On Free Crap

Day 3 (May 21): Las Vegas/Hoover Dam/Grand Canyon

Woke up at 8:45, moved our stuff to the car after going to the wrong garage, and then checked out of the hotel.

We decided to look for some free Craps lessons that we had heard advertised at the Flamingo.  We did not find anyone teaching people how to play Craps, unfortunately, but we did find some sheets of paper that explained the betting and the rules.  Maybe those laminated cards were the free lessons?  What the hell is a “point,” anyway?

After our failure to learn to play Craps (which, according to the sheet, is on par with Warhammer 40k for complexity of a game using only D6’es, and is only slightly less expensive to play), we tried to round up some breakfast.  As usual, we couldn’t remember where the food courts we had used earlier were, wandered fruitlessly for a while, and then settled for the first one we found.

We departed Las Vegas in general agreement that it was a fascinating experience, that we saw a lot of amazing stuff, and that we’re probably never going to go back.  At least not for a long while, in my case, anyway, unless circumstances conspire to drop me there (again).

We drove the forty minutes or so to the Hoover Dam, first observing it from the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, a new bridge finished last year to reduce traffic across the dam itself (and also providing great views of the dam):

There we encountered a massive pack of stunt-bikers, apparently also on a cross-country tour of some kind:

And then we travelled to the the mountains on the other side.  Unfortunately, we discovered that we couldn't actually leave that way (due to the road being under construction) when our GPS informed us that there was “no available route unless we were willing to try some REALLY crazy offroad shit, man*”:

We drove for several more hours, passing through the town of Williams (where we would be staying the next night) and then entering the park.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the scenery:

And the overfed "wild"life:

Then headed for the hotel.  We grabbed a pizza dinner at one of the local cafeterias, and by the time we returned to our canyon-viewing, the sun had unfortunately fallen behind the clouds.  It was still very nice, though.

After an episode of Game of Thrones (hooray for violence!  Boo for nudity, though), we went stargazing for a few minutes.

Setting an alarm for 9:30am, we watched a few episodes of Wakfu and hit the sack.

-Stormshrug

*Paraphrased.