Vegas Baby!

Vegas Baby!

My wife had a work event in Las Vegas. Therefore, we decided to head out a few days early to see the area since we had not been to Vegas before. We started with a stop at Hoover Dam, then onto the Grand Canyon covering the West Rim to the North Rim before returning to Las Vegas.

Rental Car Nightmare from Hell

We arrived in Vegas at about 1 AM and headed to get our car at the rental center. After standing in line for over an hour and watching what could only be described as a clusterf**k going on behind the counter, we were told that they didn’t have any cars. We had pre-paid for a car and expected to have one, especially at 1 AM. My wife checked other agencies and they were all out of vehicles.

They offered to pay for an Uber to our hotel and we could come back at 7 AM to see if they had any cars. However, we were staying close to Hoover Dam that night and not in Vegas. That was not an acceptable solution and neither was sitting in the rental car center until 7 AM or whenever they could locate a car. So, I headed back to the counter and had a less-than-friendly conversation with the rental car company. After my Oscar-winning performance of a Karen, they were finally able to locate the car I had reserved. We were on our way to the hotel at about 2:30 AM.

Hotel Issue

After a not-so-fun experience with the rental car company, we arrived at the hotel. Unfortunately, the reception was closed. There was a sign on the door that said they would be back at 3:45 AM.  At this point, I had been up for over 24 hours and was not wanting to wait. I reached out to the hotel chain to see if they could reach the person working. They were very responsive and tried to call the person. However, the reception was closed because the person working was required to take their lunch. A few minutes later, the person returned and we were able to check into our room. It was a minor delay and would have been no problem except that I was not a happy camper at that point after the car fiasco.

Vegas

My wife had a free room at the Wynn for the conference she was attending, so we saved a lot of money with that part of the trip. We did the normal tourist crap along the strip. Visited the fancy hotels, Freemont Street, Heart Attack Grill, etc.

Itinerary

* indicates where we stayed at least one night

Day 1

Boulder City, NV *

Hoover Dam

West Rim Grand Canyon

Day 2

Flagstaff, AZ *

North Rim, AZ

Day 3 – 4

Panguitch, UT *

Red Canyon

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Dixie National Forest

Bryce Canton National Park

Day 5

Panguitch, UT *

Zion National Park

Las Vegas, NV *

Day 6-9

Las Vegas, NV *

Budget (estimated)