Day Ten - Yosemite to Las Vegas

We were up again around 7am to get all packed up ready to leave the B&B - but not before some more yummy breakfast to set us up for the day and a chance to pat the cute dogs again. Today was similar but French Toast instead of Waffles. We didn't eat quite as much today and the owners made less for us, they were quite bemused by how little we (including the Kiwi couple) ate! Apparently, most guests eat them out of everything they serve and they have to cook more!

Today, we needed to drive the Tioga Pass through the centre of the National Park to get to the other side and to head south towards Vegas. The Tioga Pass road was beautiful, much more snowy than yesterday and some amazing lakes there were still half frozen.

Beautiful frozen lake in the National Park

Our original plan was stop have a night stop over somewhere between Yosemite and Vegas to break up the journey. When we had been driving for about 3 hours we stopped off to get a coffee and we hooked up the MacBook Pro to the free wifi to suss out where we were. We decided that staying in the middle of nowhere was a crap idea and that we should just suck it up and drive to Vegas today instead of tomorrow. We checked out hotwire.com and booked a 5 star hotel for $100US and got going again. Hotwire gave us the Aria hotel on the south end of the strip - slightly better than some dodgy Motel8 for the same price or dearer in the middle of the desert!

Just keep going straight for another 4 hours.....

The drive was long but still entertaining. The CA-168 was so twisty and turny with lots of dips and drops in the road it was like a roller coaster! Jo hated it but I loved it! Jo would see a sign that indicated 'windy road for next 16 miles' and just groan. Kathryn & Travis - you could go here for your next roller coaster holiday :)

Next corner in about 400 miles.

We hooked up the iPod and I have to admit that listening to Lady Gaga in the middle of the desert did make us feel like we were in Priscilla Queen of the Desert. A bit of Kings of Leon quickly sorted that out though. The music played like a soundtrack to our movie as we drove mile after mile through the middle of no-where.

Need some Gas? Last Gas stop for ten years...

Although the drive was long, the terrain flat and roads completely straight, it's so unusual and different that didn't really get that boring. There was always something to look at - if it wasn't the bikers on Harley's coming towards us, it was the cows roaming freely, crossing the California/Nevada border, a fireworks factory in the middle of no-where - pretty entertaining really!

Completely random firework factory in the desert. Good place to put it I guess!

We drove into Vegas around 8pm just as the sun was setting. The place is sprawling to say the least with new housing developments on the edge of town still being built and going for as far as the eye could see. Our GPS took us to the Strip in good time and the temperature was still 101F we arrived at Aria. Think Crown Towers, but bigger and better.

The amazing fluffy cloud bed.

We parked the car and took out all our stuff and walked what seemed like about 7 miles to the Hotel Lobby. The hotel is pretty flash and after about 9 hours in the car we looked quite frankly ridiculous in shorts, singlets and trainers and both carrying a huge backpack on our backs, one on our front, Jo carrying our laundry in a G-Star bag and me with all our food and teabags in another bag. To say that people stared at us was an understatement. Still, who cares - we are in Vegas baby! The room was luxurious, everything ultra modern, spacious and fully controlled by an electronic dash next to the bed. Want the curtains to open at 9am? Sure, just set the timer. Want the TV off and lights to dim in half and hour? Done. Pretty cool really.

We were cheap today and had some cereal for dinner as we were dog tired and just wanted to relax. This was pretty easy as the bed was magical, like sleeping on a big white fluffy cloud! Sweet dreams.