Day 10 - Sequoia National Park & Las Vegas

Trip Information

Distance Traveled: I can't keep track anymore...
Total Distance Traveled: 5,300 miles - I think.
States: CA > NV > AZ
Current Location: Kingsman, AZ
Next Destination: The Grand Canyon!

Daily Dialogue

BP and I awoke and departed Kettleman City, CA by 9:30am, a little later than I wanted. I'm pretty sure it was his fault, but he blamed me. For the record I haven't left that late the entire trip. Before departing the hotel room, we threw around the idea of possibly swinging by Las Vegas on our way to the Grand Canyon. Our justification was, "what kind of road trip doesn't include Las Vegas?" Our itinerary for the day was to head to Sequoia National Park (thinking we could tackle it in a few hours), head to Death Valley, swing by Vegas, then get on the road toward the Grand Canyon for a couple hours.

Sequoia National Park - We made it to the park around 11:30am. Started up the mountain to see the enormous sequoia trees and to see the grand-daddy of them all, General Sherman - the largest living tree in the world (by volume). The ride toward the top of the mountain was slow to say the least. It was more winding roads, 10mph turns, stopping for pictures, etc... We got to see General Sherman around 1:30pm. In order to see it, you have to park and hike about 5 minutes into the forest. Not knowing this ahead of time, BP and I wore our Florida hiking gear (sandals). Since we were so high, the ground was covered in snow... sooo.... yea. It was an interesting little hike. BP busted and I have pics to prove it. I'll post tomorrow sometime (Tues night).

The trip up the mountain, though tedious, provided some incredible views of nearby mountain ranges and even more spectacular were the views of the sequoia trees. Their enormity is almost incomprehensible. Some photos I'll post later will show just how big they are compared to the size of a human being. We thought once we saw General Sherman we'd head down the mountain and be on our way to Death Valley... not so fast! In all it took about 4 hours to tackle the Sequoia National Forest... we then plugged in Death Valley and realized it would take nearly 5 hours to get to Death Valley - putting us there after dark. We decided to forgo this expedition and solidified Vegas as our next destination.

Las Vegas - Plugged it into Gabby and she showed an arrival time of about 9:52pm, about a 6 hour drive. We hit the road and made excellent time. On the way we planned what we'd do in Vegas, how long we'd stay, and how much we'd spend. Before we got there, this is what we planned:

Grab a quick bite to eat, possibly at a buffet
Gamble
Leave by midnight

By the time we got there at about 9:45pm, this is what we decided:

Grab a quick bite to eat, possibly at a buffet
Put $100 each on black at the roulette table and walk away, no matter the outcome
Leave after the roulette gamble

This is what actually happened:

We walked around for an hour looking for a buffet and finally gave up. Pissed off, we decided to grab something at a drive thru on the way out of Vegas - which is exactly what we did.
We put $100 each on black at the roulette table and walked away - both with $100 more than we started with. We snatched up chips, cashed out, and walked straight to the truck. Wesley Snipes was right in the movie Passenger 57 when he said, "always bet on black."

We then started our journey to the Grand Canyon.

Hoover Dam - It was a pleasant surprise to cross the Hoover Dam on our way into Arizona. Neither of us knew it was on the way. Since we crossed it at night, it was glowing with lights and looked pretty awesome. The structure is massive and extremely impressive to see. I took some photos that I'll post later.