First, a little history:  Almost 20 years ago, Jen and I visited Las Vegas and our hotel room (in what was then the Las Vegas Hilton) looked right out at this Space Needle-like building with an amusement park on the top if it.  We could clearly see the roller coaster that went over the side of the platforms and the slingshot ride that went straight up a tower and dropped riders straight back down.  We could even hear the screams of terror from people hundreds and hundreds of feet above the desert floor being scared out of their wits.

I was scared out of my wits just thinking about it.  I didn’t want to go near that building or even touch its lengthy shadow.   I sensed that Jen had other thoughts about it, but realizing whom she had married, she did not pressure me to seek out these elevated thrills.  Nevertheless, to make up for anchoring Jen to the ground, I agreed to go on the New York, New York roller coaster and everything seemingly ended happily enough.

That six pack we bought in Bryce helped us celebrate the lax Vegas open container policy. It was a local brew called Evolution Ale.

Back to almost present day.  Zoe saw the tall skinny building, part of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino, last week and is very interested in the elevated thrills.  On top of that, the New York, New York roller coaster was not running when got to that part of the strip last Sunday, so she’s thrill-deprived.   Then there was my highly-publicized reversed stance on the Angels Landing Trail.

This sets the stage for me to really come through as a father in a way that I rarely ever do.  Recall that we still have one activity left in our 3 activity for $57 packages we purchased on our first day here.  The first two activities we chose were the dolphin/big cat tour at the Mirage and the CSI Adventure at the MGM.  Our last selection (and they give you a whole week to use them up) was the Adventuredome, an indoor amusement park at the Circus, Circus hotel. This was our main family activity today.  Jen might suggest that the sojourn she and I took early this morning to see the sun rise over Bryce Canyon was a more pleasant — if extremely cold — experience,  but the girls decided to sleep in and miss the subtle shadows emanating from the hoodoos just beyond the clouds of our frozen exhalations.

Not El Loco. This is one of the Adventruredome’s spinny guys that Jen and I passed on.

The Adventuredome is a fine place, especially since we were getting in at a reduced price, and we ended up spending more than five hours there.  We walked around, ate a few things*, played some video games*,  tiptoed through a laser beam maze*, played laser tag, watched some 3-D movies and rode some rides.

It was this last bit that I think earned me the Parenting Iron Cross.  Not only did I ride both roller coasters in thie place, I rode the yellow one —  El Loco — three times.  That’s right.  Me.  El Loco.  Three Times!  This is the roller coaster that has a 90-degree drop and -1.5 g forces, and an inverted drop and a whole slow motion upside down part.   It is also the one roller coaster that didn’t make me motion sick — the red Canyon Blaster, with its two loops and double barrel roll made Jen and I both queasy.

Everyone but Zoe passed on this ride.

It should be said that neither of these rides lasted more than 45 seconds and that 90-drop was only a fraction of the 1,000-foot precipice Jen had to navigate in Zion. (Also, Jen eventually agreed to a turn on El Loco just before we left the Adventuredome.  This is probably because I had started to make such a big deal about how brave I am.)  Plus I refused to go on any of the rides that spun or swung back and forth.  Zoe had to go on most of those herself.  (Though I did surprise everyone by going on the one that shoots you straight up to the top of the dome and then drops you down — almost like the one on the Stratosphere, in as much as baby aspirin is like morphine.)

The point is that by the time Zoe had gone on all the rides and had been on El Loco four times, her thirst for thrills had been sufficiently quenched.  Plus we had run out of time for her to go up on the Stratosphere.  I had started to get the impression that Jen was not that interested in going up there.  The Stratosphere is in a somewhat rundown section of the Strip and its casino/lobby smelled more like smoke than the other hotels.  It does not fill one with confidence vis a vis safely supporting one a thousand feet about the desert floor.

Me caught in the act of being brave

So, practically before Zoe knew what was happening, we were whisking everyone away from the questionable excitement and into a much more palatable experience, dinner at P.F. Chang’s on our way to the airport.  Then it was just a matter of a five-hour flight spanning most of a continent and the hours of 11 pm PST to 7 am EST to get us home.  Hopefully the Space Needle thing has been put to rest for at least another 20 years.

*All the starred activities cost extra money beyond the entrance fee.

We try to make every vacation day a special day, and generally we’re pretty successful at that. But today was one that exceeds even our normal standards of special: I think it was the first time ever that we’ve been able to cross two things off the 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up list. Two out of 500: that’s .004 percent of the entire list.

Who would believe that there are two places in the 500 Places list between Las Vegas and Zion Canyon? What’s more, none of the 500 are from Vegas or Zion. I mean, c’mon. Did you see that M&M wall? Seems strange that Mr. Fodor, or whoever wrote that book left that out.

But it does contain a visit to Hoover Dam, quite a wall in its own right, and our first stop today. No, it’s not made of M&Ms, or any other kind of candy. Yes, it does have a pretty good snack bar — the chicken avocado sandwich, today’s special of the day, was particularly impressive. Oh, and we did the Power Plant tour (which contained only one dam joke) and walked across the top of the dam into Arizona. Some people noticed Nadia’s UNH t-shirt and talked to us. They are from Barrington and have a daughter in Zoe’s school.

Terrific, fine. Cross it off the list.

Our next stop was in the Valley of Fire State Park, which seems an interesting inclusion to the 500 Places list, given that none of the nearby national parks are listed. Then again, it only costs $10 to get in and there are lots of cool petroglyphs and even more huge red rock formations all over the place. Not bad for somewhere we never heard of and would have totally driven right past if it weren’t for the book.

The highlight of this visit was spotting the heard of bighorn sheep on a hilltop about 500 yards from us. The petroglyphs were cool, too.

Check another one off the list. Some of these things we had to travel all the way to South America for, and here were two on the way between points A and B.

We eventually did make it to point B after a singularly interesting drive through Zion Canyon National Park. After about 20 switchbacks, the road goes right through a mountain. The tunnel is more than a mile long! The only thing that would make it better is if it were on the list.
Happily, we made it to our new accommodations — the ranch cabin we’ll be occupying for the next three nights — before the resaurant closed.

Approaching the Zion tunnel

We tend to find, on vacations, that everyone in the family has somewhat different priorities on where we should spend our time.  Fortunately, Las Vegas caters to all tastes.

Of all of us today, Zoe had the worst luck.  Her main focus was going on thrill rides.  We’d told her about the New York New York roller coaster and the rides on top of the Stratosphere (which Bob refused to go within a quarter-mile of when we were here long ago).  Alas, we kept an eye out all day and did not see any coaster running at NY NY.  Despite walking our feet off all day, we didn’t quite make it all the way up to the Stratosphere way in the north of the strip.  But Zoe is patient and we have promised to return next Saturday, before we fly out.  And luckily, she also likes dolphins, which we saw in large numbers at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden behind the Mirage.

Ceiling at the Forum Shops

Nadia had much better luck, given that her primary interests were Starbucks and gelato.  There is a Starbucks approximately every quarter-mile here (that probably isn’t even an exaggeration), and all of them have long lines.  She was also a big fan of the Forum Shops mall.  And although our main purpose going in was visiting a Starbucks for Nadia, we all thought the mall was pretty cool.  It had extremely elaborate “Italian” architecture, and a cloud-painted ceiling with lighting made to look like you’re strolling down a street in Rome at dusk.  Plus, curved escalators!  (There are a LOT of escalators here too.)

Sunset in Little Italy? No, just the Forum Shops at 10am.

Lanie was content just to take pictures of everything we saw.  In the elaborate and beautiful conservatory within the Bellagio, I had to stop her from individually photographing each flower.  She was also thrilled that we got back to our condo just in time to take a quick dip before the 9:30pm closing time at the pool.

Gelato!

Beyond that, there were several attractions that all of us enjoyed.  When paying the (rather exorbitant) entrance fee to the Secret Garden, we discovered we could buy a three-attraction pass for $57 — a tempting deal since individual attractions mostly cost around $30.  So we sprung for the pass and elected to try the “CSI” attraction where you study forensic clues and try to solve a crime.  A good time was had by all and we figured out the solution even before the clues made it totally obvious.

The four-storey M&M store also provided a fun diversion.  At the picture below, you can see Nadia and Lanie struggling to figure out which of the countless flavors and colors to choose.  We ended up sampling Pecan Pie, Holiday Mint, Vanilla Cupcake, Cherry, and Pretzel, among others.

Living painting at the Bellagio

We caught the fountain show at the Bellagio, and strolled through a simulated St. Mark’s Square and Doge’s Palace at the Venetian (where we recognized some details from our trip to Real Venice a few year’s back).  We saw real flamingoes, and a black swan, at the Flamingo.  When no one could agree on what they wanted for dinner, we found The Yard House, which served Mexican, pizza, burgers, sandwiches, AND pasta.  The girls bought post-dinner gelato and ice cream, even though we were all stuffed — which meant Bob and I got plenty of leftovers.

But the definite highlight of the day was at the end — the Cirque du Soleil Mystere show.  A kind usher upgraded our high-up seats to 8th row,
where performers soared over our heads and ran through the aisle behind and next to us.  (Bob got to reveal one of his special talents before the show, when one of the performers was throwing popcorn for guests to catch in their mouths and he was the only one to manage it on the first try.)  The show was amazing and also very funny, and we all highly recommend it.