Road Trip To California - Day 5 (Grand Canyon, AZ to Las Vegas, NV )

So... today we woke up at 4:40 AM to get up and watch the sunrise from one of the many views around here... It proved to be a fun-filled morning, despite a rather uneventful and cloudless sunrise (except for the small cloud that hung out just over the sun for its first 30 minutes of risenness (not really a word I'm sure) of the day.... It was cool though, all four of us jumped some fences and hike down to some of the bluffs (Pictured above: Kacey, Will, and I are just under the word "here"...Hint: we are the small specks)... Don't worry, it wasn't really against the rules or that dangerous. There were already paths carved out where other people had done it before. It proved for some really fun video footage, as Will crawled up this crazy steep rock face... I attempted the same feat, got halfway, and backed down... Dude is crazy....

As one of the top pictures show, Will and I reenacted the scene from Titanic, where Jack and whatever here name is embraced at the bow of the ship... Quite hilarious might I add... It was totally my idea, I just told Will to stand up on the bars and shut up... Haha, he didn't get it for a second, until I went, "No, Jack, I'll never let go..." The responses around were Kacey (Will's sis) rolling her eyes at me as usual and muttering, "So stupid.." and Dad laughing, grabbing his camera to take some pics (as shown above), and perhaps a subconcious, "Crap, I hope my son really isn't gay..." Haha, naw, I'm joking about that last part, although.... I cannot read Dad's mind... Oh well... Anyway, we took off about 11 or so bound for Las Vegas...

In the meantime, we stopped at Hoover Dam, just 30 miles from Vegas... We ended up unintentionally getting a discounted tour of the place and got a lot of fun pictures... we went through the "guts" of the dam... with lots of videos and commentary beefing up the fact that apparently that President Hoover was God's gift to America, or perhaps the electrically-needy of southwest Pacific area... The political propaganda provoked a small bit of nausea, but hey it's cool... Anyway, the Hoover Dam (yes) is ridiculously huge... It was definitely a cool experience... Pictured above, all four of us are on top of the dam on the line between Arizona and Nevada (woot woot)....

Las Vegas was great fun! We checked in to Circus Circus Hotel... What is really funny/ironic is that Will's sis has clown-fobia... She flips out at clowns, it's crazy... Anyway, Will and I (more Will than I) toyed with her a lot of the time, since there were clowns everywhere, including a 100-foot one in front of the hotel... One of the first trucks we saw in the city is the one pictured... it cracks me up yet depresses me at the same time (I will save it for another day).... That night, we walked around in Vegas, through the Venetian, Treasure Island, and down the strip... It's amazing to me that a bunch of dang people are gathered together, partying in the middle of a dang desert!!! Anyway, we saw the Treasure Island ship-fight show (as pictured), complete ofcourse with lots of girls in lingerie... Anyway, it was great fun and definitely a cool experience...

Road Trip To California - Day 4 (Green River, UT to Grand Canyon, AZ)

After a late night of driving, we woke up to a beautiful scene of nowhere... haha, I drove for about 2 hours on a pitch black highway last night, just wondering what was around me... I saw pretty much any star in the sky that I wanted but could not make out what was around me. This morning, I found that I was simply surrounded by lots of desert and towering rocks, similar to that of stalagmite in a cave... It's pretty crazy. Dad and I drove through this for quite a few hours... (well, really I slept for about 4 or 5 hours off and on while Dad drove)... I woke up intermittently to see more rock and more desert here and there..

We stopped at Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah which is where two of the pictures were taken (driving through the rock and the rail). I walked up to astonishing open spaces with giant rock formations all around as I peered into Bryce Canyon... I snuck off for a little bit off the trail to take some pictures and hang my feet off the edge... I reminisced of a Fall Creek Falls trip when I was about 8 or so with my Mom and Justin (my bro) and his friend (Michael Smith). Justin and Michael (or "Hamburger" as they called him) hung their feet off the edge of a bluff above a green canopy of trees roughly 400 feet below them... (to which Mom yelled for them to be safe and/or scoot back from the edge)... I remember I wanted so bad to go to the edge with them... to be a big kid, ya know? Haha, anyway, my experience was similar to theirs, except for the bottom surface was reddish-orange rock? I wondered what it would be like to be a bird... you know... to be able to fly around in all that... I know it's cliche, but hey...(similar to the day before)...

Dad and I (really I while he slept) raced through the base of Utah into Arizona to try and catch the sunset at the Grand Canyon... (Seriously, I do not believe I turned once in 20-minute stretch going about 80 mph... the roads were a bit boring)... We ventured through I think the Navajo Indian reservation, passed up the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and reached an overlook for the South Rim with about 20 minutes to spare; it was amazing! I read one of David's psalms about nature and God... I looked around and in the giant amount of space, I felt, "God is bigger than this?" I was blown away... Never before have I really ever looked at an expanse this huge and tried to compare it to God... It's amazing that the Grand Canyon doesn't even compare at all... It was a neat experience....

Well, later on that night, we caught up with Will Butler and his sister and stayed the night at one of the lodges on the South Rim... (it was a bit of an ordeal meeting up, b/c there was no cell phone service and little prior plannning)... All in all, the day was filled with huge amounts of beautiful open spaces, large expanses of desert, rock, and open air, and a lot of driving (about 11 hours to be exact)... Peace!!