Day 20 - Sand Hollow State Park, UT to Vegas baby, Vegas, NV - seeing the bright lights

Today was another travel day for us.  While we thought the boys enjoyed the lake enough yesterday and wouldn’t be interested - we were wrong and before we knew it, they were soaked and COVERED with red sand again.  Oh well, at least it gave Amy and I a chance to get the camper packed up and ready to go.  I don’t know if we’re getting better at it or what, but it sure seems to be getting easier.

Once packed up, we piled into Rover and headed for VEGAS! 

It is true, we went to Las Vegas, but largely because we needed an airport to fly over to for the weekend.  My sister’s wedding celebration is in Madison, WI and when we were planning the trip, the best option to still see what we wanted to see was a flight into Chicago for the event and Vegas was it.


Surprisingly, at least for me, the drive we did ended up taking us not only into Nevada, but also across the top part of Arizona - bonus state!  The drive was largely uneventful and fairly short.  It was so short, that we were actually early for the check-in at the KOA we were staying at.  Fortunately, they didn’t seem to mind and let us find our spot early.


We set up the camper and then headed down to the strip.  There were certainly some parts of Las Vegas we didn’t want to show the boys, but there were a few things we did want them to see.  So, we checked off those boxes including

  • The gondoliers of the Venetian

  • The Bellagio water show

  • The gelato at Bellagio

  • The gardens of the Bellagio

  • The pyramid of Luxor

  • The replica Eiffel Tower

  • The replica Statue of Liberty

  • The Stratosphere where the world record basketball shot had recently been made










We did get to see all those things, but the boys were most excited about the idea of an arcade in the “dungeon” of Excalibur.  After a fairly long, warm walk down the strip, we arrived there and turned the boys loose on the arcade.  Each of them picked different games to play, but both seemed to have a great time.  It was fun to let them enjoy Vegas.




When we got to the arcade, Amy went back to get the car so when the boys were done, she was literally about to pull into the parking lot.  Instead, we had her pick us up and off to dinner.  For dinner, our cooler and food stores were getting pretty bare so we stopped at a Mexican restaurant for our meal.  It took a long time which was unfortunate because Robinson had planned to do some swimming, but it was a good meal.  We’d recommend it as long as you have the time.


After dinner, we went back to camp and started to get ready for the early flight tomorrow.  Amy did our laundry and I packed up - especially including all the extra stuff we had brought that didn’t need to go any further.  As the sun set, we turned on the camper’s A/C for the first time this trip and started to cool off from the Las Vegas heat.  We knew tomorrow would be a long day as we jumped back to the Midwest for the weekend.   


Total miles traveled - 4,141

# States (Provinces) - 12





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