Day 19: Bakersfield, CA--Williams, AZ

Naughty, bawdy, gaudy Las Vegas was on the docket for today, but not until after a relaxing morning of sleeping in for once! While we waited for Samantha to get back we had breakfast at the hotel and then I went swimming with the boys. (Anthony and I perfected our version of the--politically incorrect and banned in Ontario--sport of dwarf-tossing, by seeing how far we could chuck JonDavid into the air in the pool. Gimli: "No one tosses a dwarf!") After we checked out, Olga decided we had to do laundry, so we found a handy laundromat and she worked on clean clothes while JD and I went to a grocery store to replenish the depleted snack bin. We got some good snackage! So, ugh, it took forever to get started from California, and when we finally did, I realized that the clerk back at the grocery who had been so kind and helpful and signed me up for a shoppers club card which saved me $15 on my bill, had been so interested in hearing about our trip, that she forgot to give me the $40 cash back I had put on my debit card. We were an hour on our way by then and it was too late to turn back, so I gave Olga the receipt and she called the store. Well, the clerk remembered 1) our conversation and 2) that she had indeed forgotten to give me my cash back and so they credited back to my debit card! We thought that was remarkable, and such a relief!

Before we leave California I have to mention one other favorite memory of our long drive across that great expanse of state: the sound of JD in the back seat doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression! I had no idea that he even knew who the famed governor is, let alone knew how to mimic his Austrian accent!

It was another blistering hot day although happily we have been shielded from it by hotel and car air-conditioning. I glanced up at the thermometer this evening in the high desert in California before we crossed into Nevada and it was 115 degrees! By the time we got into the hotel in Arizona tonight it had cooled off to 80! Can you even believe the temperature dropping by 35 degrees and still being almost the hottest day of the summer back in New York?! (On the topic of weather - and I am probably jinxing myself by mentioning it, we have had rain ONCE since leaving New York three weeks ago...and we didn't even see that, it happened overnight in Chicago and we slept through it, and that storm was only because God was punishing Dave LeVan whose heart is black and full of sin. Just kidding--an old joke of Leslie's and mine from JBU)

So anyway, we crossed into Nevada, which is my 48th state--leaving only the two that are impossibly expensive to get to--and made our way to Las Vegas. It is basically on the way to the Grand Canyon anyway, so we had decided it would be interesting to see, and indeed it was. We found ourselves driving right down the strip. We parked and walked down to see the sights (quite a few of which are better left unseen!) But we got to see the amazing water fountain show at the Bellagio Hotel (where Oceans 11 was filmed) and walked through the lobby, then we went to a Chinese buffet for dinner and then headed out of town, stopping briefly at the Hoover Dam as we headed south to our hotel near the Grand Canyon. I probably wouldn't have made a special trip just to see Vegas, but since we were in the neighborhood anyway, it was definitely worth the detour. We will stay here in Williams both tonight and tomorrow night so that we can spend the full day tomorrow seeing the sights. If you didn't see them yet, I posted a few more pictures, mostly of Oregon, on facebook.