Summer Time Travels Part 1

Before my belly gets too large for me to want to do anything I took a couple summer trips around the southwest ...this endeavor lead me to the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Tucson and Tombstone all in one week! It was a busy week, my cousin Jake from Michigan who had never been to the Southwest came for a visit and I have to show him around so here is a recap and a few pictures of our week together.
The Hoover Dam and Sin City
The Hoover Dam is no longer the iconic pass over to get from Arizona to Nevada, but a new bridge has been constructed in order to make traffic flow faster and prevent onlookers of the dam from slowing down traffic.The new route to take if you want to experience the history of the dam is to go over the new bridge from the AZ side to NV and then backtrack down a windy road to get to the dam, where i might add you also get a pretty good view of the new magnificent bridge they have constructed.  Once you get down to the dam you can walk around provided its day light, or if night time you can go to the parking lots that were previously there to take pictures.

Once stopping at the Hoover Dam, we heading into the bright light city of Las Vegas!  As many of you know we travel here often to see my parents who moved there about 7 years ago, but for Jake this was a new place so we had to show him a little bit of the Las Vegas Strip!  We spent our days hanging out in my parents pool soaking up the sun, some cold beverages, and of course watermelon!  Then the evenings were spent with a family BBQ and hanging out, my Aunt and Uncle from Utah were down and my brother flew in from California too!  One evening we ventured down to the strip and for a boy from Michigan i think it was an eye opener, all the people handing out "cards" on the strip, everyone walking around, the HUGE drinks, the crazy hotels and all the lights and excitement.  We ate dinner at Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino and then walked a bit over to the Bellagio and Paris hotels!  The Bellagio was playing their water show synchronized to "Proud to be an American" for the July 4th holiday!

 The Fourth of July!  Always a fun holiday to celebrate with swimming pools, warm weather, BBQs, fireworks, etc!  This year we decided to do the most All-American activity i could think of and attend a baseball game!  We headed down to Chase Field to see the Dbacks take on the San Diego Padres, and unfortunately it ended in a loss but we had a lot of fun!  The smell of hot dogs, popcorn and watching the little ones eat ice cream was all great to take in, and after the game we sat back in awe just like children watching a wonderful 20 minute firework display from our seats as the roof was then opened!  Happy Independence Day America!