We made the drive up from Sedona to the Grand Canyon without a hitch. We drove into the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to get our America the Beautiful pass which gives us free admission to any national park for a year. We pulled into the parking lot of the visitors center and Stephanie ran straight to the bathrooms. After we had relieved ourselves, we walked the short trail to the rim of the Grand Canyon. The views are breathtaking to say the least.
We walked around to four or five vistas to take in as many views of the Grand Canyon as possible. On one edge of the rock, there was a California Condor which was on the brink of extinction in the late 80s. When they started their recovery program, there were only 22 condors in existence and all in captivity. Now there are over 200 California Condors in the wild.
After we had seen much of the Grand Canyon and had eaten some delicious PB&Js, we headed out for Las Vegas. Around 5 PM we finally rolled into Sin City and checked into our free hotel room at Bally’s Las Vegas. Thanks Harrah’s and the blackjack machines in New Orleans. Once we got checked into our hotel, we quickly googled who had the best buffet in Vegas. Everything found said the Bacchanal Buffet at Casear’s Palace. (sadly, he did not actually live there)
Our free hotel room
Luckily, it was just across the street from Bally’s. We walked out into the 110 degree dry heat, but still felt cooler than New Orleans. We walked over to the buffet and they had an automated reservation system. The machine said the wait was 110 minutes which we thought was very long for a buffet, but since we had walked ALL the way across the street, we decided to stay. We gambled for about an hour when I got a text message saying our reservation was ready. We were very excited until we realized we had to wait in another line. I guess we had reservations for waiting in line. After a 30 minute wait, we finally got seated at the buffet and boy was it worth the wait. They had all the normal buffet food, but the quality was what you would find in a four star restaurant. After thoroughly gorging ourselves and drinking our fair share of wine, we stumbled back to our hotel and passed out.
The next morning, we woke up, bought a Buffet of Buffets pass which gave us unlimited buffets at all of Harrah’s hotels, googled which pool was the best and took a cab to Mandalay Bay.
The pool was gorgeous and after drinking all afternoon, we cabbed back to our hotel for some more buffets. After eating our fair share of food once again, we took a mid afternoon nap. We woke up around 8 and went to the buffet at Planet Hollywood. But we were too full to eat very much and went to bed shortly after.
Vegas at sunrise
Wednesday was spent lounging in bed and relaxing and figuring out the fine details of our Oregon and Washington sections of our road trip. We packed up Thursday morning and headed out to Yosemite National Park. Stephanie really liked Las Vegas and I enjoyed my 3rd trip there. We ate 5 buffets in 48 hours. FAT! ~ garrett
Garrett & Stephanie 