Day 7 - Chopper & Vegas

One of our better purchases was a polystyrene cooler that we keep filled with ice to keep the drinks & chocolate chilled. This is kept safely stowed behind the passenger seat in the car.
The downside is that apparently when performing a 'sharp' 180 degree turn at speed the cooler is prone to tip slightly or even completely fall over spilling pools of melted ice in the car. Go rental car!


This all happened whilst searching for breakfast which was delivered courtesy of IHOP. As much as we like to give the yanks stick, they do know how to cook a damn fine breakfast. Although in this case they got the order wrong, and later forgot the pancakes. How much of this was down to a brummy accent and how much is down to the Mexican waiter we cannot tell...


Despite our Grand Canyon intensive day yesterday, we felt that we had some unfinished business back in the hole in the ground. We felt an aerial assault on one of the seven wonders of the world was in order so we set in search of a chopper pilot to take us in. We settled on the aptly named Maverick Helicopters and with the Top Gun soundtrack blasting in our ears we set upon our flyby. Check out the montage and let us know what you think, bear in mind that we don't exactly have a video editing suite here.

Once the sortie was safely completed we got back in the car and charged towards Vegas. The drive was fairly monotonous apart from visiting the Dyson (sorry I mean Hoover) Dam. No idea how much sponsorship Hoover paid for that name. The dam was pretty impressive, there was lots of water, concrete and everything. It was also 102F so we didn't hang around and high-tailed it to Vegas!

Achievement: 1500 miles driven.

Our hotel has a roller-coaster!

Guess which hotel we're staying in! Hint: It has both a casino and our money. Actually we didn't do too bad on our pitiful betting on the first night. Mark nearly doubled on roulette and once you took off the drinks bill ($17 for 2 Buds), he nearly broke even. On Martin's round, he found a rather cheaper bar which was only $2 for two drinks, so he got 2 rounds in before it was Mark's turn to pay $10 for the following round. Mark's not too sure he got the best deal here :)


Following his winning streak, Mark had no idea how to cash the chips in, so he grabbed his chips and ran which apparently isn't how the casinos operate. After a lengthy discussion with the Pit Boss he was allowed to keep his winnings and asked to move along.

Achievement: Won in Vegas.


After a few bouts of Video Poker with mixed results (Martin lost, Mark won), we called it a night and walked back to the hotel to collapse and do it all again the next day.