continental breakfast, we left Oakhurst, CA for Las Vegas, NV via the Death Valley National Park. Because the famous CA-120 is closed for winter (one of the most scenic driveways in the US), we had to take a rather long detour in order to go to Las Vegas via the Death Valley National Park. According to both Microsoft MapPoint's and Google Map's directions, it was a 10-hour journey. The drive to the Death Valley National Park was rather uneventful, the sceneries were not bad at all. We saw a bunch of wind-turbines (modern windmills) along the way.

For lunch, we stopped at somewhere-I-forgot when we found a Denny's at about 1pm. Breakfast food for lunch is always good. :)Long drive, but this is what we see for most of the drive.

Death Valley National Park is famous for its well below sea level elevation, in fact, it is the lowest elevation in North America at -282 ft. Also, it features the Mojave desert and stuff. We saw some great sand dunes, and drove through dips and stuff. (Sorry, not really that well converse in geology.) Also, Death Valley is also famous for being hot. Really hot in the summer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley

Also, while driving to/along Death Valley, our GeoSci major friend Keng Yang spotted a horseshoe-vortices cloud formation.
I tagged this photo because it's a rare thing and don't want others to steal it... :P http://www.weatherscapes.com/album.php?cat=clouds&subcat=horseshoe_vortices
Keng Yang couldn't find a pole, so needed to look for a hole to settle his business instead. On his way back after his small business.
Cam-whoring while waiting for Keng Yang dealing is small business.

We continued our journey and reached the Death Valley National Park and found a designated scenic spot. So, we took some pictures, some rather interesting ones. It was rather windy, so I decided to put on my sport jacket.

I suggested (I think I did) people to leap/jump and I'll snap their pictures while they were in mid-air, a much better pose than the usual say-cheese-toothpaste-commercials-smile. So, it was all good when I was taking the pictures, perfect timing for most of them. :P
First, Pei Ying...
Then, who else...
Then, Siew Gee...aka Atsuki
Then, Ren Jie...

Then, when it was my turn to jump, oh my, Keng Yang and Ren Jie really wanted me to have some workout, had me jumping umpteen times, until Pei Ying finally got it on her second try.
Here are the evidences:
Too late...Another one...
Yet another too late...
And another...
And another again...
And another...

FINALLY!!!
Then, the harder group-jump photo. Other tourists must be thinking that we were crazy and all.
Pretty neat huh?

After about 20-minute of admiring the beautiful view of the basin lake, and enjoying strong wind breezing through our hair, we decided to continue our journey.
Because of unclear printed directions, we sorta overshot but managed to claw our way back when we saw a kinda 'unofficial' road sign pointing us to Las Vegas - 86 miles.

~"Country road, take me home, to the place I belong..."

Ren Jie and I decided that it was 'safe' to follow the unmarked, but paved road, as it was leading us to the right directions. It took us to a town, Pahrump, NV, where the highest building of the town is 2-storey tall, and it was ghetto-looking and stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahrump,_Nevada
Love this picture. Ren Jie!!!
We stopped for gas, and Keng Yang, Pei Ying and Siew Gee almost wandered into a bad-looking bar while looking for the bathroom unknowingly. Luckily we spotted the sign of the bar and Ren Jie warned them just in time. After refueling, we continued our way, and hit the major road of Pahrump and it was much better.

So, after a rest stop, where I got more coffee, the sky was getting darker, and we had about 60 more miles to cover before reaching Las Vegas. As we had to go up and down the mountainous terrain all these while, often going up to elevations of more than 5000ft, it took more than an hour to cover the 60 miles.Elevation 4000 ft...
Sun is setting...

We reached our hotel at almost half-past eight. It's the Monte Carlo Hotel, on the Souther part of Las Vegas Boulevard! Checked in and ka-ching. We were set for the night.
We went to Luxor for dinner buffet. It was not as good as we expected. So, Luxor buffet, a NO-NO. But, we still do pretty well. At least I did, 3 full plates of meat and stuff, a plate with 5 different desserts and some fruits. Not to mention ice-cream and a cup of coffee.


We walked around and stuff, and called it a night, of course. The 3 lightbulbs gave Keng Yang and Pei Ying their own time and space, but asking them to go on their own. The 3 of us pretty much back-track to our hotel room and called it a night after everyone of us had a long shower. Really need to point out that the water pressure was really strong and I really enjoyed the shower. Best shower in a long long time.

We dozed off at about midnight, and the two lovebirds only came back later. Ehem...

Day 4 (02/25/2008):

We woke up slightly later today, at about 7.30am I think, after packing and all, and Siew Gee and I got our Starbucks coffee, we hit the road at about 9am. Next stop, Grand Canyon, AZ!!! Initially, according to our directions, one says it's gonna be 4.5 hours, while the other claims approximately 6 hours.
Crossing Hoover Dam... into the state of Arizona
Also, the weather was great... Some interesting cloud formations.

We did it in about 5 hours. Including a little bit of stopping for informations (maps) and gas. Of course, along the way, the lovebirds were busy dozing off, while the other three of us sang our hearts out to some old tunes we can remember. Fun fun fun! ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........



So, we were able to check into our hotel early, at about 1+pm (different time zone, it's Mountain time here). We had a late lunch at a Wendy's nearby, and then, went back to our hotel room for some rest. Before we headed out again for the Grand Canyon National Park for the sunset.We saw snow on our way to Grand Canyon.

So, some pictures of the beautiful Grand Canyon and of course, the sunset.While waiting for the sunset... we took pictures of what else at Grand Canyon....
Magnificent...


Can't believe wherever we went, there were snow.
Group picture...
Staring at ... well, just turning away from the camera man... Keng Yang
How cute...
Quick... guess a professor... You know it, you know it... come on...
Sun setting...
Sun really setting...
Sun really really setting...
Told you so...

How cute... over the shoulder...
On the way back to our car, we saw a couple of rabbits.
Snow at Yosemite and now snow at Grand Canyon. At night, we did nothing much, other than watching tv and playing Big-2. Dominating the game of Big-2 was fun. :P

We went to bed rather early again because we were planning to catch the sunrise the next day.

Day 5(02/26/2008):
So, we woke up at about 6am and left for Grand Canyon National Park at 6.30am. As we checked from weather.com, the sun rise will be at 7.09am. While driving there, just a short 5-mile drive, the sky was kinda bright, and we thought we were gonna miss the sun rise, but apparently not.
Love the color...
This one looks even better... The shading, the color...
And, love the leng chai...
First glimpse of the sun rise...
A couple minutes later...
And later...
And even later...
And by popular demand...
Love the light shone on the lens and created the ray and the refraction.
It was freaking cold, well, relatively. It was still below freezing and the wind was really gusting. But, the sun rise was absolutely amazing, and thanks Siew Gee for sparing me your extra pair of gloves.
Mother nature at her grandness...
Yup... no doubt about that...

After the sun rise, we went back to our hotel for the breakfast. It was rather good breakfast. Bacon, cereals, biscuits and sausage gravy, yogurt, coffee, toast, eggs and stuff. I pretty much stuffed myself with it. Then, after a couple of hours of resting, we went back to Grand Canyon National Park again.
The weather was great, but the temperature was still not warm at all...
There, we did more sight-seeing, drove along the scenic driveway, stopping along the way. Snapping pictures of deers and elks.
~"Doe a deer, a female deer....
A GIANT ELK doing its business... That's our car hood...it's only like 10 ft away from us. And our friend Keng Yang suggested me to honk it. You crazy ar?!?!


And all those stuff. We even had our cute little picnic at the very tip of the South Rim of Grand Canyon.Our picnic spot...
I mean, having a snack while enjoying such breathtaking view... Can't be that...

We did some 'hiking' too. Nothing serious, just about half a mile, until we saw a sign that says where the trail leads to and warnings to people that are unprepared. It was a 9-mile trail that will take us all the way to the Colorado River. Maybe next time, as we said it so many times during the trip, we will come back in the summer. Right, guys?

So, we head back to our room at about 3pm, I think. Bored! I went to check out the swimming pool. Damn, the swimming pool was tiny. One kick off the side and I'm at the other end of the pool. Spent about 30 minutes floating on my back, just relaxing. Then, went back to join others and dominated the game of Big-2 again. Went out for dinner, and then, called it a night even earlier as we will be hitting the road at unearthly hour tomorrow. All for the sake of our friend Keng Yang.

So, that's part III.