Jacksons in Nevada (part two; with guest appearances in Arizona)

"And I would walk 500 miles..." Ok drive is more like it.

As I mentioned in my last post after a little time in Vegas

we headed south... 

...to the Arizona/Nevada border and...

The Hoover Dam!

 For only being a couple hours away, Steven and I never considered

actually going there.  I don't know why, we just didn't think we'd see it.

My mom suggested we go, and I'm glad she did.

It's pretty impressive.

They completed this bridge two years ago and it diverts the main 

traffic so that it doesn't go over the dam anymore.  It's a massive bridge.

This was also our first time seeing Lake Mead.

My parents have already seen the dam, bridge, and been to Lake
Mead, so it was nice of them to do it again for us :)

Gigantic spillway

Vortex of Doom.

You can't quite tell from the picture, but this is pretty

much a massive hole that would make a wicked awesome

water slide of death.

Love this picture

My parents are awesome

Debbie is slightly (hugely) afraid of heights, but bless
her, she tries :)

Looking directly down the side of the dam.

If we'd had more time we probably would've taken the dam tour (yep, I said it).  The dam is pretty amazing, and one day I would like to take the tour. It's awesome how you can just walk right on top of the dam. We did go out of our way to drive over the huge bridge. 
We headed back north on I-15 and stopped in Mesquite for a yummy buffet dinner.  By the time we made it back to Cedar City we had driven just over 500 miles.  All in a single Saturday. I can't tell you how much I love trips like this.

Here is a lovely picture of our journey :)
We are so grateful that my parents came down and that they are not only willing, but love as much as we do, to randomly drive everywhere and explore new places.  We are glad that we could convince them to stay a little later Sunday and enjoy good food and dessert before they headed back to Salt Lake. 

Jacksons in Nevada (part one)

This past weekend my parents came to visit :)

So we went a few places

We headed west toward Nevada, and stopped at Modena.

We mostly wanted to see if anyone actually lived there.  Steven

and my mom claim they saw a woman and two dogs.  I think they

may have been of the spirit variety.... :)

People or no, Modena had some nifty run down old buildings.

Just over the Nevada Border is Cathedral Gorge state park.

Steven and I have been there and we really liked it, so we

were happy to show my parents. Plus at the time it was raining 

and really windy in Cedar, and for a brief moment we were able 

to escape it.

The rock formations all look like melting clay.

There are very narrow canyons? They aren't quite tunnels, but they

are fun to run down and explore through.

Making Steven pose with his mummy-in-law.

Dream playground!

The rain eventually caught up to us and slowly increased.

By the time we got back to the car we were pretty soggy.

 It really is neat little state park.

There is a little highway that runs along the eastern border of Nevada called 

highway 93.  From where we were it heads south through Caliente and Alamo, Nevada and comes out 20 miles north of Las Vegas.  For a while we've wanted to check it out.  We figured Nevada might have decent weather...

I guess it is still January..and this was only for about half an hour of our journey.  The farther south we got, the better the weather was.  It stayed pretty windy though.  It was more scenic than we realized, and some of the towns we passed were really neat.  I didn't get pictures though.

Since we were only 20 miles away, we decided to head to Vegas.  We checked out Fremont street in the really old part of Las Vegas.  I love the look of the older hotels.  I didn't get any pictures because I'm a little paranoid and was afraid to take my camera out; it's kind of a shady area to a sheltered little Utah girl.

We didn't stay long in Vegas before heading to Henderson and then to someplace I never thought we'd really see, or just hadn't considered it:

But we'll save those pictures and that story for later :)

Discoveries

Over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend we made a few new-to-us 

discoveries

 First we discovered some caves

 Then I discovered that I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to dark

caves when I can't see what's in front of me.

 To backtrack, this is where we were:

Snow Canyon State Park

 It's a very pretty state park, with lots of places to

climb and explore.

 These were the Lava Caves that kind of sneak up on you

as you're going along one of the trails.

You can't quite get the perspective of how big this cave really is.

 That bright light behind my hubby is the opening to the cave.

 It gets really dark really quick and we didn't have

flashlights so we flashed our cameras to try and see ahead of us.

I easily freak myself out by picturing all sorts of monsters

and beasts ready to jump out of the dark and tear us to shreds..

 Deeper inside the cave the light feels so far away.

Next time we'll remember flashlights.

 All around the cave entrance the rock looks like it's melting.

 Then we saw this and had to climb to the top.

 Half way there

 The view to either side

 Traversing back down

 Just by the south entrance to the park there is a little

trail that leads to this arch.  It's a neat trail, and apparently

there are some more caves around it, but we'll save that for

another day.

 We ran into some ward friends and chatted for a bit, 

then we went into St. George and did a bit of shopping.

Despite not really being in the mood to shop, we made 

out like bandits with all of the great deals we found!

It doesn't happen often, so we were pretty excited.

To top of the night we had some of this for dessert:

 Pretty much our new favorite ice cream.

I love long weekends with my hubby