Gigantic Road Trip, Part the First: Las Vegas and St. George, Utah

So! This summer we set out to sail our trusty Honda east to Aspen. With our baby! This is the kind of thing that would have sounded a four-alarm crazy alert for me before I had Micah. Whyyyyyy would anyone do that?! And now I am happy to be able to answer my own question: because it is awesomely fun! It seriously went so well I am still pinching myself (and expecting the other travel shoe to drop on some future trip). I want to write all about it, and will probably do so in one thousand small installments while said baby is sleeping. Here goes!

Eric was actually out of town at a conference in Baton Rouge just before we left. He got back after midnight on May 21, and we left town early May 23. More fuel for the crazy fire! I did my best with pre-packing and list-making and laundry-doing while he was away, and then Blessed Saint Hillary came over to play with Micah on the 22nd while we packed and pre-loaded the car (thank you!!!!) It took about an hour on Saturday morning to get everything crammed in the car, and then we hit the road. We reached Vegas about lunch time, and it was, true to legend, a bizarre adult fairy land rising up out of nowhere in the desert. It was also kind of stressful trying to find a place to eat on the go, where we wouldn’t have to pay for valet parking or pawn our jewelry to pay for some sort of gold-encrusted filet mignon (only 40% kidding). We finally found a decent sandwich place, which was unfortunately contaminated by the smoke from an old school steakhouse several doors down, one that the Rat Pack had frequented. On the other side of our sandwich shop, which was staffed by an innocent-looking teenager, was a plus-size strip club, complete with black-clad limo drivers idling out front. It was a bit of a weird experience! But the sandwiches were good, and we went on our merry way. Micah left a trail of cracker crumbs behind him.

We wove our way up past the golf course that is Mesquite, Nevada and into beautiful Utah: red rock as far as the eye could see. We had never been to Utah, and we fell in love right away. I provided all the seedy Vegas detail above not to judge, but to highlight our hilarious cultural whiplash at arriving in one of the most family-friendly places we’ve ever been: huge downtown playground, 20 high chairs at every restaurant. We felt out of place for only having one child!

This was the view from our quaint little hotel. The auto shop is not super scenic, but gives some idea of high those rocks are, towering over the city.

Someone was very excited to be out of the car and made a beeline for the forbidden zone of the bathroom.

There was a lot of public art downtown, including this rather fabulous shoe.

But this was my favorite part of St. George. There was a carousel, and we had never taken Micah on one, but we decided to give it a try. We thought it might scare him, but…he laughed uproariously the whole time! It was one of the most joyful moments of my life, for sure. There’s nothing better than seeing your child happy.

This tiny angel gives St. George his stamp of approval!