Idaho to Vegas via Salt Lake City

Hi, still catching up. We've done a lot of driving. When we left Idaho Falls, we felt refreshed and energized. We'd just finished a loooonnnng day of driving and were lucky to get a great room with great beds! As it turned out, we'd need the energy for this leg of the trip. Idaho has a few different looks to it. Some parts look like desert, some normal and some like the moon. We also noticed as we drove that the speed limit began to creep up. The posted speed was 75 MPH, but most were going faster. This was really evident when we hit Utah. There was so much scenery to take in, it was hard to do while driving that fast. Luckily we had Jacki along who took a lot of pix from the back seat of the car. She did a good job of learning on the fly when using my camera.

A lot of reddish rock in the hills of Utah. If you click on the title of this chapter you'll see some of the pix. Scenery is really nice in Utah, the pictures just don't do it justice. We didn't get to the arches although it would've been interesting as one of them collapsed while we were on our trip.

We had planned on looking around Salt Lake City, but when we hit the freeway there, it was like getting flushed right through. I kid you not....I was doing 80 MPH and people were passing me like I was standing still! Six lanes of traffic, everyone on a cell phone and vehicles zooming across lanes like nothing. The craziest ones were the women in huge SUV's on cell phones.

It took an hour to get through like this. I think Arlene needed about that much time to pry my white knuckles off the wheel. More great scenery, then more mountains as we entered a corner of Arizona. Beautiful amazing awesome scenery!! I just wish it was a little slower pace going through so that we could enjoy it more. No place to pull off and take it in. So we made a spot which freaked Arlene out. I just pulled over, problem was it was around a corner so it was hard for anyone to see us. Getting back on the road was a bit of a "gun it" experience. LOL.

When we finally got on the other side of these, it opened up into the desert of Nevada leading to Vegas. Temp at this point was 43C. It was hot! Basically sand and sparse brush all around us. Not sure what people do that live in some of the homes we saw out in the middle of nowhere.
Finally made it to Vegas. We were booked into the Tropicana. Little did we rookies realize it was in the heart of the strip! Crazy busy down there and ridiculously hot.
When we finally found the hotel and a parking spot we went to check in.....an hour later (long line up) we went to get our stuff. I saw one of those baggage carts outside the hotel so I grabbed one to help bring our stuff in. Big mistake! It seems regular folk can't use those. You have to hire one of the bell hops to do that for you. We passed on that and wound up dragging our stuff in ourselves. (Yes we were on a budget)
Our room was on the 12th floor and it was evident right off the hop the A/C wasn't close to keeping up with the heat. Older style hotel, which was ok for character. If only the room had been cleaner. There were stains all over the floors, we found two pairs of earrings near the beds and there were two wires hanging out of the wall where the smoke alarm used to be.
We went downstairs to have a late supper, took a walk around. It was crawling with people. The Tropicana is on a major intersection kind of like a Portage and Main, only dressed up. There are overhead crosswalks around the whole intersection with escalators taking you up and down. This is done so as not to disrupt the non-stop traffic below. It's a very busy place with all kinds of flashing signs inviting passers by to come in.
Maybe it was the long day, maybe it was the heat, but we just couldn't get into the swing of Vegas. In fairness, it appeals to a lot of people and looks like it could be a fun place. Just not our speed. So we decided to cut our stay short and only stay one night instead of two.

Next stop...Flagstaff Arizona.