Leaving Las Vegas (Hugh)

Up reasonably early to pack then cab it out to the RV rental center (sic) courtesy of an Armenian who corrects us when we don’t tip the appropriate 20%.


RV chicane is a very hot experience and we listen hard to pick up all the necessary tips. After an hour or so, we eventually set off, via WALLMART for hardware and FOOD FOR LESS for a staggering quantity of provisions. Our RV is 36 feet long, 12 feet high, 8 feet wide, sleeps 6 people (in theory) and has a “slider” which moves out electronically when you stop to create something approximately the size of our TV room at home.

We drive 2.5 hours to our first RV experience, the Zion Canyon RV park.

Sarah has been clever, this one is quite up-market. I immediately get RV envy – almost everyone has a nicer RV than us and most are towing Jeeps Renegade like our one at home. Some people have those aluminium AIRSTREAM Winnebagos; the one opposite us is from 1956. I love them and want one (of course), but I don’t think it would last even one Haslemere winter.

We rise late, for a 10am ride in a station wagon to Zion Canyon Park.
This canyon far exceeds my expectations, the walls rise sheer thousands of feet above us. We go hiking, splashing through the river at the upper reaches of the canyon.

At one point the river is 7 metres wide, and the cliffs 450 metres high above us.

Cool. I get all het up because I want to go back country hiking, but I can’t because I have 3 small children.


Get used to it Hugh.


The next day we go inner tubing on the Virgin River (you sit in an inner tube and float down the river). Not exactly class IV rapids these, but that’s probably a good thing as the kids have a fantastic time bobbing around.

We get married (Sarah)

I wake up on the morning of our "wedding" to find H armed with a cork screw determinedly trying to remove the huge white security alarm tag from the sleeve of the Cowboy shirt he’s bought especially for the ceremony. Judging by the damage that he’s managed to inflict so far, he’s been at it for a while but the device shows no sign of weakening. I suggest that it may be quicker to walk the ten minutes or so back to the shop but am given to understand that this is not the point, that would be giving in….

Anyway, he has a spare shirt, so with us girls all plaited up Annie-get-your-gun style we don our hats and head off for breakfast fully Cowboy suited and booted.


Down in the lift, past the malls, through the Casino floor, Reception, Concierge, this is still one hotel but it takes a good twenty minutes to walk from one end to the other. The city types clearly think that rednecks have hit town. We must look like Bonnie and Clyde with kids….

The thing that confuses me about US directions is that they always say Route so and so South or Route so and so North…. but of what point exactly? Logically the main highway through Vegas should go - from North to South: Las Vegas Boulevard North, Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas Boulevard South, But no, our wedding chapel is at 600 Las Vegas Boulevard South, half a mile north of the strip – you still with me? The only way I saw any cabbie find anywhere outside the strip in Vegas was to telephone the place to where he was headed to get directions. Totally bonkers.

We get married again - Hugh

A champagne breakfast with the kids, then we cab it to a wedding chapel at completely the wrong end of the strip. Cabbie is horrified, but about turns and gets us to the correct chapel and on time.

Wedding is great fun. Monty is best man, girls bridesmaids, and Elvis escorts Sarah down the aisle. I get a bit emotional, which catches on, and the whole thing is really good fun and everybody has a good time.

We eat the wedding cake on the bus on the way home, then extravagantly throw the dregs into a bin.
Stop off at Circus Circus for a few rides,
then walk back to the hotel in 110 degree heat. A few errands while Sarah goes swimming (more shopping and mail retrieval), then off to Bellagio for the Cirque du Soleil “O” show. Awesome. We watch the fountain show at 930, then cab it back to the hotel.

Notes on the wedding day - Sarah

Elvis: Our Elvis turns out to be the tallest and most Elvis like man in the world, we really do look like gnomes in comparison, please see wedding pics to follow at some point. The whole thing was very very silly and I want to do it again.




The Best man: Monty takes ages to get the ring out of its brown paper package during the service…..he is concentrating verrry hard, a top best man effort.

Re: ‘A few shopping errands’ above, please note that the wedding shirt no longer has the security device attached.

Swimming = People watching. You don’t go swimming in Vegas actually to swim. You hide behind your sunglasses and watch reality unfold, great sport.

Cirque du Solais: I have been wanting to see the ‘O’ show in Vegas since I can remember and I wasn’t disappointed. It is quite simply breathtaking and if anyone reading this gets the chance to go – jump at it.

I booked so far in advance that we had front row seats right on the rim of the huge flooded stage, so close that you could make eye contact with the performers. Sitting there you were immersed in the performance in more ways than one –splattered with water as they plunged in or played the fool. Spectacular feats of human ability and imagination unfolded before our popping out eyes. This show could not be further away in terms of wonderment from the Rain forests of Central America but every bit as beautiful. An amazing celebration of human endurance, theatrics and artistry taking place in the middle of what by rights should be an arid desert. Wow.

At the end Eliza was presented with a rubber ring used in one of the clowns’ acts, it remains a treasured possession.

Fly in to Vegas - Sarah

A Las Vegas kid I meet on the plane who looks about thirty but turns out to be sixteen, named Ricky Gomez tells me its so hot there you can fry an egg on the bonnet of your car, I start to question his authority only when as we fly over the Grand Canyon he cries eagerly “Guys, look look we’re flying over the whaddaya call it….. The Big Crack”

Turns out he’s not wrong though, the heat as you walk out of the airport takes your breath away, luckily it appears that 98% of the geographical area of Vegas is air-conditioned. The other 2% is generally avoided by anyone other than the lizards. Just turning up at this place must double the size of your lifetime carbon footprint.

Having not travelled to the States recently I am suitably impressed when immigration control scans and records each of my fingerprints using some sort of fluorescent green screeny thing. I suddenly imagine being a master criminal or James Bond Villain. Would it be possible to get rubber fingerprints made up in order to travel incognito? Or on the flip side what if you presented your fingertips only for sirens to sound, lights to flash and armed guards appear from nowhere tackling you to the floor. Maybe terrorists could have copied your fingerprints from a half eaten Dunkin’ Donut and you could spend years incarcerated for a crime you never committed. Make a mental note to wipe all restaurant cutlery clean after use to be on the safe side.

Hugh is ‘recognised as friend’ and allowed in to the country after placing only his thumb on the glass. He adopts an immediate air of superiority. Unfortunately for the kids they are yet to young for this excitement.

Think H pretty much covered everything else, except that our hotel has a river running through it….. on the first floor…...with Gondolas and streets and a realllllly cool fake sky.
So authentic in fact that Monty spends the rest of the visit to Vegas having to check whether the real sky is the real sky or not, even when we get into the helicopter he takes a bit of persuading.

Oh and our room is on the 17th floor out of 54,
it has three TV’s and a phone in the loo in case you get a sudden urge to talk and eleven swimming pools (not our room, the hotel) ….
and a pirate ship battle to watch from our window.
Sensory overload. We eat cookies and pass out.