Las Vegas Vacation

This is for me to jot some things down about my trip so I don't forget everything, feel free to read through if you like.

3-14-14
Flew out of RDU friday evening and landed in Vegas  a few hours later. We elected to rent a car for the entire trip. We rented the cheapest smallest car we could find using our credit card miles. We landed and went straight to the car rental station. A little friendliness with the cashier and we got a free upgrade to a 4wd Mitsubishi Outlander. Due to the cost of hotel rooms being expensive on the weekends we hopped in our car and headed bout an hour and a half out of Las Vegas to Kingman. There we crashed hard at the Knights Inn. Oh, and also earlier in evening we ate at Jack in the Box and I got a free upgrade from water to fountain drink. We also stopped at a Vons grocery store and picked up some snacks and some bottled water. The Knights Inn was right on old route 66.

3-15-14
We woke up and decided against the crappy motel continental breakfast and ate breakfast at Denny's instead and then we got back on the road towards the grand canyon south rim.

We at arrived at the little tourist trap town right outside the park and got an early check in at the Holiday Inn. Nice room. but we had some hiking to do. So we jumped right back in the car and headed to the Grand Canyon.

The first time I laid eyes on the Grand Canyon was quite breathtaking. It is hard to put into words and pictures definitely can't capture just how immense the canyon is. We ended up hiking about 8 miles total along the south rim. We kept walking until sunset and caught a tram back to the visitors center. The sunset was awesome, not the actual sunset, but the way the sunset light played off of the different colors of the canyon walls. We walked until our feet couldn't handle another step and until we ran out of daylight. It was one great vista after another and I couldn't get enough of it. So different than anything on the east coast.
We had crappy pizza and went to bed and slept real well that night.

3-16-14
Woke up and enjoyed the totally awesome (by hotel standards) Holiday Inn breakfast. After that it was time to get in the car and head to Page, Arizona, home of Antelope canyon, horseshoe bend and the rainbow bridge (we thought).

I had a 1pm reservation to go see Antelope canyon. It is expensive to go see the canyon and Linh had already seen it once, so I was going on my own for this one. Midday is supposed to be the best time to view it, so that the light is coming down the canyon and lighting up the walls. There is a 10 minute ride in the back of a 4x4 pick up truck to get to the canyon. Driving over sand, the truck bed is set up to seat about 8 people on benches on either side of the bed. All of my part was foreigners, but that made it easy to befriend our driver and tour guide, a native American lady. I think her name was Sherry. With a little small talk, I was now known as "North Carolina" to her. This actually worked out really well because I know nothing about photography and she knew how to set up my phone camera to take some awesome pictures of the canyon.
" Hey, North Carolina, let me see your camera, hold it like this, no, change the iso to this, set up the white balance to this" All of a sudden my dark and dreary pics took on a little bit of color and beauty. Thanks Sherry, I definitely tipped her.!