Stuard Family: Day 10

We left California behind and headed to Las Vegas. At our first rest stop we could feel the temperature changing and knew we were going somewhere HOT. We stopped in Barstow, CA for lunch and saw some missionaries walking down a dirt street. Man, did we feel bad for them. The scenery started to change and we were loving the Joshua trees everywhere. We made everyone get out the car to take a picture with one. It was so sunny no one could see, HOT, and the kids were afraid that there was going to be snakes on the ground if they got out. This picture = mandatory family fun.

Our first stop when we got to Las Vegas was to go to the Hoover Dam. I was really hoping that we would get there before the visitor center closed for the day but we just missed it. To see the Dam you can walk out onto the bridge that the highway is on and get a good view. It probably takes 10 minutes from when you get out of the car. The heat was so intense, we had never felt anything like it. Lucy kept saying, "My skin feels funny." The bridge and the Dam are amazing. I don't feel like I have a fear of heights but standing on something like that made me a little woozy and dizzy.

It is crazy to see how the water is so low by the color of the rocks.

Stopping to pose at our fourth state of the trip

By the time our 10 minutes out of the car was up to see the bridge, Lucy was d-o-n-e with the heat. We truly are North-Westerners. The kids thought they might die if they stayed outside for a few minutes longer.

The bridge is almost more impressive than the Dam!

Just a little HOT!

This is Lucy saying, Please turn on the air conditioner and get us out of this place!

We thought it would be fun to stay in a fancy hotel on The Strip so we got two adjoining rooms at the Pink Flamingo. This turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Our first problem was that we had a luggage carrier on the top of our car so we couldn't park in their parking garage and had to park sort of far away and walk. This wouldn't have been a problem but there was literally no where to drop the bags off without a valet service. We then had to pay a bell hop to bring our bags to our room. We were feeling a little out of place, waiting for our bags to come so we could leave to explore with the little time we had. Just as the guy left after dropping off the bags and we were about to walk out the door I realized that a toilet was running in our adjoining room. When I went in there, the toilet was over flowing and it had been doing it for awhile. Water was covering the bathroom, out the door and flowing by the beds. Mitch had to hold the floater to stop the water and couldn't let go. We dump all the towels in both rooms on the floor trying to mop up some of the water. We called maintenance and a guy came to fix the toilet and called housekeeping to come clean up the enormous mess. He told us to leave and that it would be cleaned up by the time we got back that night.

By the time we got back that night (really late), nobody had come to clean the room. We called two more times asking for more towels and was never brought any. When we left in the morning and carried all our bags to the car about a mile away, we were ready to get the heck out of there!

We were, however excited to see the lights of The Strip at night and all the crazy things Vegas has built to attract people to come to their Casinos. The Strips traffic was crazy because the entire thing was under construction, so driving down it was a little slow. We also wanted to see our 5th temple of the trip and went to the Las Vegas temple. It was pretty late, so we saw it in the cover of darkness.