Leg 8: Los Angeles to Las Vegas

July 14

          Saturday morning came and we packed up as I walked a few blocks to the mechanics to pick up the car. The gentleman there informed me that he could not fix my car until Monday because he needed a part from the Saturn dealership. I asked him if he could get it today because we really needed to leave that night to get to Vegas and he said 'Sorry, no'. So I weighed my options, sought out a mechanic to ask him for the key to my car so I could get something out of it, got in, drove away and sped off with an engine sans a fan motor to keep it cool. So I drove in a calculated manner, got the car down to the Saturn dealer near the airport and waited.

          And waited.....

          Three hours later, I strolled into the garage and found the mechanic working on my car and learned that while it was fixable, the last mechanic screwed up the inside of the fan motor area and he had to do some work on that first. Another hour later and the car was ready. I thanked the mechanic profusely, paid for the service and sped back to Deidre's. Shawn and Siobhan packed the car while I cleaned up the rest of the stuff for me and Halley in the apartment and headed out of town in record time.

Leg 9: 278 Miles

We drove through the evening towards Las Vegas and arrived at 10pm. We had no A/C but the car was running, which is all we could ask for. Halley was a bit cramped in the back of the car with some of our stuff and Siobhan, plus when we got out for her to go to the bathroom, she had trouble finding a spot to go since there was no grass or any scents in the desert. Finally after much coaxing, she went but this would be a common theme in later trips as she got older.

Me, Halley and Shawn in Vegas 7/14/01

I checked us into a Howard Johnson hotel at the end of the Vegas strip and we all decided to take a walk down the strip to see all the lights of Las Vegas. It was amazingly bright and really warm for nearly midnight.  Feeling the urge to gamble a little, I left Halley with Shawn and Siobhan while I went into Bellagio for a little Blackjack action. 30 minutes turned into 45, I won about $60 and turned down an escort with a solid dose of naivety. When I walked out, Halley was going nuts and Shawn was clearly in a bad mood. She seemed to have some serious separation anxiety issues that were never this apparent to me. Shawn and Siobhan wanted to go explore, as Shawn's 21st birthday was coming up in a couple days and he was excited to explore the ability to drink on the sidewalks of Vegas. 

             Halley and I went to the hotel, eating a little along the way and saw a casino that looked blown out from a fire that we later learned was used in the first Rush Hour movie. We slept comfortable that night in the air conditioned HoJo, only waking up when Shawn and Siobhan came in the room to sleep around 6am. Shortly thereafter, we had to wake up to head to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon by that evening, and thus began a two day journey to Red Rocks.