Day Six Recap - Next Stop: Las Vegas!

So Day 6 started off a little bit on a sour note. Filip thought that the trip from Denver to Las Vegas would take between 6-7 hours... boy, was he wrong. The trip actually takes around 12 and a half hours. So Danielle wasn't too thrilled with Filip the night of Day 5 or the following morning. But we managed to get up decently early and repack the car. A quick stop to pick up breakfast and then on the road.

Leaving Denver itself took a little longer than expected thanks to morning traffic, but once we got past the city and headed into the mountains it was smooth and clear.




The Rocky Mountains are truly breath-taking. The drive is both thrilling, scary, and tough. You climb to over 10,000 feet at the highest point and your ears constantly pop. There is nothing like the sheer size and majesty of the mountains to remind you of your place in the universe. Words don't really do it justice so we'll jump to the pictures. The pictures don't really sum it up either, but it's as close as we can get. We definitely recommend you go over to the photo album to check out the full array of images.







There were parts of the drive through the mountains where we were heading down 7% or 6% grades and the highway had runaway truck ramps going off the road.






We went through several tunnels.





We drove through famous ski resorts like Vail, Aspen, and Copper.





The cats ended up sleeping part of the trip, but the exciting parts of the drive in the beginning definitely had them excited.




After we got out of the mountains, we headed into Utah. The one thing we noticed is that the Colorado signs were nice and clean and the Utah one looked like it hadn't been cleaned or changed since it was originally put in place.




Utah was filled with new breath-taking sites, mostly grand plateaus and rock formations. We stopped at a couple of lookout points and took in the incredibly clean air, stunning views, and almost mind-boggling canyons.





We eventually got into the plateau plains of Utah and saw tons of cattle, buffalo, and isolated ranches. It struck me as the place Fil's mom and dad might want to retire to. No neighbors for miles and nothing but beautiful open nature all around you.








We looked for polygamist Mormon compounds from one of our favorite shows, "Big Love", but alas Bill Paxton was no where to be found.



We also passed Joseph, Utah. This one's for you, Joe!



We didn't get pictures after it got dark, but we entered Arizona and then Nevada without any incident. Arizona was a bit of a scary drive because it consisted of winding, fast roads heading down out of the plateaus at a sharp angle. The road was surrounded by huge rock formations, which we could only see silhouetted against the night sky. It reminded us of some racing video games. Nevada was pretty much all flat and we think we passed through desert mostly, but couldn't really see to tell for sure. The night sky in Nevada was amazing. You could see so many stars and so brightly.
One funny note was the two cities we passed on the way to Las Vegas, which each had their own casinos. We kept trying to figure out who would go to a casino which was only 50 miles away from Vegas?!
Vegas was an incredible sight driving in at night. We could see the massive spread of lights from over 20 miles away! Again, it's hard to describe but rest assured it's worth doing once in your life.

We checked in at the end of a long day to the Marriott Residence Inn in South Vegas and were pleasantly surprised to find we were upgraded to a two bedroom suite! Why is that nice? Because it meant we could lock the cats in the other room and got our first solid night of sleep in three nights! Woo-hoo!