Vacation Day 5 - Grand Canyon Rafting

Our 5th day of vacation started early.. I mean EARLY! We had to be in the downstairs lobby by 330am to catch our ride. This ride turned out to be a questionable driver in a van. We picked up several other passengers, stopped for a question coffee / breakfast and then we were on the road. Little did we know that this drive was a three hour tour (During which the drive took out a pair of binoculars to use to look for cops as he was driving) to the Reservation where we would transfer to a school bus with 40 of our closest friends to ride another 1.5 hours down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Now, had this expectation been set by the tour company it wouldn't have been so bad, but an unexpected ride of this length at 330am was not very pleasant.

About 1/2 through the school bus ride the scenery started to get pretty and this made the the ride more pleasant. Once we were finally at the bottom we were divided up into groups and assigned to a boat. Now we thought this was going to be boats that we had to paddle in but as it turns out we were actually in motorized pontoon boats. This was probably a really good thing since we had to go through rapids rated up to 7+. After getting our life jackets on and loading up the boats we were ready to start the day. Now I realize that the water in the Colorado river is run off from the mountains but... We were in Nevada... It was like 110 degrees outside... Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the water would be that cold! We hit the first rapid and holy cow! Water came all the way over the top of the pontoon and we were instantly frozen. This continued off and on for about the first two hours of the trip. The rapids were cool and fun to go through but man the water was cold. It wasn't as bad after the initial shock, but still cold.

The scenery was beautiful on the trip. We made two stops along the way. The first one was at a waterfall that you can only see from the bottom of the canyon. The guides had ropes set up along this path so you could climb up right by the falls. It was amazing. The second stop was for lunch where we got to get out of the boats and find a place in the warm sun to eat lunch. Again, when you stop to think about it it was completely amazing. Here we are at the bottom of the Grand Canyon having lunch. How many people can say they have ever done anything like that.

The second half of the trip was just floating down the river. During this time it would have been really nice to have had some of the cold water splashing up on us. It got really hot and we did our best to continue to enjoy the beautiful scenery, but I have to admit the trip could have been over about 1-2 hours before it was and that would have been fine with us. Once the boat ride was over we were scheduled to take a helicopter ride back to the top of the canyon. Again, the tour company could have provided more information here and it would have made for a more pleasant experience. Because of problems with one of the helicopters we had to wait about two hours for our ride. I would have paid hundreds of dollars for a pair of clean shorts and a book.

The helicopter ride was a great way to end the trip. We can now say that we saw the Grand Canyon from the top, the bottom and from a helicopter. Amazing. Here are our digital photos of the trip. I'll have a few more once the CDs from the water proof cameras are done.

Vacation Days 3-4 Las Vegas!

After going to UFC 100 we had no plans but to hang out, gamble and be bums for the next two days. On Sunday we slept in a little and then enjoyed a nice champagne brunch at the MGM. After brunch we decided to walk down the strip and check out some of the sites that had changed since we were there last. Man.. its hot in Vegas in July! We had to stop a couple times for an adult beverage and a little gambling in the casinos.

We wound up at Circus Circus, which now has an indoor amusement park complete with a roller coaster and water ride. We decided to try the roller coaster, which turned out not to be such a good idea for me. I wound up sick to my stomach (apparently going upside down four times is not my idea of fun). We got a cold drink and a pretzel to try and help my stomach. We found a relatively cold area to sit in Circus Circus and decided to gamble a little while I was resting and before we tried to walk back to the hotel. Gambling that night turned out to not be any luckier than the roller coaster for me, but Wendy won a little money.

Monday we decided to do a little shopping and hit the M and M store, the Coke store and bought tickets for the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor. If you get to Las Vegas in the next 10 years, I highly recommend seeing this exhibit. It was very cool and they have the largest piece of the Titanic that has ever been pulled up on exhibit there for the next 10 years. After the shopping and exhibit we decided to do some gambling and wound up gambling at the Party Pit in Excalibur. This was a really good time, basically loud bar music playing while you gamble. I won a little money that day and Wendy won a little more so can't beat that.

Here are some random pictures from Vegas.

UFC 100!

After enjoying the morning at the Grand Canyon, we headed out for VEGAS BABY! We had tickets for UFC 100 and I was so excited. There were some great fights on the card and I couldn't believe we were actually going to get to see it in person. We got to Vegas in time to check in to the New York, New York hotel, get cleaned out, grab a slice of pizza for dinner and then off to the fight. We had so much fun! Frank Lester, one of the fighters from the latest Ultimate Fighting Championship show was in the crowd right in front of us and I was able to get my picture taken with him, which was pretty cool!


The fights were awesome, especially getting to see Dan Henderson knock out Michael Bisping. I really wish Frank Mir would have beat Lesner, especially after he was such a jerk after the fight. But we had a really great time and are excited that we get to go to another fight in Oklahoma City later this year. Here are some pictures that I was able to get.

Patio the Interuption

Man, and I was doing so good posting updates about our vacation and then I got distracted! While we were on vacation, we stopped by Wendy's parents house to spend the night. Dan, Wendy's Dad, was working on putting in new patio pavers and doing some other improvements in their backyard. I have been wanting to redo our patio in the backyard for awhile, but have just never gotten around to it. After seeing how good his looked, I decided to redo ours when we got home. So the Saturday after vacation Wendy had to work all day and Zach wasn't back home yet, so I decided to stop delaying and put in the new patio. In my mind, it was a job that I could finish in a day. Oh how wrong I was!! A week and a half later, I finally finished the patio with some help from Wendy and Zachary. We put in 2500 pounds of pavers, I don't know how many pounds of sand and assembled new patio furniture. Even though it turned out to be much more work than I expected, we are really happy with the results. Let me know what you think!

Here is what it looked like when I started.

After I pulled up all the pavers.

Pavers are all in and sealed.

Patio furniture set up.