Sunday 22 September 2024

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Sunday 22 September - !!! Brett's Birthday !!!

The Flight out and car rental

So, we flew out of Cincinnati to Las Vegas on my birthday. Since we were both taking a week's worth of clothing, and I needed all my hiking gear (poles, backpack, water filtration, camera gear, etc.) we had a lot of gear to take. So much, in fact, that we could not ride with the Trenaman's to the airport, our trunk and part of the back seat were full of just our gear.

• CVG -> LAS Delta DL2915 7:10 am -> 9:15 am
• National Rental Car mini van (folding 3rd row seat and all captain's chairs) in Vegas
• Reservation for Sunday at Circus Circus hotel and casino

Once we were on the ground in Vegas and grabbed our luggage, we took the shuttle bus to the (offsite!) rental car facility and got our mini van. We made a quick stop at Smith's (a Kroger brand) to get distilled water for my CPAP and some drinking water (and a few snacks for the non-keto in the group) for the various hikes we planned to do before and after getting to Grand Canyon. Since we arrived at about 9, we had our baggage and were at [National] about 10 am.

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  Leaving Cincinnati

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  My pack weight (with water)

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  Packing

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  Loading the Car

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  Too Much stuff

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  In Vegas/Tower

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  Circus Circus Hotel/Casino

The Las Vegas Sphere

We had also considered/planned to do the "Sphere Experience" show at the Las Vegas Sphere, but since we weren't sure exactly when we would be back from Red Rock (see below) we didn't want to buy the tickets too early. That was probably a mistake because by the the weekend we traveled it was sold out. I would've like to have gone to the sphere, and we actually looked for tickets the following weekend when we would be traveling home (and have basically an entire day to burn as well), but they were also sold out as they'd moved to an Eagles showing. That was a bit of a bummer, but it wasn't super high on my must-do list, and the cheapest tickets were over $100, and the better seats were over $300, so I really didn't want to spend that kind of money on an "extra" thing to do, and then have it screw up our larger schedule/plan. That's something we'll try again if we go back.

Red Rock Canyon

We couldn't check into the hotel until after (like 3 pm), we drove from Vegas directly to Red Rock Canyon. Red Rock is due west of Vegas about 20 miles, and has several shorter day hikes and a nice drive-through path for seeing the various colored rock formations. It's handy that the same "America the Beautiful" National Parks pass that gets you into Grand Canyon also works here. We spent about 3 hours driving around and hiking in Red Rock park.

• Calico Hills Trail
• Petroglyph Wall Trail
• Lost Creek Trail
• Pine Creek Canyon Trail
• Calico Overlook Trail easy
• Ash Spring Trail easy
• Girl Scout Trail easy
• Ice Box Canyon hard

Since Elizabeth had not been training for the hike, I planned to mostly drive through the park, and only do one or two of the shorter and less strenuous hikes. I think the only one we ended up actually hiking was Ice Box Canyon, and Elizabeth joined us for about a mile of that one. It was a pretty warm day, though, and fairly rocky, and she didn't have real hiking shoes, so I wanted her to be super careful. The kids that parked next to us ended up bumming some water off of us as they hadn't brought any, and there was none at the trailhead.

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Dinner in Las Vegas

When we were hot and tired enough from Red Rock, we headed back to Vegas and got showers and checked out "the strip". Elizabeth had just been there for a conference (Oracle Cloud World 2024). So, we parked the van at Circus Circus and took an Uber over to the Venetian and tour it and the Wynn a bit, checking out the various shops and restaurants. Elizabeth showed John how to play Blackjack, and everybody else had dinner at one of the restaurants (I was being careful to fast and eat little enough to stay in ketosis for the hike).

Next up, Monday the 23rd.