Our Whirlwind Vacation!

We were planning a two week vacation back east, but my hubby couldn't get the time off. So, our summer vacation has dwindled down to a long weekend. We left Friday, returning Monday.

Our first stop was Las Vegas, we stayed downtown at the Golden Nugget. They had a three-story tall water slide through a shark tank! Very Cool!!! We did a little celebrating... Today is our 22nd wedding anniversary... But, it's to bed early! We are being picked up at 3:50am. We are going white water rafting through the Grand Canyon!

The van took us to the Hualapai Indian Reservation in AZ, where we caught a school bus to the river... Have you ever been off-roading in a school bus? It's a wild ride!!! From there we boarded our raft.

We shared a raft with a very nice family of four from Florida. This whole white water rafting tour is run by the Hualapai Reservation. Each raft is captained by a member of the tribe.

I don't know if the term white water really applies to the Colorado River. It's about as white as a cup of hot chocolate! Hahaha! We noticed right away that none of the guides were wearing white. And for very good reason... we all got very very wet, and muddy, and dirty! This is mild compared to other rapids we went through. We went through a couple of class-6 stretches!

Here's my son. Doesn't he look like he's having a wet good time?

The scenery was beautiful... I won't bore you with too many scenery shots, but here is one of my hubby with the walls of the canyon behind him.

We took a break in the rafting action to hike up the side of a stream; through a water filled cave; to a gorgeous waterfall!

The outside air temp was 124F, the Colorado River water temp was 45F.

At about 35 miles from Lake Mead we were airlifted out of the Canyon by helicopter.

Isn't it beautiful? That chocolate brown strip at the lower right hand corner of the photo is the Colorado River. Whew, what a busy day! We got back to Las Vegas at about 8pm.

The next morning we left Las Vegas and headed home... on a whim, we stopped for the night at Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains. By this time my daughter's sniffles was a full fledged cold! So, no Lake activities for us.

We went over to Snow Summit, one of the the local ski resorts, and went for a speed run! We took the ski chair lift up the mountain and rode in these little toboggan things that zoom their way down the mountain.

From there we went for a little drive.... 4-wheeling in a mini-van is not as much fun as going in a school bus. We ended up in a beautiful little spot.

Then we went for a climb to try and catch a view of the lake.

Here it is and it was really worth the climb.
The next morning we walked through town. They even had an LSS!

We stopped at the marina and looked around. My daughter's cold was no better, so we scrapped the wave runner idea. They had a little replica pirate ship called "Time Bandit." It was pretty funny... it was sooooo small! Hahaha! Major tourist trap!

So that was our whirlwind vacation. It's back to work tomorrow!