September 12, 2008

Vegas Baby!

We just got back from our annual trip to Vegas with the Hayashida clan, including my parents, brother and his fiance, grandparents, aunties and uncles. We stayed at the Fremont Hotel for the first time, since our usual hotels, California and Main Street were booked solid due to an Asian basketball tournament taking place that weekend.

Since we were born in Hawaii, we're eligible for the kama`aina discounted room/meals package, $310 for room and all meals for four days. Not a bad deal and I was surprised that our hotel room at the Fremont was nicer than the ones we've stayed in at the Cal and Main Street, although a bit smaller. We ate most of our meals at the Market Street Cafe at the Cal, although we had a great breakfast buffet at the Paradise Buffet at the Fremont. We also had the Seafood Buffet at the Paradise Buffet. We're shown below after filling our bellies with crab and dessert.


I won't go into much detail about the gambling as we deposited a small amount into the casinos' banks but we did pretty much all our gambling downtown. We only went down to the Strip once, to see the Bellagio conservatory and fountan show. We lucked out, seeing our favorite fountain show/song, Con Te Partiro. Jenn also got to see her favorite lobby fixtures.


Since we're trying to find geocaches in as many states as possible, we decided to make the drive north to Arizona and Utah. We also decided that if we were going to drive all the way to Utah, we might as well drive to Zion National Park. I figured that it would be three hours up, a couple of hours at Zion, then three hours back. Well, it was an 11 hour trip, after stopping for lunch, dinner, and a few caches, including about 45 minutes at an Earthcache in Utah featuring dinosaur tracks.


Zion was cool, with all the colorful rock formations. I also finally gave in and bought a National Parks passport and stamped it with the Zion cancellation stamp. I wish I had bought one earlier since I've visited many other National Parks/Monuments.

All in all, we had a great time, getting to see all of our relatives. We didn't lose too much money and got to eat a lot of great food. Time to diet!

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