The Last Part of Vacation!

We have officially been home for over a week now, and we just realized we never finished days 6-11 of our vacation! We are about to give you a debriefing of those days, compacted into one blog post, so we apologize if its too much or too vague.

After driving so long in a car, one can get really tired from doing absolutely nothing, which is surprising, but we were so exhausted from driving so much. We believe the last place we left you was at the Grand Canyon- From there we drove down to Williams, AZ and then over to the Hoover Dam on our way to Las Vegas. The drive from Williams, AZ to the Hoover Dam was the closest scenery that we have seen that resembles a desert. Wait, it is a desert. There were cacti, dirt, some mountains (composed of mostly dirt) and some barbed wire fences. Needless to say, it was boring until we got close to the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River. About 15 miles out, the scenery became more mountainous and rocky, still no grass, but much prettier and bearable. The Colorado River looked like an oasis of blue next to all the brown dirt (picture below).

The Hoover Dam was some kind of concrete wonder. It was incredibly high and incredibly windy! There were plenty of tourist there, and unfortunately we didn’t do a dam tour because it was too expensive per person for us. We did get some incredible shots though! The states of AZ and NV had built a bridge that connects the highways on both sides that includes a walking bridge so you can walk and see the HD from a distance! We will include a picture of the bridge facts so you can gawk at them like we did.

Once we took in all we could of giant extreme landmarks we moved on to Vegas! The first night we stayed in North Las Vegas (kinda not as cool as the strip, but it was still cool and not as crowded). The next two days we stayed on the strip and did the most touristy things we could think of: Visit the M&Ms store, Coca-Cola store, walk the strip, go to the shopping mall in Planet Hollywood and Paris, Las Vegas, visit the Welcome sign, watch the fountains at the Bellagio, go to a show! Hunter surprised Alex with tickets to Love by Cirque di Solei. If you like the Beatles, this is the show to see! It was an hour and a half of Beatles songs “Cirque-di-solei”-ified (rollerblades, dancing, flips, trampolines, etc.). It’s safe to say that Alex totally enjoyed the show! 

Vegas was super fun and much better than the day we drove to Albuquerque. The drive was 10 hours and we stopped at the Petrified Forest/ Painted Desert National Park (which was the best part of the drive). The Petrified Forest is in AZ and has broken logs all over the place that have turned into rocks. Some of the trees are humongous! The Painted Desert is just north of the PF and is located on the other side of the interstate. This part of the desert has different colored dirt due to bacteria (or something like that) and produces colors like purple, grey, red, and green. It’s really cool, and there are several “mini-canyons” (we’re not sure the technical term, but that’s what we called them).

We stopped in Albuquerque for two nights and visited Santa Fe for dinner the next day. We bought train tickets to take us to Santa Fe from Albuquerque (it takes an hour and a half by train and cost $7 – well worth the money!) for dinner. On the train ride, we could see the forest fire that is in the mountains by Santa Fe (Not to be confused with the largest wildfire in US history that is currently burning in SW New Mexico).

The next day we drove to Amarillo and once arriving, we spent most our afternoon visiting Amarillo’s historic antique district off of Route 66. There are over 30 stores within a mile and a half! We also saw The Avengers that night (which we both really enjoyed, but probably not as much as Men in Black 3, which we saw in Albuquerque).

After Amarillo, we drove through OKC (Thunder Up! Hunter is rooting for the Heat, but Alex, and the rest of the nation are rooting for the Thunder) and then over to Fayetteville!

            Once home, we unpacked everything within a few hours and got to just hang out with our new roomies- Molly and Emily!

            Right now, we are settling in for a few weeks before we move. Alex starts her internship on Wednesday and already started her other part time job (watering flowers for a lady in Rogers) and Hunter is slowly, but surely packing up items as he gets ready to start his job!

All is well with the Houses!

Thanks for stopping by!

Colorado River just south of the Hoover Dam

The beautiful new bridge that looks down on the Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam and Lake Mead in the background.

Bridge facts

The real Welcome sign!

Before the show. Lots of colors everywhere.

The bottlenecking mad rush to the exit after the show. 

The fake sign inside the M & Ms store

This is an attempt to get a picture of the indoor thunderstorm that happens inside the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood

Part of the night skyline

The back of the Welcome sign

Painted desert

Petrified forest logs everywhere

A close-up of the petrified wood. It looks like glossy rock.

This tree was huge! and completely petrified all the way through.

The Rail Runner that goes from Downtown Albuquerque to Santa Fe.