A quick detour

So after a great 3 night break from driving, and adventurous stay in Zion National Park.. we left Saturday morning set out to arrive in Fabulous Las Vegas!! We were both excited to see Vegas, as neither of us had been.. and it was only a short 2.5-3 hour drive from where we were, a nice change! So we set off due to arrive in the early afternoon. However, the one thing that still remained for us to do was finding a place to stay... in planning the trip I had been amazed and relieved at how cheap it was to get a decent hotel in Vegas, anything from 25-40 dollars. What I didn't consider, was that our dates of arrival could shift enough to cause us to arrive on a Saturday instead of a Sunday... We stopped at the information center when we crossed into Las Vegas and I used a free service they have there to try and find the range of rates for an available room that night.. Being that it was a Saturday night, the cheapest room was around $95, and that was for something a mile from the strip! Anywhere else this wouldn't have been a surprise, except it was 3+ times more than we were expecting to have to spend for a room there...

SO, in the spirit of road trips and after some research about rates and my moms help on the internet back home.. we decided that if we could just arrive in Vegas on Sunday night we would be able to find a room on the strip for a quarter of the price. Instead of driving all the way to Vegas, we drove through Lake Meade National recreation area and found a campground near the lake for $10.. that's the kind of budget we like! The detour ended up working out well, as we got to see Lake Meade which is a gorgeous, crystal blue lake surrounded by deserty-looking mountains.. a very different view from the lakes we are used to seeing surrounded by forest and cottages. The campground also happened to be just 5 miles from Hoover Dam, so we took a quick trip in the evening down to see that. Other than that, we just got to bed early again in our extremely hot tent and NOW were looking forward to getting up in the morning to head for Vegas, less than an hour away.. and with a room already booked for two nights at the Excalibur right on the strip!