This is my room on the 16th floor of the Luxor. Pretty exciting, huh?

Right about the time I got to Vegas, Roy (of "Siegfried & Roy") was getting chomped on by one of his tigers. You couldn't walk two feet in Vegas without hearing ten people talk about this, and seeing it all over the first, second, third, and fourth page of the newspaper. This is in front of the Mirage, where everyone and their mother was placing flowers and whatnot.

I went to Vegas in mid-October, so I knew it would be hotter than Anchorage (well, duh!), but I really had not anticipated it being as hot as it was (98 degrees the second day I was there!). Fortunately, they had plenty of these all over town-moving walkways! As far as I'm concerned, they are the second-best invention ever, for an over-heated Alaskan.

Wait a minute. "Second-best" invention? What's the first? Yard-Long Margaritas, of course! I had encountered this wonderful concoction on my last trip to Vegas, but imagine my happiness on this trip when I discovered they had built one of the restaurants that serve them right inside my hotel! I almost extended my trip so I could continue to slam these things and stagger back to my room each night! Yummy!

Well, eventually I had to leave the land of hundred-degree heat and massive margaritas behind, so on the fourth day I headed out to the desert, traveling northwest, up I-15.

My first National Park was Zion. This was also my favorite of all the parks I visited. I've never seen a cleaner and better-smelling (more on that later) park in my life! As far as I'm concerned the $20 entry fee (yikes) was well worth it.

One of the reasons the park was so nice, was that you can only drive a short way into the park. For the last twenty miles or so, you have to take a bus. This is kind of a pain, but it eliminates the thousands of cars that would ordinarily be there, and the accompanying enormous parking lots. Besides, the buses were nice and new.

The buses had about ten stops between the starting point and the end of the line. What they wanted you to do (and what most of us did) was get off the bus at each stop, and then get on the next bus to keep on going (the buses came every ten minutes or less).

This was getting towards the late afternoon, so the temperature was tolerable (I don't remember exactly, but probably around 85)

At the end of the road, there's a trail that goes about a mile and a half or so. It's a very easy, flat trail, with just amazing scenery. You're surrounded on all sides by these red canyon walls that go straight up for hundreds of feet.

Here's a picture of the trail (told you it was an easy trail). I mentioned earlier that this was a very nice-smelling park. I still can't place the smell, but it was some spice (that I was semi-familiar with) and was very pervasive along this trail.

The trail ended along the river here (you follow the river all along the canyon, of course). A lot of people chose to walk farther up the river, but I didn't have a lot of time, (or the right shoes) so I didn't. One of the tour guides did tell us the river was flowing about 10% of what it normally does.

Another shot of the scenery. This is just a stunning place to visit, and I highly recommend that if you go, you take some time and wander around as much as possible. I plan on going again someday, and will definitely take more time myself.

More red canyon walls. About this time I was starting to wish my camera had a wider-angle lens. Sigh...it's never perfect, is it?

Heading back down the trail, near the river. I didn't really see much wildlife here (at least, not as much as I expected to see). I think I saw a total of one squirrel and three or four birds. They were doing some controlled burning down the canyon, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I did see some rock climbers around here somewhere, but I guess I didn't get a picture of them, so you'll just have to imagine it. :-)

Heading out of the canyon. Shit, can you believe I finally ran out of words about this place?

Some of the roads going into and out of Zion were made of this red rock, which I thought was pretty cool (as cool as a road could be, anyway).

This is about 10-15 miles outside of the canyon (still in Zion, though).

Just some loser on the side of the road. Oh wait...that's me.

Leaving Zion, I drove through the quaint and quite-tiny town of Mt. Carmel Junction. This town consisted of a Best Western, a gas station, a little store, a couple of trailers, and I think that's about it. It was around 5, so I drove on about twenty more miles, before I realized I'd have to drive a lot farther to find another hotel, so I turned around and headed back to the Best Western. This turned out to be the most expensive place I stayed the whole road trip (about $80), but it was pretty nice. This is my oh-so-lovely rental car (an Alero). Behind me is a small golf course, which was quite picturesque in the mountains. Luckily, there was also a restaurant attached to this motel, and they have incredible food! Highly recommended.

The next day it was on to Dixie National Forest, and Bryce Canyon National Park.

Bryce Canyon is that place with the red rocks that stick up like little fingers all over the place. Quite nice, but there were a couple of downers to this place. First of all, they road into Bryce was under construction, and we had to wait for a pilot car forever. At least I was the first car in line, so I got to chat with the freaky spent-way-too-much-time-in-the-sun flag person.

The other downside was that it was very windy here! I didn't actually stay outside too long here because of the wind. It certainly wasn't cold, but there was quite a bit of dust in the air.

This was just about at the end of the road at Bryce, looking North. Bryce was on a long road that you drive in (unlike Zion, with the buses) and then have to turn around and drive back out.

"The Arch" or some such originally named formation.

Leaving Bryce, I traveled Northwest up highway 12. This part of the road was definitely the twistiest. It was also damn windy here. Escalante Park.

Dropping out of the mountains (and into them!) we, or more accurately, I (don't want to start talking about myself in the third person-that's just weird) headed into Capitol Reef National Park. This is apparently one of the lesser-known parks, but I thought it was second only to Zion in terms of scenery.

The scenery here was just amazing. This is another place that it would really be nice to have a few days to hike around it, but sadly I did not.

There didn't seem to be any facilities at Capitol Reef-you just pretty much drive straight through. Oh, since it's a national park, I'm sure there's a visitor center or something somewhere, but wherever it was, I didn't see it.

Now, this structure just had me puzzled. This was next to the road, just leaving the mountains and where the desert started. It looked like some old rock house from the 1800s, but there wasn't any "historical" sign or marker around. Is it a recent structure, never completed? Hrmmm....whichever it was, it kind of gave me the creeps.

This neat looking mountain was in the desert, a little to the East of Capitol Reef. I think I saw a movie filmed there once.

I headed south, and stayed that night in Kingman, AZ. This was another nondescript town, which turned out to be larger than I had at first thought. I stayed in a Super 8 that was spartan, but cheap (something like $35) and across the street from Taco Bell, so it wasn't too bad. :-)

This picture is of "historic" Route 66. A surprising amount of "For Sale" signs along here. (land-not property).

Well, that was my trip! At least the highlights, and leaving out the R and X rated parts (just kidding...or am I?). I had a great time, and the weather was just great.

When I went on the trip, a lot of people asked where I was going, and when I told them, almost the first thing everyone said was, "Wow! That's sounds like fun! Who are you going with?". When I told them I was going alone, almost everyone reacted with surprise. "Alone? Won't you get bored or lonely?" Not on your life. There are parts of this trip that I probably wouldn't have minded having someone else along, but then I would be always asking, "What do YOU want to see?" or "Do you mind if I stop here to take a picture" or "I'm sorry I pushed that kid over the edge of the Grand Canyon". Well, I knew this was a "free-form" trip, with no set schedule, and I wanted to enjoy it as much as possible. I love being on the open road (should have rented a convertible, dammit) with or without other people. I only hope my next vacation will be as much fun.