Woke up this Sunday morning to another sunny day with fresh mountain air and we went back to Porters Restaurant for breakfast for the second time. We both had the Fruit Parfait and OJ and I had a coffee as well and did not realise our vouchers only allowed one beverage but the water said it was all OK. Id overlooked to mention yesterday that I was able to watch the AFL Grand Final whilst we were staying here on Friday night on ESPN with coverage starting @ 10.30pm and I saw Geelong thrash the Sydney Swans on what looked like a beautiful Melbourne spring day.
As we walked back to our room at the back of to get ready to check out we had a quick walk to see the adjoining hobby farm and saw the ducks, chickens, black sheeps, goats and pony horse it was a very peaceful with where we will be tonight.
We left around 9.00am for the 2.5 hour drive to Sin City. We had two route options presented by google maps, so I asked the receptionist for guidance on which route might be more interesting and she said go
via Hurricane (not sure youd want to live in a town with that name ?). Got some gas there whilst stopping for a quick break to stretch the legs and gas price has now increased to around $4.80 a gallon and I grabbed a Columbian blend of coffee from the 9 choices available. Kerry spotted a rather unusual scene at the gas station with someone towing what looked to be a house on the back of a pickup truck.
We kept on driving and roughly 100 miles from Las Vegas, we drove through a spectacular gorge carved by the Virgin River (the same river that carved out Zion NP). As the highway twists and turns above the river, enormous cliffs rise thousands of feet on either side. Apparently, other than Zion, this is the Virgin Rivers most impressive natural feature. The road through the gorge, which opened in 1973, is one of the most expensive portions of Americas interstate highway system ever constructed (thanks to James Kaiser website for the fun facts).
a final fuel stop as we approached Las Vegas as we had to leave the Lexus with a full tank and the gas price
was now the highest we have paid at $5.35 per gallon. We drove down the strip and arrived at Paris Hotel around midday and decided to check in and then take the car to the Mirage Resort to drop it off at the Avis Depot. We had to drive to the parking garage at the back of the building and walk through with all of our bags to the front of the hotel to check in and after waiting for 30 minutes in line we were told check in was not until 4.00pm unless we wanted to pay extra for early check in. We declined so we left our luggage with the porters for $10- and headed back to the car and it was now 12.40pm so we were getting close to the 1.00pm drop off time !
On leaving the car park we had a bit of a drama exiting as the boom gate required a ticket to allow us to leave but when I drove in earlier the boom gate was already open so we had no ticket, so I had to call for help and Kerry was getting stressed about being late and getting
charged extra car rental fees. The situation was not helped when I took a wrong turn to explore the loading dock of the adjoining Planet (not what you would call a scenic manoeuvre !
We eventually found our way to the Mirage Resort which is scheduled to be bulldozed soon including the famous Volcano that erupts on the hour that I saw on our first drive down the strip back in 1992 as a newly wed in the biggest car I have ever driven (I think it was a Lincoln Town Car that had a trunk so big it fitted 4 extremely large suitcases with ease. Into the parking lot at the rear and followed the Avis signs and no problems at all with car dropped off at 12.
