Hoover Dam and Vegas!

So after the long Grand Canyon hike I set out toward Las Vegas to stay at a hostel on the strip called Hostel Cat. Along the way I traveled across the Hoover Dam which was pretty neat looking and I was a big fan of the architectural styling reminiscent of Bioshock. I got lunch at the Dam cafe, which had ridiculously overpriced food, but they gave me a butt-ton of chili fries so I felt satisfied. After that I managed to steal away to a Lake Mead campground and grab a shower,

though I don't think the park superintendent liked that very much.

So I made it to Vegas and was quite surprised at how greasy the downtown part of it was, which was where my hostel was located. There was a strip club right next to it, in fact with creepy mannequins that appeared in the evening. Probably the creepiest mannequins I've ever seen, especially the one riding the mechanical bull.

Anyway I did some exploring on my own and saw some pretty cool casinos. I didn't gamble because I like my money, but I did go into the Wynn and Venetian, which I think were my favorites.

The Wynn was super classy and upscale, apparently 2.9 billion and relatively new. The Venetian had an amazing sky ceiling and gondola guy paddling around a little pond inside.

After that I went back and socialized with the hostel people, all of which were really nice. We all went to Caesar's palace by piling into the hostel van like sardines. It was an okay time but I think they were all on different agendas than I and I would rather have just gone off and explored on my own. I think I may have gone during the most busy time ever because the place was packed out the rear by nightfall. After walking everywhere with some of the hostel people we took the bus back. Vegas was pretty cool, but I'm pretty sure I would get tired of it fast.

By the next day I was ready to hit the road off to San Diego. Like last time I'll produce a link to all the photos after my next update.

Oh and I finally uploaded a massive amount of Grand Canyon pictures from my last post. You can find the link to them there or here. Also I fixed it where the pics can be clicked for a larger image.

Road Trippin'!

So I'm going to be pretty lazy with this blog since I don't have a lot of free time while I'm travelling, but I'll try and get it what I can. So for those of you that don't know I'm travelling west this summer. So far I've hiked in the Grand Canyon, visited the Hoover Dam, and right now I'm staying in a hostel in Vegas.I have plans to stop in San Diego, Death Valley, Yosemite, San Francisco, Napa Valley, Mount Shasta, Portland, Seattle, maybe Glacier Park, Maroon Bells in Colorado, Mount Elbert, and Island Lake also in Colorado. We'll see how much of this I actually get done.

Anyway I left Atlanta last Monday and zoomed west, only taking a couple short naps inbetween.

I passed through Birmingham, Alabama (left), creepy Memphis, Mississippi, boring Arkansas, beautiful Oklahoma (above), Amarillo, Texas, Albuquerque, NM, and finally through Flagstaff, AZ to the Grand Canyon. You can see all the pictures I took from Atlanta to the Grand Canyon here.

Once I got to the Grand Canyon I started a nearly 25 mile hike along the canyon, destroying my feet, meeting two rattle snakes, and drinking radioactive water out of thirst. It was a crazy experience and I'm glad I was able to do it, but damn if it wasn't one of the more difficult things I've ever had to do. The first two days I had to walk nearly 10 miles to get to camp and I didn't even make it in time before nightfall to my first camp, although the next morning, after camping on a boulder in a gully I realized it was only like five to ten minutes away. A small rattlesnake, lost gps (which I later backtracked and found), lost trail, painful feet, and creepy gully led to that decision to just give up and camp wherever.

I had barely seen anyone on my first two days. The second day I actually did not see one single soul until I got within 20 minutes of camp. It would definitely suck to get seriously hurt out

there. The weather was surprising great. I was only hot a couple of times during the midday, and most of the time it was super windy and cool. But the air was so dry that if you breathed

through your mouth you'd quickly end up with a dry throat and a need for a sip of water. My shirt was actually covered in white rings from the salt of my sweat that had dried constantly on me.

Check out the great views!

The hardest part to me aside from maybe the struggle at the end of the first day was the 5-ish mile hike out of the canyon... more than a mile vertical. I was so tired and my muscles so weak by then that old and fat alike were passing by me easily. Lucking I asked so people at my campsite earlier if they could spare some ibuprofen and they happily obliged. So after I finally made it out of that giant hole in the ground I headed to the nearest fast food burger place (aside from McDonalds) and got myself a huge meal. I never ran out of food but it was never a full meal. Once I had to mix and eat a poor man's version of tuna salad with a tent stake since I had forgotten to bring fork with me. After the pricey Wendy's burger it was to off to Vegas which I'll talk about later. Here are some highlights of photos I took: