3 Feb 07 Zion NP to Las Vegas and Kingman, Arizona

 Awesome to wake up surrounded by Zion’s 2000 foot cliffs! They’re lovely in the early morning sun.

We enjoyed a lavish breakfast at the Lodge and then a beautiful drive out to the highway. We were “bound for Vegas baby”! We were able to find easy, free parking at the Fashion Show Mall, so used that as our base for the day. We wandered through a few casinos, had lunch at the vast buffet at Treasure Island and explored the canals of Venice thoroughly. What a busy happenin’ place it is! And what a variety of people – ordinary middle class middle agers in running shoes and comfort-fit jeans, all the way to a bride in a billowing train with 2 pink-haired attendants.

After leaving Las Vegas, we crossed the Hoover Dam and stopped for a couple of photos looking down on it. Quite an impressive piece of engineering - holding back Lake Mead. The next section of driving continued the very “crumply” landscape we’d seen before Vegas. It’s almost as if someone has randomly bulldozed and shoveled soft piles of debris hither and thither. Every once in a while there is a small rift or jaggy hill, and everywhere there are sage brush, mesquite, and sometimes tumbleweed. Little huddles of trailers here and there on the desert. We’ve stopped for the night at Kingman, AZ, right on the fabled Route 66.

All Photos 3 February