Grabbed some awful motel danishes and coffee and hit the road before 8 today. We drive north and grab another coffee at the Grand Canyon Village McDonald's. The village feels and looks a lot like Canmore or Kananaskis Village maybe. We stop at the gate for a park pass and drive in to the visitor center. Here we park the car then get out and follow a trail that goes along the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We spend over an hour taking in the views, snapping photos and walking to different observation points. I had heard from several people before that the Grand Canyon was in fact not that impressive, and that you go up to it, say okay cool and leave. Not the case. Very easy to spend hours there and a spectacular sight. Once we have had our fill, we go over two route options with a guide; north of the canyon and down to Vegas or backtrack south where we started today and across then up to Vegas. It turns out option one is over double the distance, so we opt for the short route.
Off the I-40 we detour onto the old historic Route 66 and drive the very quiet road for about 100 miles. At the start of the interstate detour we grab lunch at a place called Road Kill 66 Cafe which sounds like everything I want in a restaurant and manage to get a salad bar with the various meat sandwiches. The town we are eating in is called Seligman and claims to be the birthplace of Route 66. One stretch we hit had torrential rain and crazy multiple lightning strikes every few seconds. The weather on this whole trip has certainly been interesting. Just past a little town called Valle Vista we saw a roadrunner hustle across the highway! At the last town before we get back on a main highway called Kingman we stop in at the Route 66 museum. It was very boring. Matt put it best: "it was just competent enough to be boring. Any more and it would be educational and any less would make it funny." We carry on north until the Hoover Dam where we stop and walk across for photos and also walk halfway across the massive bypass bridge. Obligatory photos snapped and pouring sweat (it was 111 degrees and sunny) we hop back in the luxury of the air conditioned car and roll into Las Vegas. Vivaaaaaaa Las Vegas...
Check in at our hotel (Monte Carlo) and ask about upgrading to a suite. No dice, they are completely sold out. Wow. We grab some beers and walk the strip. Play some roulette in Caesar's Palace. I'm wearing a Roughriders shirt and as we are walking out a big black dude stops me and says "hey Riders! You fans are everywhere man!" He goes "I'm Joe Mumford" and I say "cool, I'm Vaughn Turnbull." At this point Matt and Nick walk up and Matt goes "whoa, Joe Mumford, awesome!" Apparently he was a CFL player for the Ti-Cats for a number of years. We chat a bit then carry on walking. Earlier we had done some research on casinos that didn't have high table minimums, as $15 per hand adds up pretty fast. One we found is called Casino Royale so we go in when we track it down. It's old, not flashy like the big casinos and has a lot of, shall we say, character. Find a $5 table of 3-card poker and sit down to play. We are joined by 3 guys from Toronto that are down for a tobacco/cigar show. Two owns cigar shops and one carves custom tobacco pipes. End up spending a couple hours at the table with the TO guys losing their money, Matt and Nick finishing a bit down and me finishing a bit up. Walk back outside and get flagged down by one of the common street club promoter guys. Limo ride to club, couple drinks, etc. in the sales pitch. Sure, what the heck we say. He makes a call and says the limo is quite far away so he decides he'll just drive us. We hop in his old Jeep Cherokee, pour some drinks and cruise over to a club. What followed that was a whirlwind tour of other clubs til the wee hours of the morning. Walked back into the hotel room just before 6 AM. Then sweet, sweet sleep.
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