The Grand Canyon and our last day in Vegas

Waaaaaaaay too early in the morning, the phone rang. I shot up in a panic, thinking that we had overslept and missed our pickup. As Cesca blindly grabbed for the phone, I checked my phone for the time- 4:50 am. Phew. They were just calling to confirm that they were picking us up. Ugh. Too early.

The bus ended up being like 15 minutes late and getting us at like 6:10, but we were off. After registering and chancing buses, we headed out on the road. We made a quick stop at the Hoover Dam then headed out into the desert.

View from the bus on the way to the Hoover Dam

There it is

Pretty cool

LOL Buffal Bills

the road here wasn't paved- SO BUMPY AND DUSTY

just a Hualapai, no big deal

The Skywalk- we went on but you can't take pics on it

On the skywalk you can't take any personal items and you have to wear little booty things over your sneakers so you don't scratch the glass- it's crazy scary but awesome! The workers have cameras and we bought a picture, but Veronica has it so I'll have to post it later

so crazy beautiful. Can't believe I was there

Enjoying the view

You can see the storm clouds in the back. It actually rained when we were there. What are the chances that in a place where it rains 7.5% of the year that it rains in the middle of summer on the ONE day that we were there? It didn't make too much of a difference, but it was still kind of unbelievable.

A hualapai tent?

The Hualapai are the natives that live on the land near the canyon. They have tons of acres near the canyon and the name means "People of the Pines."

It was incredible 

oh you know, just relaxing

we got caught being too awesome

it was too much to handle for Cesca

This goat tried to get on that bus. Cute!

A joshua tree- named by Mormans

I called this our anti dehydration collection

On our last day, we decided to hit up the last minute things we missed, like:

The Pawn Stars shop! 

Browsing

The stars weren't there, but we found their cardboard cutouts

Afterwards, we headed to the strip to see Caesar's Palace

I've seen the real one too!

Sadly the talking statues were under renovation so we missed them

such a cool hotel

Then we hit up the inside of the Mirage

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And then the Venetian for the Gondola rides

the canal is much cleaner than in Venice.

The gondolier was super nice and was asking us the standard questions, like was it our first time, what are we doing here, blah blah blah. If I was writing an autobiography or something, this is how I would have narrated this interaction.

The friendly gondolier smiles and tells us that he's amazed we traveled so far. "So what made you come all the way out here?" he asks. I guess 21 year olds from across the country aren't that common here. I tell him that we really wanted to see Phantom Las Vegas before it closed so we decided to do a whole trip, and he said that it was an amazing show. He then asked if I had seen the Broadway show. I enthusiastically nodded and said "oh, of course!" He laughed and said he could tell that I must really like the show. I almost exclaimed that I had seen it in London as well, but I resist. This was a perfect stranger and you don't blurt out your crazy obsession with Phantom of the Opera to a gondolier at a hotel. 

The ride was quite fun though, as they actually sing here, unlike in real Venice. Afterwards, we decided to get to the airport and get ready to head home on our red eye.

our awesome purple cab to the airport

Cesca celebrating the end of our trip, as well as the fact
that they had their own escalator

It was a wonderful trip, even though the red eye flight caused much exhaustion and stress (we had half an hour to get across Newark, including 2 buses, to get from C to A and catch our flight). I had a ton of fun and fulfilled a big life goal. It was a kind of trip I had always wanted to do and thought I would eventually, so it is still kind of incredible that I'm sitting at home having just unpacked from doing it. I guess study abroad has really instilled a fire in me, and I never want to stop traveling and seeing amazing things.

Now that this excitement is over, it's time to get ready to first move Cesca into Bonaventure Wednesday and then head back to IC on Saturday! Aaaaaaaaaah!