We woke up Friday morning (July 9) at the crack of dawn and began packing up our site and getting the RV ready for a long drive. The night before we all discussed a potential plan and had decided that it would be best to drive for about 8 hours, find a cool campground in UT for the night, and then drive another 8 hours on Saturday to the Grand Canyon. In our initial 'outline' for the trip, we planned on days like this to drive the entire distance thus giving ourselves more time at the 'destination'. However we've found that every destination is great and as a team we do better breaking up the trip and just enjoying wherever we stop for the evening/night.
So around 7:50a.m. we pulled out of Yellowstone disappointed to be leaving one of the most amazing places we've ever seen, but also thankful for having made it a part of our adventure. We were also excited about the second half of our trip and our first time really heading South since we left Virginia. That being said, there was also a little 'rust' on our part as we had really enjoyed being based out of the same campground for a couple of days and we weren't approaching the long drive with the same 'gusto' that we had earlier in the trip.
In any case, we headed out West (past Bear World) and drove through Idaho for several hours before entering into Utah. An amazing thing about Utah is that you can see rainstorms WAAAAY before you actually run into them. This happened over and over as we could see far in the distance that the clouds were touching the earth and then 45 minutes later we would be in a crazy rainstorm with sideways rain and funnel clouds (a lot of white-knuckle driving here). Our drive slowed down as we hit the Salt Lake City area but nothing of course like driving around DC. It was at this point that Michelle and I started chatting about where to stop and someone (not sure who exactly) pointed out that Vegas was awfully close to our campground at the Grand Canyon. We had talked loosely about making a Vegas stop in the months leading up to our trip but had decided that we just couldn't fit everything in. Well, so much for that theory! After a few phone calls, some changed reservations and some new GPS coordinates we were on our way to VEGAS baby! The only problem....it was FFFFFAAAARRRR. The only way we could make it work was to get there in one day. So we called a family meeting at the front of the RV and laid it out to the kids. In an unanimous vote they opted to suck it up and make the trip to Las Vegas. We also then quickly pulled off the highway to a tiny little town in Utah to have a picnic and burn off some energy before the long drive. We stayed for about 90 minutes in the park throwing the frisbee, chasing birds, rolling down the hills and laughing. What could be better?
First, we made it. We are camped at the Circus Circus KOA right on the strip in Vegas. We pulled in 14.5 hours after leaving the campground in Yellowstone and with the time change it was somewhere around 9:30pm. I want to say that Riley and Brock have been UNBELIEVABLY good on this trip. They played games, read books, did puzzles, watched movies, read books, watched movies, played with Cooper and then repeated all of the above. This type of trip could not be possible without such amazing kids and I am both in awe and proud of them every second of the day. Cooper was also his usual happy, adventurous self though it was a LONG day for Michelle and Veronica keeping him occupied.
In any case, the drive to Vegas ended up being a totally unexpected highlight of our trip. Coming through the mountains of Utah and Arizona was breathtaking. I mean really overwhelming. The kids said it made them feel like we were little termites going in and out of our termite hills (the red, brown, and tan mountains of the desert). I felt the same way and was reminded just how small we really are. As the sun set on the mountains Brock sat with me up front as my wingman snapping picture after picture of the sunset (see pic attached, that's from Brock). In the final hour we blasted rock and roll music and everyone in the RV played an imaginary instrument to the best of their ability. We finally descended down into Las Vegas with a great big countdown of the miles and we were overwhelmed with excitement and fatigue. Yellowstone was 77 degrees and sunny, Vegas is 105 and HOT. We parked the RV, took the top off the Jeep and although we were all tired, we took a quick trip down Las Vegas Blvd where I thought Veronica, Riley and Brock were going to cry with excitement. How fun!
Tomorrow we will head down to some of the big hotels, Circus Circus, the fountain show and tons of other things in mind!
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