24 May 2007 at 23:22
MAMRT: Day 1
The Mommy & Me Roadtrip is on! Theoretically this should have been 2 days but since my mom’s flight came in 2hrs late (thus landing on Thursday) it’s all one day! I had booked us a room at the downtown Radisson. So after I picked her up we went back to the hotel and crashed. The next morning we were up early and made a quick stop at my apartment before getting on I-15 South.
To say my car was jam packed would be an understatement, so we stopped at a Target about an hour into the trip for some snacks and a rooftop cargo bag. I decided to spring for the Thule model. After emptying the car to find the tool move my roof rack crossbars, we still couldn’t move them. So we put it up anyway. My car was still full but att least things were no longer flying at our heads.
Our first stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. My mom has an America the Beautiful pass which gets us into all National Parks for fee. That’s pretty rad since they cost around $25/car. Bryce is know for their hoodoos..or as a I would call them tall red rock towery looking things. But you all know I’m a stickler for scientific terms. Bryce was pretty amazing. There were several places you could drive to and park and ether be right at a view point or walk a few minutes into one. We spent a couple of hours their and my mom bought me a National Parks Passport and we both got ours stamped.
I also had a surprise for my mom. I had gotten us tickets to see Cirque du Soleil in Vegas that night. I knew we’d have to budget time so I told her on the way to Bryce. We’d need to be on the road to Vegas by 5pm to make it all work. So our next stop was Zion National Park. It was gorgeous and so different from Bryce despite being just a couple of hours apart. We basically drove through the park to get back to I15. However we did get more stamps for a our passports and stopped for more photos.
My mom drove the last couple of hours to Vegas. We got off of I-15 too early, which was dumb because our hotel, the Rio was right off of an exit. D’oh! I blame the misleading signs. Anyway we made it there around 8pm. We needed to be at the Bellagio at 9:30pm to pick up our tickets. So we made quick work of getting changed and took a cab to the Bellagio. It’s funny how driving maybe a half mile costs $8, but I knew we didn’t have time to deal with parking.
We picked up our tickets and looked for food. There was a long line for the buffet and the restaurants were all pretty packed. So we went to the “snack bar”. This misnamed place was pretty cool. It was a fastfood-ish place with sandwiches, burgers, fries, etc. Everything was under $10, which was overpriced for what it was but a good deal for Vegas food. We got a couple of French dips and some caffeine and were done by 10pm. Perfect timing to head to the theater for when the doors opened. We had good seats, but pretty much every seat looked to be good.
Did I mention we saw O? That’s Cirque du Soleil’s water show. There was a giant pool with floors that rose and fell. As an engineer and theater geek I was fascinated by this stage. The entire show was enrapturing. There were acrobats, trapeze artists, divers, clowns and synchronized swimmers. It’s quite impossible to even describe everything that went on, so I won’t. After it was over we just missed the last fountain show, so we took a cab back and went to sleep.
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