California Trip Report, Day 1 ('bout time!)

I've had all these great ideas for blogging about the trip, but my time and energy have never coincided to actually blog. I have time; let's see how long the energy lasts...

Day 1, Denver to Las Vegas
We left home about 5:30 am, got 10 minutes down the road to the interstate where a bungee cord snapped and we lost the stroller. I parked on the shoulder, played Human Frogger in the pre-dawn hours, picked up the pieces and we continued on our merry way. We assessed the damage at a rest area on I-70 and bid adieu to the stroller (it was on its last legs, anyway---an exciting demise, to be sure). I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the Georgetown, CO sanitation workers for filling the entire rest area trash can with our stroller.

We then continued westward over Vail Pass, where whiteout conditions had us driving pretty darn slow for a while. Once we got past the town of Vail (where ski traffic was backed up a LONG way at the off ramp), the roads and the weather cleared and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way to Las Vegas. In Eagle, CO we discovered that Burger King makes great croissanwiches and nasty everything else for breakfast. Highlights of the rest of the drive included the cool rock formations west of Green River, the 80 mph speed limit on I-15 in southern Utah and the canyons of northwestern Arizona. The kids enjoyed spotting the St. George temple from the Interstate ("wow, it's OLD!") and loved the twilight skyline of Las Vegas.After we checked in at the Excalibur Hotel, we went to Greenberg's deli in the basement of New York New York (sandwiches to die for), tooled around the strip a small bit, found it to be largely pornographic and spent the rest of the evening in the relatively safe, four-story M&M's store.