You dont get to walk in the sky for free
Trip Start
Oct 12, 2008
1
10
Trip End
Oct 26, 2008
Las Vegas, Nevada
Monday, October 20, 2008
we hit the complimentary continentel breakfast,then hit the road and made tracks for lower altitudes and warmer climbs with our eyes on Las Vegas, but first we need to check out this skywalk over the grand canyon.
The sky walk is roughlyl 60 miles north of Kingman, AZ and 20 of those 60 miles are down a long dusty road that is a really unbearable road with all the traffic on it. Huge busses from vegas, lots of tourist cars...and all for this skywalk.
As we get closer to the West rim of the grand canyon and the road becomes paved again, we are surrounded by helicopters going every which way, as far out into nowhere as we were, I kinda felt like I was in an X-files episode and mulder and skully would have a road block up ahead not allowing us to move any further. (the truth is out there, ya know :-) Anyway our first kiosk that we get stopped at is 20.00 a bike for parking. Okay, i wonder if that gets us into the skywalk. Nope that gets us a spot to park and a pamphlet explaining in simple terms how every dollar we had would be parted from our wallets, very swiftly.
We are guided first throught the helicopter and airplane waiting area where its roughly 250 bucks in addition to the sky walk tour. (we passed) The next spot is the gift shop where we find the line to the bus that takes you to the skywalk. Okay two tickets to the skywalk. That will be 60 bucks sir. great, here you go. BTW sir, do you want to walk out on the skywalk? Of course i do, I didnt park for 20 and pay a 30 dollar bus ride not to go out on the skywalk. Okay that will be another 30...per person. Okay, here you go.
Sir, are you aware that you cant take any cameras are keys or anything out on the skywalk? What? No camera, no proof i was up there? Sir you can get your picture taken with a true Have-a-pie indian chief on the sky walk. Sir, the picture package is 100.00 and gets you blah blah blah..."No Thank you"
Now that we are about 200.00 lighter in my wallet we jump on the bus and get hauled out there, we are bitched about how the indian is getting retribution on the white man for all those years of pursecution. They are building a large airstrip out there, and I bet you dollars to donuts there will be a casino out there before 2015.
anyway, we get off the bus, snap some shots (at no charge) then proceeded to get into line for the skywalk, we are told to put all metal items in a locker (complimentary...WHOA really?) I wonder if the ride back to the parking lot is another 30$? anyway we go through a metal detecter, i get wanded as if i am about to enter a flight on Airforce 1 and then we get into another line where we wait.
Finally we get our little booties on our feet and we are allowed to walk out and what a crazy idea this thing is. acrylic see through floors and acrylic see through walls, you literally feel like your sitting in wonderwomans invisible jet. it is something to behold. All our bitching stopped and we both remarked that this was really worth a walk out here and how neither Erica nor Kelly would ever be able to be pried of the hand rail to truly view this.
You have to do this and feel the pain, because the view is spectacular and the skywalk is open air and you cna look over the acrylic walls. BTW this is higher than the empire state building. unbelievable and we have no proof we were there except that we know that we were there. and we bought a magnet as part of our trinket package for the one that guesses the most drops.
We get off the skywalk, get back on the bus, and head to the bikes, make a b-line for vegas, with only a short stop at the hoover damn. Welcome to the Dam tour, I will be your dam guide, now before i get started does anybody have any dam questions? BTW for those that havent been out the hoover dam in a while you will soon find out they are building this huge bridge bypass to allow you to bypass the dam altogether via the speedy speedway of hiway 95. it looks really cool to see a bridge being built like this in our time and not just seeing those pics of the Golden gate bridge being built.
anyway, we make it to vegas, find the Planet Hollywood and Jefe being the Playa that he is got us the Evita Suite on the top floor of the PH. We cleaned up, headed downstairs for your traditional vegas buffet and stuffed ourselves so much I kinda felt like a turducken right out the oven, complete with crispy skin (sunburnt face) Then we decided to hit the poker tables. we found a $1-$2 no limit table that had some interesting, but nice characters and planted it for about 3-4 hours drinking newcastles and watching our stacks go up and down. Jefe was going all in to go call Kelly and he won then he hit quad 5's and won a house prize of 221$ which put him up so he called it a night. I on th other hand was doing well and felt that the rest of the players were drunker than i was and i continued to play to a total of ~8 hours which got me up 302$ so I called it a night as well.
All is all it was a good day and what was even better was that Jefe and I were leaving vegas on the plus end, and that hasnt happened in a long time.
