Las Vegas and Springdale, Utah

I spent most of the day in Vegas in the Mirage Hotel.

How is the Mirage different from the other motels I’ve been staying in?

I guess it’s best described as a newer, shinier, brighter motel. The room doesn’t even give you a pair bedroom slippers. The bed is very thick and the sheets nice, but open the fridge and you get charged.

In a motel, most of the time, a fridge and microwave are included.

Both give you ice.

Have I told you I love the ice making machine? It is part of my ritual to get ice everyday. And every time I do, I wonder why people need to have such a big chest of ice. Whoever gets to the bottom of that huge vat of ice when new ice is always made and piled on top? No wonder murderers like to use them to store bodies. Very convenient.

When I arrive at the motel/hotel/lodge/bed and breakfast, I always start to charge the batteries, then unpack and clear up the room with all the plastic bags and stuff we accumulated during the day, then get the ice. Then I wash up, do the photo sorting and tagging. By the time I get to sleep it is nearly 2am, then it’s up at 7am for the next day.

As we headed through Montana, I saw really nice houses in remote areas. Overlooking lakes and so on. And again, I was reminded of movies where someone comes and murders you and you are all alone with no one around to help you.

Vegas is bigger, brighter (I assume, ’cause I went up to the room at around 7pm and went to sleep at 9), and not as fun as it used to be. Where are the people giving out ads and stuff of sleazy places?

All I did in Vegas was look for the place where I’d pick up the rental car, use up the $50 voucher at the buffet (so three of us ate for the princely sum of $8.42), and watched the animals at the Secret Garden.

Well, now, we’ve driven up some four hours back into Utah to Springdale, just outside Zion National Park. We’ve entered canyon landscapes. Mesa, buttes… oh how I must now dig deep into my limited knowledge of geography for the right terms.

Here’s a preview of what I’ll be seeing for a good while.

And here’s the view at twilight from my motel room.