from Las Vegas to San Diego - June 9th

The next day, we enjoyed lunch at Paris and took a walk along Strip.
The ambiance of Las Vegas was utterly different from the national parks we visited. By visiting both side of the places, our trip was enriched and became unforgettable one.

Lastly, I want to mention how we were able to endure the long drive we had as showed below.

- San Diego to Zion --- 7 hours
- Zion to Yellowstone --- 10 hours
- Grand Teton to Salt Lake City --- 5 hours
- Salt Lake City to Las Vegas --- 5 hours
- Las Vegas to San Diego --- 4.5 hours

It is all thanks to a Pod Cast. My partner acquired various shows such as Rakugo (Japanese comic storytelling) and radio talk show by comedians like (My loved Bakusho-Mondai etc..) from Pod Cast. It kept us from tiring when we drove for a long time and make us laugh quite a lot. I even felt like driving more to listen to the Pod Cast.

from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas - June 8th

Olympic Monument------------------------------------- Scenery from a car window-----------
In Salt Lake City, we did nothing other than visiting Temple Square for about 10 min., where reverent Mormons gather in. Since we are not Mormon, it was just like a beautiful park with buildings and gardens. We left there without being solicited, and headed for Las Vegas, our last place to stay.

After almost 5-hour drive, we arrived at MGM Grand Hotel and Casino where we stayed, and then enjoyed Buffet there. It was okay for me, but for my partner, the food was not satisfying for the price. He tried Sushi, and it came with cheese inside a roll, maybe that's the main reason he didn't like it.

To get a fresh air, we strolled from MGM to Bellagio and looked at the famous fountain show. My image of Las Vegas was just a big and an artificial city where everybody smoke and enjoy casino, so I was wandering why so many people were fascinated by Las Vegas. The question in my mind was solved after the fountain show came with music "My Heart Will Go On", the theme song of Titanic. It was extremely impressing in the twilight.

Though we were exhausted, our last big event on this trip was the well-known show by Cirque du Soleil called "KA". I cannot express it in a word, but truly want to recommend everyone who goes to Las Vegas see it.

At the end of our journey, of course, we didn't want to lose our shirt. However, my partner was eager to compensate some of our expenses by winning at casino. Therefore, at around 11 pm after the show, we started playing at casino. I lost about $50 until 2 pm, (it's not too bad as a first experience) but my partner gained $350, and as he predicted, a part of our expenses was covered by his fortune :)

from Grand Teton to Salt Lake City -June 7th

I jumped out of a bed in the morning, and realized that there was snow everywhere.
Everyone seemed to have been impressed by the snow lying all over the field. But it was not only snow that many people were seriously looking into a telescope but moose browsing.



With our binocular, the detailed action of moose could not be captured, but the kind couple who possessed a telescope let us look at the moose :) They were amazing with big horns.




We decided to stay in Grand Teton as much as time permit, and didn't leave for Salt Lake City until the last minute(3pm).

Thanks to this decision, we had time for a 3-hour trek and were able to meet a bear and bear cubs, moose, a mule deer, squirrels and marmots etc.

Being satisfied, we hit the road at 3 pm for Salt Lake City. It was, again, a long drive, but we were able to arrive 8 pm as scheduled.

from Yellowstone to Grand Teton - June 6th

I was badly anticipating visiting Grand Teton, because many friends commented they liked it very much and the irrefutable beauty of the park is incomparable. So, it was going to be the best place for me too. However, it turned into a terrible stay unfortunately, due to my acute headache and sore throat coming from my cold that I caught the day before.
Having said that, I have an inexorable character that I could not give up going out to see the Grand Teton. Therefore, after a while rest at Jackson Lake Lodge, I just had to hang in there, and went out with my partner.
By the way, the name of Grand Teton derives from the name of mountain "Grand Teton". From the lobby of our hotel, the Grand Teton was invisible, but a series of mountains captivated our heart.

The deer we ran across was there with a fawn, and maybe because of the maternal instinct, it intimidated us who were even in a car, but at a 5 meter distance from them.




The hotel we stayed was so fabulous that we had dinner at their restaurant. The crab cake I ordered was right my favorite :)

@ Yellowstone - June 5th

When we think of Yellowstone, the first thing which comes to our mind should be the geysers. They vigorously erupt once in a while, some periodically and others irregularly. The most famous geyser is called Old Faithful (left photo), that comes out every 65 - 92 minutes. Although the visitor center shows prediction on a board, we were able to tell when the next time the geyser will erupt by the number of the people gathering to see around the geyser. It's worth seeing it once in your life, but once is enough, in my opinion. The world is too big to visit everywhere we want in one life. Anyway, I preferred finding animals than observing geysers :)

- Today's animals -

a herd of bison
elk
Spectators of a coyote family


coyotes (Mother and 3 puppies)
Red bellied marmot

@ Yellowstone - June 4th

Yellowstone can be divided into roughly 5 parts and the figure 8-shaped loop road enable us to access all these 5 countries.

- Geyser Country(Old Faithful)
- Mammoth Country
- Roosevelt Country(Tower falls area)
- Canyon Country
- Lake Country

The hotel we booked for the first night was in Mammoth Country at the northwest of the eight and the following two nights were in Geyser country, southwest.

When we stepped out the Mammoth Hot spring Hotel in the morning, a guy talked to us (or maybe was mumbling himself away) "there is noting to see here!"

Being shocked we headed for the Mammoth Terrace anyway, and found out he was not wrong... sort of... The Mammoth terrace is a characteristic phenomenon which was covered with thick beds of travertine. We cannot see it very often, but it is not more than that.













Going through the Roosevelt Country, we visited Canyon Country. There is a great scale of canyon which is called "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" and according to a guide book, the length of the canyon is 32km. Yellow Stone river goes through at the bottom of the canyon and two spectacular falls were mesmerizing tourists.
We were able to approach the canyon using various view points in North Rim and South Rim, and enjoyed it from different angles.

These are some of the animals we ran into today!

Bison
Elk(female?)
Deer

from Zion to Yellowstone - June 3rd

- Zion -
Court of the Patriarches

Looking the Court of Patriarches lastly, we headed for Yellowstone. It resulted 10-hour driving. Salt Lake City is an only big city between Zion and Yellowstone (it was not actually big, though), and other than that, ranches stretched on both sides of I-15 as far as we were able to see.
FYI, the left hand side of the photo is the scenery of a ranch a bit north of Salt Lake City and the right hand side is of the desert area near Las Vegas. The surface of the mountain suddenly changes when we come near Salt Lake City. Can you see the big difference?

We were warmly welcomed by the herd of bisons right after getting entrance of Yellowstone. We did not know by then that it was not allowed to approach within 70 feet, so my partner excitingly got out of the car and greedily took a picture of bisons. It is said that bison is the most dangerous animal in the park since, though they are wild animals, they look passive and quiet that incline people come close to them without knowing their huge power. I was truly relieved afterwards that nothing had happened to my partner.

It was after sunset (9pm) that we arrived at our Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel in the park. On the way, we were also able to observe the Mule deer's dinner time.

@ Zion & Bryce Canyon - June 2nd

One of the pleasures to visit National Parks is to walk on trails and enjoy sceneries. It is unassilable that even a short trecking will amuse us with proximity to nature and wildlife.

To begin with, we tried a riverside walk trail.The end of the wheel-chair accessible trail was the entrance of another trail called Nallows hike where we soak ourselves in the Virgin river and hike as much as we want. Being wet, we walked for about 1 hour one way. The cold water shrank me from proceeding further and let us turn back, yet none of other hikers did not stop at the point we did. They seemed not to have been feeling cold and pushed ahead in the river. Since this river becomes menace once in a while depending on the weather, it is important to be well-prepared.

The first animal we encountered on the trail was a mule deer. It was the first opportunity for me to see a wild deer with horns browse in the field. He was adoring :)












Bryce Canyon is another National Park located close to Zion. Because it is only one and a half hour drive from Zion, most people prefer to visit both. Obviously there was no reason for us not to visit there. Unlike Zion where there are variety of unique geography of valleys, Bryce Canyon consists of various horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters. Several hiking courses are connected to each other and we could choose the route depending on a time and level. No matter where we look down from, the object we observe is the only one ... I don't think it requires more than half a day here to see the entire park, yet the scene was magnificent.

Vacation - Starting June 1st through 9th

Yellowstone is the America's first designated National Park and is famous for the wildlife. Last week, my partner and I were on vacation and took a trip to Yellowstone. We incidentally visited Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park and Las Vegas during this vacation.

This map is a rough direction of our journey that covers 6 states, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.

June 1st
From San Diego to Zion National Park
We departed our house at around 6:30am and took I-15 North for Zion. Due to some congestion at the area shortly passed Las Vegas, it took us about 7 hours to arrive at Zion.
As soon as finding our space in the Watchman camping ground I booked beforehand, we built up our tent and prepared to camp out for two nights. Being exhausted after a long drive, we just relaxed reading a book and felt a fresh breeze blow.

Just for the record... I could not take a shower for two nights. There was a shower room belonged to the RV park outside of the park's gate, yet we had no idea that there was a time limitation for outsiders. Only solution to freshen up was to use a tap water and wipe ourselves.

After sunset, an open air fire and a starry sky gave us an energy for tomorrow. We slept sound without being attacked any animals. Phew... :)