Las Vegas and Arizona

We went on a eight day trip out west to Las Vegas and Arizona, more specifically, Flagstaff and Sedona. We were there from May 24th to June 1st. Also, we got engaged while in Sedona on May 28th!! One of my favorite memories ever!!! Enjoy the pictures :)

We left for Vegas on Friday, May 24th and did not start out as smoothly as we'd hoped. Our flight had been changed to a later one and you would have thought that the extra time would have been helpful. I can't really remember what we did that day, but for some reason, we left the house late and in our rush, we forgot the camera. That would have been ok because my cell phone takes pretty good pictures, but oh yeah...I forgot that too. I was pretty upset about it and so was Michael. While I did not like the idea of getting another camera, since I had a perfectly good one already, fact of the matter is it was at home sitting on the kitchen counter. So, we decided to get another camera once we got to Vegas. Hopefully, we would be able to find something that wasn't too expensive. I probably would have been fine with Michael's phone camera, but he insisted on getting a "real" camera since his acted up every now and then and he did not want to risk losing some good pictures.

Well, after finally arriving at the Wyndham resort pretty late, we were exhausted so we decided to just call it a night a relax in the room. In the morning, we decided to start our search for a camera. We walked towards the strip and went to the Planet Hollywood shops, Cesar's Palace Forum shops, and even the mall at the north end by the Wynn. No luck...at least not for the price we were hoping to pay. At that point we made a decision to see if we could locate a Best Buy and purchase a camcorder which also takes pretty good photos. That way, we had the video and the camera for a decent price. We relaxed by the pool for the rest of the day and ended up having pizza that night for dinner.

We were hoping to leave Las Vegas relatively early because we knew we had a long drive ahead of us to the Hoover Dam and we were hoping to get to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for a day hike. Well, things didn't happen as planned and we got held up in Las Vegas longer than we anticipated. We finally left for the Hoover Dam around noon. After an hour drive we arrived at Hoover Dam and it was over 100 degrees...it was HOT! We took the dam tour and took all the dam pictures we wanted. After a few hours, we headed to Flagstaff, knowing we would not be able to make it to the Grand Canyon that day. Michael seemed upset about that, but we did have a rafting tour planned, so we would still get there eventually.

Prior to our trip, I looked up a few locations featured on Diner's, Drive-In's, and Dives. One of these locations was in Flagstaff, so upon our arrival, we headed to Salsa Brava. It did not disappoint and we absolutely loved the salsa bar. The food was great and staff extremely friendly. We arrived at our resort and received some friendly advice from the staff again and headed to our cottage. Everyone in Flagstaff is so polite and nice. We absolutely enjoyed our time there.

This is Michael writing now, so you may notice a difference in the narrative.  Don't worry, I'll try to make it entertaining.  From the moment we got to the west coast, everyone had told us that Sedona was beautiful.  We decided to make the determination for ourselves and headed out towards Sedona the next day.  The drive was only about forty five minutes from Flagstaff, so we planned to spend most of the day in Sedona and then possibly go to some of the state parks there.  Downtown Sedona is geared towards tourists, but its beautiful.  The scenery is amazing and makes for some great pictures.  We ate at a brewery where Liz and I had a barbeque chicken pizza and some great beer.  While I only had one beer, Liz got a flight (which to you novice beer drinkers means about 4-5 small beers).  I decided to drive after lunch.  We had decided to go by one of the state parks (of which there are quite a few).  We settled on going to Red Park State Park as it was close and open for a little while longer than the other parks.  On the way there I got a little turned around in the car and it led to someone (who will rename nameless) getting annoyed with my sense of direction.  I didn't really worry too much about it as I figured this anonomyous person would be much happier once we got to the park and I proposed.  It was around 4 in the afternoon when we got to the park, so I was running out of daylight to get the ring out of my pocket and onto Liz's finger.  If you've seen "the proposal" part of this website, then you already know the rest of the story.  Long story short, its a moment in my life that will stand as one of the greatest and most memorable.  Once night came, we went to the Lowell observatory.  It was the observatory that originally discovered Pluto, which is no longer a planet, which means they haven't really done anything there.  It was a beautiful night and Liz and I looked at stars, planets and we also heard the tour guide make a Star Wars reference.  At the end of the night, we went back to the room to eat leftover Mexican from the night before.  Before anyone criticizes us for not being romantic on the day we got engaged, we were both tired and Flagstaff didn't really have a whole lot of places open after 9:00 p.m., or so we thought.  

Have you ever woken up super early just so you could sit in a car for three hours?  Exciting, right? That's how our day started on the way to the Grand Canyon.  I was tired, it was cold and our tour guide almost didn't pick us up.  Once he did pick us up, we quickly learned he was a raging hippie.  

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