Day 10 – Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, NV – July 4th, 2007

Leaving the mountains we dropped below 3000 ft altitude for first time since the plains. The land quick turned to desert again… oh the joys… so Vegas is really in the middle of no where and it’s ridiculously hot. It was 110+ and I wanted to roll over and pass out… so did my car… After checking into our hotel I didn’t want to leave the AC safe haven of the casino. Vegas is ridiculously over the top… the whole thing is a big money trap. Anyway I spent my time rocking out those penny slots, and making a whole dollar… the comped’ drinks made it worth the mind numbingly boring lever pulling. On the positive sides we were able to get a really good deal on a dinner, and the blue man group show was amazing. The show is probably one of the coolest combinations of entertainment and musical concert mixed into their own stylistic twist. After the show I decided to play some Texas hold’em to try something a little more challenging. I found out the hard way that you can’t play poker in Vegas unless you really want to commit to the game. My game play is already weak when I’m short stack and I don’t like losing any sizeable amount of my money, which cripples my play. There were a few guys sitting at the table with between five hundred to two thousand dollars sitting on the table, which could basically muscle me out of any hand. Like all Vegas stories… should have quit while I was ahead. To top it off it was overly hot still at midnight… why would anyone want to live in the middle of the desert….