Day 22: Up early, oatmeal, packed & ready, swung by the McDonald’s inside the hotel casino for coffee & a breakfast sandwich. I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate there. It’s been years. While I can’t say I would go there often it was a guilty pleasure this morning & hit the spot. Ben had another flat tire (darn semi tire shrapnel) so we fixed that before hitting the road for Las Vegas. It was mostly flat-ish today; a little 1-2% grade but not too bad. Stopped at a gas station along the way for an apple & yogurt, then off to 7 Magic Mountains (stacks of giant rocks in the middle of nowhere, each one painted a bright color: pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, white & black). Our rainbow bikes & attire fit right in 🙂
We finally finished with I-15, which was nice in some ways but I also missed the wide shoulder. The new shoulder on the frontage road was smaller & had a rumble strip in the middle of it so only half of it was actually usable; not much wiggle room. We saw dust tornadoes every once in a while out in the open desert that were fun to watch. We made it to the outskirts of Vegas & stopped in the shade for a quick rest before biking a few more miles to Roberto’s Taco Shop for lunch. Pretty tasty. Hung out there a bit. Chatted with a local about things to do & see in the area that aren’t the typical Vegas strip things. After lunch we stopped at PT’s Gold for a drink & to blog, then finally off to Aunt Sue & Rich’s by 4:30pm.
We got pretty cranky with each other on the bike over & it always has to do with the Garmin. I’m constantly fighting with what Garmin tells us to do & what Ben thinks we should do; he always thinks he knows better. I feel like a couples counselor, caught in the middle; a constant back & forth of he said, it said. Ugh! It took us on a short gravel road for 2 minutes to a busy intersection that was hard to cross but we figured it out. Ben gets frustrated very quickly when facing a challenge but I love them; it’s like a puzzle that needs to be solved & I find that fun. Needless to say, we made it to Rich & Sue’s just in time before we ripped each other’s heads off!
Ben’s aunt & uncle live in Washington but are trying out this place in Vegas to fight the long, dark, cold, rainy winters. They just happened to be in the area for a few days while we were passing through so it worked out perfectly! This house is in a pleasant community; beautiful place. All the houses are very nice with pretty landscaping. Rich & Sue were so warm & welcoming! We showered, did laundry, & caught up. Sue made an amazing dinner: salmon, carrots & asparagus, gnocchi, & watermelon. SO GOOD! After dinner, the 2 of us & Rich went swimming in the community pool, then sat in the hot tub chatting for a while. Aaahhhh, nice & relaxing. Back to their house for ice cream, TV, & bed.
Day 23: Frittata, toast, & fruit for breakfast. So good. Sue is a great cook. She also packed us a super tasty lunch for our upcoming hike (egg salad sandwiches, berries, cucumbers, carrots, pickles, watermelon. YUM! Produce again, so wonderful & refreshing). They let us borrow their van so we drove up to Red Rock Canyon. Beautiful place. We went for a couple hikes. Such a pretty area. We had our picnic lunch at one of the trailheads. It was a nice morning of non-bike activity.
We were back by 1pm, changed into our swimsuits, grabbed a few things & headed to the pool again. Beautiful day, great weather, nice & relaxing. Ben napped while I worked out. Only my legs have been getting worked over from biking so I decided to work out my other muscle groups. Aaahhh, felt so good. Once we were nice & toasty we finally went for a dip.
Back to the house, I blogged, Ben patched tubes. Sue made another great dinner: tuna casserole, asparagus, & salad. We all had wine & talked for a long time. It was really nice. We talked a bit about Rich & Sue’s many foreign exchange students that have stayed with them over the years & the lasting relationships that came from them. It sounds awesome; now I want to do it! We watched a little American Ninja Warrior, then off to bed.
Day 24 : Waffles, fruit & coffee for breakfast 🙂 Packed up, group photo, exchanged hugs & said our goodbyes. We can’t thank Rich & Sue enough for our stay with them. They were so generous & welcoming. It was the perfect rest & relaxation we needed.
We hit the road by 9am & biked downtown for one more day in Vegas. On the way, we passed by Mandalay Bay hotel & couldn’t help but be filled with sadness in remembering the October shooting last fall. So senseless. We checked into our motel & walked the strip all day, just checking out all the different hotels & casinos. It’s interesting to see but also exhausting: so many people, so many places, too much stimulation for me.
Back to the motel for a nap, swim & shower. We grabbed a quick dinner at a little pizza joint inside MGM, then did some serious speed-walking to Treasure Island for a Cirque du Soleil show: Mystere. I definitely could’ve won an award for my speed-walking & puzzle-solving skills! It was like Tetris trying to figure out where I could squeeze in to pass people (the sidewalks were crazy-packed!). The show was amazing; so entertaining & talented! There were funny parts too. I didn’t want it to be over. It was a great time. I would definitely recommend it.
I was so pooped after the show. The 2 mile walk back seemed so daunting 🙁 When I get tired it happens quickly & with a vengeance! I can go from chatty & excited to passed out on the floor in minutes. I get so tired, so hard & need to sleep immediately . It’s like sleep possesses me & I’m no longer in control. Needless to say, the walk back was slow & Ben had to practically drag me most of the way. I would’ve been happy sleeping on the crowded sidewalk but apparently that wasn’t an option. Back to the motel, I passed out as soon as the door opened & I saw the bed. Aaahhh, sweet relief!
Day 25: Breakfast next door at CoCo’s. Pretty good. Stopped by a Remembrance Wall for the 58 killed in the Vegas Shooting at Mandalay Bay last October (see reflection below for more). Biked to Fremont Street (the original & old Vegas Strip), which is pretty cool. I’d been there before but thought Ben should experience it; funky, eclectic place. We finally left the city & headed to our next Warm Showers in North Las Vegas. We chilled at a Starbucks a bit to catch up & kill time, swung by Lowe’s for Ben to pick up pipe insulation to give his handlebars extra squish, & made a pit stop at Smith’s Grocery to get food for the next few days. Off to Doug & Shelley’s by 3:30pm. Doug was out of town, so it was just Shelley & the pets: dog (Flora), cat (Harriet), & itty bitty tortoise (Torty!). I really loved Harriet. She was so chatty & squeaky 🙂 We talked with Shelley a while. She’s so nice. We plotted our next few days & general route to Denver (more on that in reflections below…). Dinner was veggie pesto pasta & salad. Aahhh, salad, so good. After dishes we sat outside a while & talked about our differences & frustrations with this trip. It was a productive & healing conversation. We cleaned up, played cards & got some shut-eye.
Reflections:
1. This isn’t a reflection but we get asked a lot of questions about our trip that maybe some of you have too. A lot of people ask, what do you eat? I love to eat & think about it all the time so I usually include that in my posts but here’s a more detailed description. More often than not, breakfast is usually oatmeal with dried berries, nuts, hemp seeds, cinnamon & honey. It gets old but does the trick & has what we need to start the day. If we’re in the same place more than 1 night & don’t have to travel with food we’ll make eggs & veggies for breakfast. Snacks are usually apples, bananas, carrots, crackers, avocados, beef jerky (for Ben), dehydrated fruit, or cliff bars. Lunch is almost always a bagel with peanut butter & jelly with said snacks. Dinner is usually a rice dish, typically curry (the Tasty Bite pouches of curry sauce are great for camping). Rarely we do pasta. Sauces for pasta don’t come in small enough sizes. I’ve also been obsessed with chips, fries & ice cream. I’m always craving something salty & sweet. It’s my body telling me what I need! And I listen…very well 😉
2. Mandalay Bay Remembrance Wall: I couldn’t help but cry at the loss of so many innocent people. For what? Those moms, dads, sisters, brothers, friends all left for the night to just have a good time & those they left behind probably said “have a good time, see you later”, not knowing that’d be the last time they’d see them. Preparing for someone’s death is hard enough but something so unexpected & so unfair is absolutely heartbreaking. Ugh 🙁
3. It’s always exciting to go grocery shopping when we know we’ll have a fridge that night. We can actually get cold stuff & make nice meals. Yay! This is definitely something I’ve never felt at home since I take it for granted.
4. Routing to Denver: we disagreed on where to go, got frustrated, compromised by saying no motels til Denver & even then, since we’ll be staying with family, no motels til AFTER Denver! I feel like I’m compromising my route again. I want to go further south after Bryce, into Grand Staircase Escalante & Glen Canyon, but Ben thinks it’s too remote & desolate & is worried about the usual: water, food, safety & dirt roads.
5. I’m worried this trip is driving us further apart when I thought it would bring us closer together. We just need to take it one day at a time. It’s hard to do a trip you’ve been dreaming about half your life & get everything you want when there’s more than just you on the trip. We’re both afraid we’ll resent each other at the end: me, for compromising my trip; Ben, for being put in sticky situations by taking a harder path at my choosing.
As I sit in Denver typing this, it’s now been a little over 3 weeks since our time in Vegas & there’s so much to catch up on! Despite my darker reflections lately & all the disagreements (which are OK to have!), there are brighter times on the horizon as well. It just goes to show that life is hard work & takes some struggle sometimes to make it out on the other side, able to appreciate what it took to get there. If everything was easy, would we do it? I find some challenges rewarding & necessary. Well, time for lunch so I have to pump the brakes for now. Til next time!
Whitney