Apr 2014 – Apr 2014

It’s easter and we all know that means easter goodies for me!

I got creme eggs.

We went on a family hike.

I got peeps.

Life is good.

Is Final Fantasy X.

Oh yes oh yes!

We’re just about home.  Final stop is Crater Lake.

We were thinking about camping here too, but given that the area gets 44 feet of snow a year and that the park is only officially open for July and August we decided we were a bit too early.

Still I wanted to drive by and see it.

Yep it’s still early.

There’s still a giant snowplough on standby.

Still fun to see it now before all the snow melts.

If only it wasn’t like a 2 hour detour to go.

We didn’t get to gamble in Vegas and I wanted to try my luck at Blackjack so we stopped in Reno on the way home.

And we booked a hotel that costed $25.  That’s right.  And it was the best valued hotel of our trip.  $25 for a 3.5 star hotel!  I loved it.  All it needed was free breakfast as part of that price.  Oh, and for those annoying smokers to go back to the smoking floor.

I loved it so much we ate our pho takeout in the hotel.  Actually we didn’t have a choice it was because all the restaurants were closing but I digress.

Now if only Nicholas remembered to TAKE me to play Blackjack instead of leave me in the room he would have had better luck.  Serves him right.

During our road trip we saw our fair share of ghost towns.

And finally we decided to stop at one of them.

Welcome to Goldfield, Nevada.  Home to boarded up houses, a historical court house and a fiery fire engine.

Founded in 1902, there were once about 30,000 people here during the goldrush and apparently a whole lot of tavern drinking.

And now it’s dead.

Apparently for Pokin, Vegas = buffets.

So instead of seeing all the shows we just went to the Bacchanal Buffet in Caesar’s Place in Vegas.

We were going back on the road again soon so we ended up eating at 10:45am.  It was a bit early for my best bear bud and I – especially since they started switching over to lunch foods already by 11:00, but I guess we got lunch for breakfast prices at least.  ($25.95 instead of $35.95)

Bacchanal Buffet is billed as the largest buffet in the world.  There are over 500+ dishes.  We got a quick tour.

I loaded my plate up right away with lots of desserts.  YEAH.

I guess it was too early for Nicholas so he couldn’t eat too much.

Pokin didn’t do too poorly, she filled her plates.

That was kind of fun.  I could have eaten more chocolate cake but I think it was way too much for my best bear bud and he felt a bit ill after.  Given that I weigh 186* and he only weighs 115* I weigh more and can out eat him too!

• if you ignore that one is grams and the other is pounds.  I’m dealing strictly with the numbers here.

So much to see and do!  You think they’ll let me play some blackjack?  I’m a high-rolling kind of bear.

Goodbye Page, Arizona!  We turned our car westward and southwards and headed towards the Grand Canyon.

Originally we had planned to camp overnight at the Grand Canyon, but 22oF / -5oC forecasts and our recent cold experience at White Sands made us rethink that idea pretty quickly.

Both Pokin and Nick had been to the Grand Canyon and both of them were underwhelmed during their last experience.  But since I’d never been, they took me just so I could see it with my own eyes even if we weren’t going to camp.  We got in from the east entrance and drove westward along the Grand Canyon park road.

I liked it.  I could see myself soaring over those canyons.

We started at Dessert View, which was actually the nicest since you could see the river.  We then stopped at various other points that we could drive to along the way.

By the time we got to the main Mather Point viewpoint I was already more interested in the wildlife and how they just didn’t give a hoot about the tourists gathered around.

Well I’m glad we got  a taste of it.  We could have taken the mandatory shuttle bus to see the rest of the viewpoints, but Nicholas had the idea of going straight to Vegas instead.  Vegas yeah!  Let’s go!

Pokin came back at 1:00pm and we met her at the gift shop.  She looked pretty frazzled.

“Place is nice, but my heart is pounding!”

The way the canyons work is that several groups have rights into the canyons.  They shuttle you in mostly open air trucks down a bumpy dirt road to the entrance.  Once there, you have a bit over an hour to take photos (after the transit time); less if you don’t do the photo tours.

Well the canyons are crowded!  And the light beam show is fleeting.  So her entire experience was what her guide Rob described as “speed shooting”.

Run in, don’t have time to set up, take some photos quickly, run to the next spot, take some photos, run back to the first spot.  Repeat until your hour is up and then go and delete all the photos with arms, legs, heads and people in it.

The place is cool, the pictures look neat but I’m sure glad my best bear bud and I skipped out on the experience!

At least she got to go with a photographer friend she met earlier in the day.

I mentioned we’d learned that the Antelope Canyon (which has an upper and lower section) isn’t publicly accessible.  It’s on Navajo land and in fact different families have rights to the different canyons.  You have to pay a permit fee, a guide fee, a licensing fee if you want to take photos and possibly sell them, and you have to sign up for a tour in order to go.

Well we didn’t know that, so Pokin spent a few hours on the phone calling up tour companies.  Most of them were already booked up, but eventually she found a tour with one spot left.  A two hour photography tour with Chief Tsosie of the hour Upper Canyon for $80 at the 10:30 time slot.   There was also a $43 regular non photography tour too.  Upper Canyon is famous for the beams of light that shine into the canyon at certain times, and as a result it’s crazy busy there.  Being crammed into small confined spaces with tonnes of other tourists seemed like the last thing my best bear bud wanted to do, so we wished Pokin good luck and headed towards lower canyon where there were rumours that you could go without a guide.

Which turned out not to be true.

Well it’s true that you could go to lower canyon if you were a photographer.  With an SLR.  And a tripod.  No, your fancy Leica won’t work because they don’t accept mirrorless cameras.  So not surprisingly they didn’t accept our cell phone camera as sufficient equipment.  And unfortunately we missed the guided tour departure by about 5 minutes so seeing the Antelope Canyon just wasn’t happening.

Off to find something else to do!