Grand Canyon and the stuff that happened before..

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So because I have no real notes, Ill write from more recent stuff I can remember. Basically we have hit our highlights- we spent the first night with our lovely but ill friends in Olympia- oh my gosh they were so sick, just got married a few days before- and still they had a beautiful spaghetti dinner and told us their wedding story and pictures and basically a one year recap since we last saw them! Very gracious. Long day of driving from the mossy wet forrests near Portland, along the colombia river gorge, to dry dry desert stuff in Iowa. Alex had a bonanza at this Cabelas store in Twin Falls. It was like a destination store- a taxidermy destination of camping and hunting everything. I got some boots, Alex got a thousand yard stare. Also, getting back to the truck, some folks were looking at our trailer and they asked if we were engineers. The guy was an engineer with a machine shop and said he was impressed. That floated our boat for awhile! We drove into Nevada, into the dark. This old guy in Cabelas said- take the interstate, I don't know about your road... Just think of me when your in the mountains...' in a kind of grim way. We did find ourselves in some mountains, in the dark, pulling off the highway on a little ranch road that became made of soft sand and washouts but wound up into some higher ground and we pitched the tent in record time because it was freezing and windy. After a good sleep, woke up to find ourselves in this beautiful range, tumbleweeds and sage brush everwhere and the sun just rising. It was pretty cool. Long drive to Las Vegas with a super headwind. Vegas was actually a bit of a problem. I think I got overstimulated. At one AM I was crying over some ribs in our hotel bufferaunt. I lost almost 10 dollars to gambling! My big win was in Pennies, I won 300. Very excite. Ill close on Vegas, because the next day was much better.

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