I was prompted with another opportunity to attend a
conference in Las Vegas. He happened to
get a week off from his work as well.
And it was Sophie’s spring break from her school too. So what?
It’s time for spring break road trip.
We had decided to visit to National Parks in Utah and here
was what I’ve came up with for my trip plan:
Las Vegas -> Page (Arizona) -> Bryce Canyon National
Park -> Zion National Park -> Las Vegas -> Home Sweet Home
Page was not planned initially and I squeezed it in last
minute.
It’s Vegas again!
My first night at MGM was really awesome. Academy of Country Music Awards (ACM) was
happening right at the Garden Arena at MGM during the evening I got to
MGM. It explains the crowd at Mc Carren
airport and the extremely long line and about 1.5 hours wait for the cab line.
Girls had a blast playing and swimming in the “lazy-river”
like pool at MGM. Sunbathing next to
one of those several pools at MGM was way to kill a nice day.
Eating buffets was our another way to enjoying the Sin
city. This time, we tried at MGM grand dinner
buffet, Bellagio’s dinner buffet, Cosmopolitan’s wicked spoon brunch buffet and
Circus Circus’s dinner buffet.
My ratings for those buffets are that Wynn’s buffet which we
tried during last visit was superior.
Sea food was top notch there and super fresh. In terms of sea food freshness and taste,
none of the other ones could beat Wynn.
Wynn’s ice cream were very delicious as well. And their sugar coated apple candy was girls’
one of must-try one.
Bellagio and Cosmopolitan come very close to Wynn as well in
terms of taste and varieties. Bellagio
also got various seafood selections. I
particularly like the prime rib there. And
their desert varieties and selections were big like Wynn. I love their cheesecake and macaroons.
As we dined for brunch at Cosmpolitan, there wasn’t any sea
food. The settings in Cosmopolitan was very
contemporary. And their buffet settings
were unique. Most of the items were
served in miniature pots, pans and bowls and you just gotta pick them. The
Thai tea flavored ice cream was great and it tasted like what it’s supposed to
be.
Circus Circus buffet was okay and I rate that the buffet of
their counterpart at Reno is far better.
Page, Arizona
I wanted to visit Horeshoe Band and Antelope Canyon so I
squished it into my plan at last minutes.
Having said that, there got quite couple of lessons learnt from it.
1)
Didn’t really realize that passing through Zion
National Park is the only way to page.
It really slows us down due to the traffic entering into the park entrance
and the speed limit and the drive inside the park was about 20 to 45 mile per
hour (mph). I blamed myself for not
thoroughly looking at the Google map beforehand. Also, a couple of places along the way to
page had the road construction ongoing.
All these factors really added up to the commute time and I didn’t
factor in them.
2)
Little did I expect that the data network will
be unavailable in Page. Being spoiled
here all these years and having experienced such before, I had never thought that
Page has no data network coverage.
Thus, the address to the point of interest weren’t able to be
retrieved.
And our car GPS has not been updated often
so we weren’t able to look Antelope Canyon’s address up. The one which came up with Antelope Canyon at
Page led us to the Antelope Canyon tour office in page downtown and we lost time
there. By the time we got to Antelope
Canyon, we had missed the last tour so we decided to head to HorseShoe Band
instead.
Without GPS, the cell data network and no
paper printout for our destination addresses, it was really painful. But being the direction guru, he was still
able to get to Horse Shoe Band finally.
It was about a mile walking trail to get to
it from the parking lot. At some point,
there got a couple of slight hiking. I
thought we would be the last one there at around 5:00pm but there still got a
big crowd there. Thanks to spring for a
longer day and getting dark late around 7:45pm to 8:00pm.
The Colorado River in green with that
unique standing big piece of red rock was stunning. The only regret was that the sun was shy and
was hiding behind the cloud when we were there. As soon as we’ve got back into the car, the
sun suddenly exposed to my face. While I
was squinting my eyes and trying to pull down the sun visor of my car, it
suddenly clicked me and made me yelled why it came out only now. With the sun light, I would have witness
more stunning scene and also have gotten more gorgeous pictures.
Before heading back to Bryce Canyon, we
stopped at Denny’s across Glen Canyon Dam per girls’ request.
Too bad, the Visitor Center was closed by
then so we didn’t get a chance to see the dam close up. But when we first got to Page, we were amazed
by the depth of the dam while we were passing it.
Bryce Canyon National Park
The drive to Bryce was pretty lonely. Well, from Page to Kanab which was a small
town next to Zion National Park wasn’t that bad. There got two cars: one ahead and one behind
us. Our first day driving was quite
adventurous. From Nevada to Arizona and
from Arizona to Utah and crossing three states within a day.
We got the room with the lake view at Bryce
Canyon. The Ruby Best Western Inn was
just outside of the park entrance and I was pleased with its proximity to the
park.
I did the research the night before and
planned for the route. It was
recommended to drive all the way up to the other end of scenic drive where FarView
Point was.
The scenic drive was 18 miles long for one
way. As its name suggested, FarView point
provides the panoramic view of the park.
We first witnessed those hodoos which we used to get amazed through TV. The elevation was about 8800ft and it was
like the highest point we visited throughout the park.
Due to the park’s elevation, the weather
there is easily 10 to 15 degree lower than Zion park and the temperature stayed
around 50 to 60F. It was no surprise
that a few traces of snow can be found there.
There got about 10+ view points along the
way of scenic drive and we stopped at pretty much every one of them. Rainbow point and the Nature Bridge were
notable. Inspiration point gave a much
better view of hoodoos. The best is yet
to come when we got to Bryce point. The
surrounding view was just so outstanding and I still felt astounding for being
able to personally view those incredible stunning hoodoos.
Sunset point was my second favorite. And he took 0.5 mile trail from Bryce point
to Sunset point. I drove up to Sunset
point with girls to meet with him. And
girls got the picnic at one of the tables by Sunrise point.
Sunrise point was another great view but having witnessed Bryce and Sunrise points
I prefer them.
Red Rock Canyon
It’s a sidetrack beautiful stop on the way
to Zion. Needless to say, those
beautiful bright red rock under sun light convinced me to stop there. There was a little trail leading to the canyon
of some of the red rocks. He tried to
hike there but found out that the rock weren’t that stable. Being so close to Bryce, some of the rock
formations are like hoodoos and it wasn’t surprising that it turned out that
way.
Zion National Park
Here we come again to Zion-Mount-Carmel
Highway toward the park. We drove that way when we headed to Page so it
wasn’t no stranger to us.
A mile-long tunnel on the highway to the
park was the longest tunnel we ever drove through. Most part of it, it was pretty dark except a
few points where they made the windows and could see the light. Girls got so excited for passing the long
tunnel but I was holding my breath for no good reason J
Those beautiful tall mountains throughout
the park are self-explanatory of why the park got million visitors every
year.
The newly renovated La Quinta Inn at
Springdale surrounded by gorgeous Zion ranges of mountain didn’t disappoint
me. It was a much needed break to relax
for the long day. Again, I was so
pleased for its close proximity to the park entrance.
Springdale is a small little tourist towns
full of lodgings, restaurants and eateries.
To regulate the traffic, Zion doesn’t allow
any car for its scenic points and those are accessible through the shuttle bus
operated by the park only. We were
debating to leave our car at La Quinta as the shuttle bus stop was just nearby and
it would help with the parking headache issue.
We were glad that we brought it into the
park as there got plenty of parking spots by the shuttle bus stop.
Again, we decided to go all the way to the
last stop of the bus and to come back and visit each of them on the way
back.
So, our journey began at Temple of
Sinawava. Along the way on the bus, we were amazed by
those fearless climbers who were trying to reach the peak of 90 degree tall
rocks of Zion.
Probably it was the best way to view and in
touch with Virgin river at Temple of Sinawava.
When we passed Virgin River Gorge toward Zion from Neveda direction, it
makes me wonder why they name it Virgin River while I could hardly ever see any
water in it during spring. If it’s summer,
it might be neglectable.
A little family competition for rock
throwing to see who could throw furthest and also who could land a little rock
onto the big rock at the distance. The
girls got a blast and didn’t want to move forward but we gotta get going to
about 1.5 mile hiking trail to The Narrows.
The trail ends at the entrance of The Narrows where exploring it could
only be possible by getting wet and crossing the Virgin River.
We witnessed a couple of comrades who were
well-prepared, determined to cross Virgin River and chartered into the Narrows
to see what the nature and Zion has to offer at the other side of it. I wish all the best to them. With kids, it wasn’t something we would be able
to do. On the other hand, flash flooding
was haunting me. Of course, one could
check the weather forecast and prepare and avoid them in advance but there
still got low risk.
Girls did such a great job making the round
trip of the hiking trail. They were
quite amused by the close-ups of those brave and taming squirrels along the
way. Without any fear, they posed for a lot of
cameras of park visitors. Perhaps they
learnt that human beings there never hurt them.
During the lunch time, we re-fueled
ourselves at Zion Lodge. Oh, man! The soft serve ice-cream were huge and they
were a big reward for girls for hiking a long way.
After that, we resumed our journey to Lower
Emerald Pool trail which is accessible from Zion lodge stop. Sophie was leading the way all along but it
was such a big dragging for Mcihelle to make it to the end.
I was hoping to see the big Emerald pool
when we got there but seeing with very few and not-so-green water was a bit
disappointment. But the
overhead waterfall which was sprinkling the water from the top refreshed the
girls and they got big laughter by passing it back and forth a couple of times.
I wanted to do 0.5 mile trail of Weeping Rock
but Michelle couldn’t make it so we gave it up. We stopped at Angle Landings stop though to
hang out. Definitely, we wouldn’t be
able to make those steep trails with girls but was just hanging out for that
one of the famous hiking at Zion. We
also heard a lot about Subway for strenuous hiking but we didn’t see it on the
map of Zion.
He was a bit disappointed due to some
restraints for hiking and was planning for a big comeback to there when girls
got all grown up. Then, the restraint
could very likely be me as I might not be able to keep up with all of them by
then, LOL :P
Back to Vegas
Due to the popular demand by girls, we
stuck with Circus Circus. They love
circus shows there and also mid-way arcade games there. And more buffet time for us of course :P
Journey back to home-sweet-home took much
longer what it was supposed to be as we stuck in the traffic. It let
us suffer 90 degree of piping hot desert weather. When we entered California state back, it
was misty at one point on the way to Los Angeles and the outside temperature
display at our car was showing that it was 58F degree. 30 degree difference within a couple of
hours. No kidding, huh? Time to appreciate CA’s weatherJ
Home-Sweet-Home Again!
A quick stop at LA and finally it was
home-sweet-home again! A nice little
road trip to experience and explore what the amazing things the nature has to
offer.
