Day 13

We woke up and got a quick take out breakfast which we ate in the room and then popped to the rim of the Canyon to have a last look. It looked very nice in the morning sun. We got the binoculars out and searched for people on the Bright Angel trail, it was hard to see them even with 12x magnification which helped us realise the scale of Canyon. I think we both wished we could have spent a day hiking down to the bottom and be surrounded by the ‘monolithic rocky outcrops’!

We got on the road as soon as possible as we were on a mission to get to Vegas, there was a bit of sadness at the prospect of leaving all the natural beauty of the National Parks behind but we were looking forward to something a bit different, and to being in one place for more than one night.

We made sure our journey to Las Vegas included driving on part of the Historic Route 66. We stopped in Seligman, a small town which would have been very busy before the new highway was built, now it had a lot of shops dedicated to Route 66 with lots of old, often beat up, cars parked outside. There were lots of closed down motels with the old signs outside; you could really imagine what the place would have been like in its prime.

We got back on the road and continued towards Vegas with just one more stop, this time at the Hackberry General Store, another place which was a Mecca to all things Route 66. It was pretty cool!

We got a little bit excited at spotting the New Hampshire licence plate, only nine to go.

We did consider visiting Hoover Dam but we were so excited about getting to the Mandalay Bay, and more importantly the beach pool at the hotel that we decided to give it a miss. We’d seen one dam at Lake Powell; it was only a bit smaller than Hoover Dam so we decided it wasn’t something we needed to do any more, we poked the GoPro camera out of the sunroof and filmed driving over the bridge so we did kind of see it! Natalie was a bit sad that she couldn’t get a photo of the bridge opposite the dam but perked up when she focused on getting into the wave pool.

When we got out of the car at the Mandalay Bay car park we couldn’t believe how hot it was in the shade, we knew Vegas was hot but didn’t expect that. We made our way though the car park and down some escalators that led straight into the bright, noisy casino; it was brilliant! The whole of the hotel seemed so opulent and over the top, the lobby had an enormous aquarium with huge fish and sharks in; it was brilliant!

The receptionist was very nice, offered us the choice of one king or two queen beds (we chose two queens, I love having two beds) and allocated us a room on the 21^st floor. We quickly made our way up, as the pool was only open for another couple of hours. The room was massive and had giant windows from floor to ceiling, looking out of them made me feel a bit queasy, it felt like you could fall out of them any second. Although the view from the room wasn’t of the strip it was still excellent, we had the beach pool to one side and the airport to the other, this was good as it meant Natalie could watch planes taking off and landing, we also seemed to have an awful lot of helicopters fly right past our room which was cool.

We quickly got changed and headed down to the ‘beach’, it was pretty busy but we managed to find a couple of sun loungers (to put our shoes and room keys on, we didn’t get chance to actually do any lounging!) and headed to the wave machine. Natalie enjoyed surfing in and barging children out of the way to ensure she caught the next wave. We went to the lazy river next and swam around a couple of times, after a while we managed to grab a couple of rubber rings, Natalie tried to fob me off with a big gold chair but I saw through her plan and made her keep that one. Watching her try to get on it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, she tried to jump on it from the water, from the side, from the steps, backwards, sideways; every time she slide right off. It was brilliant!  (Ahem, I did eventually get on it though!)

After a while I managed to drag Natalie away from the water, after all Las Vegas is a big place and there was lots to see. We had a quick shower and set off up the strip. The lights, the themed hotels, the people walking around with foot long margaritas, everything was crazy but we both had big smiles on our faces, we loved Las Vegas.

We quickly made our way up to the Cosmopolitan, which is a fairly new and contemporary hotel about half way up the strip, I’d read reviews about the Wicket Spoon buffet there so we thought we’d give it a try. It was about 8pm when we got there and there was a bit of a queue, we were finally seated at 8.40 and were told that food would stop being served at 9.15, that meant only 35 minutes to get our money’s worth in an all you can eat buffet – challenge accepted! We had a strategy to get different food and share everything, to not fill up on fizzy drink and to stay away from bread, potato and rice, you don’t want to fill up on carbs when there’s loads of pudding options to get through. We had a good go at dinner and managed three plates each but were eating at light speed to make sure all of the dessert didn’t get taken away.  There was a large variety of foods from around the world, the annoying thing was that if we’d got there earlier we could’ve spent a while between plates to make room for more food, not that we needed it. We had lots of pudding, I think we got almost all of the options, Natalie even asked for two different flavours of ice-cream, the server seemed shocked by this, as if no customer of the Wicked Spoon Buffet has ever asked for more than one at a time.

I felt sick. I kept on eating, but I was in pain. Eventually we gave up and decided to walk it off around the strip and popping into a few casinos and posh hotel lobbies. We had a quick go on the slots at the Cosmopolitan, I won $12, it was exciting.

$17 of winnings!

We stopped off at the Bellagio fountains and watched a couple of displays, they were incredible, a bit like a really good firework display, but with water. I especially liked it when they shot the water up really high, Natalie was impressed by the sound they made when they shot the water up really high! Kaboom!

We made our way back down the strip through New York, New York and to Mandalay Bay, where we played on a few more games on the slots. We stuck to 1 cent machines, but we soon upped the ante by playing more than one line at a time. I started to play 5 lines, 2 bets per line, this meant that each spin of the reels cost me 10c, I was playing with the big boys now! Sometimes you have to play big to win big. At one point I asked Natalie what time she thought it was, she guessed midnight, I looked at my phone, we were both completely shocked to see it was actually 1.30, time moves differently in Vegas. We were having so much fun and had managed to while away the evening spending less than $10 each; it was great entertainment.

We noticed a live band playing just a few feet away from us and went over to watch them for a bit. After a few songs they stopped playing and said they’d be back in a few minutes. I could’ve stayed up all night but we thought we’d better get to bed, we had another long day of exploring ahead of us and we needed clear heads to help us win our fortune.