We got there Sunday morning and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Luxor and were pleasantly surprised at how nice the rooms were! For the price we paid, I wasn't expecting much but they were really nice! Whew! After dropping off our stuff, we decided to hit the strip! We walked for quite a while that day and had fun taking pictures along the way! Finally later that evening, we headed back to our hotel and figured we better get some sleep before our big day on Monday.
Monday, we were up early and after grabbing some oatmeal and yogurt at McDonald's, we ran (literally) out the door to meet our tour for the day! The tour description said it was an "extreme ATV tour"! We were so excited! We hadn't been on ATV's since our trip to Mexico two years ago! The rides were no where near the same! Never in my life have I sent up so many prayers! We were out in the El Dorado Canyon and the terrain was harsh! We were up and down hills that I would never have ridden on, if I had been thinking clearly! In fact, another lady about my age in our group, chose to sit those hills out. She had no desire to take a risk.....a few times, I considered joining her but for some reason I just had to experience it all!
It didn't end well for a couple in our group. The lady my age that brought her niece and nephew to Vegas probably should have picked a different tour. This wasn't the tour for them. The girl and aunt both tipped their quads over a couple of times. Then finally towards the end of the tour, we had gone up a huge hill and most of us were down, waiting for those two. The girl was coming down the hill super slow. Her aunt must not have had her brakes on or hit a patch of really loose gravel or something because as we all sat there watching, she came around a corner, smacked into the back of her niece's quad, the niece flew off her quad, the aunt flew over the niece's quad, her own quad flew over both of them and everyone came to rest a ways down the hill! I seriously thought they were dead! It was a terrible thing to watch. We all pulled off our helmets and went running. After about 45 minutes, we had 2 life flight helicopters, 4 state troopers, one fire truck and one ambulance at the scene! The niece was fine, they were worried that the aunt had possibly punctured a lung. After they flew her out of there, we resumed the tour....it was lunch time at that point and following lunch was the mine tour.
We learned so much that day about the history of mining in Nevada! It was amazing! We were at the Techatticup Mine in El Dorado Canyon. It was so interesting to learn all about it! Finally it was time to actually go into the mine.....which by the way, was rumored to be haunted! :) Even better!! We were soooo excited! In the end, we got some cool pictures, heard even more cool stories, got to see what it was like to be a few hundred feet underground in a mining tunnel and most importantly....got out alive (there were many who were not so lucky in the past)! We pretty much made it back to the hotel and collapsed!
Tuesday we had planned on walking the strip and taking in all the sights! It was hot......soooooo hot. We were sweat balls! But we walked and walked and walked all over that place! The day before (while we were collapsed on our beds) we had seen in a brochure an ad for zip lines! I called them and asked if we could go Tuesday afternoon. So after seeing the sights on the strip, we headed back to get ready for our afternoon excitement!!! I was so nervous! Flying through the sky, hundreds of feet off the ground sounded so scary to me!!! I could hardly stand it! I tried not to let Sabrina see how nervous I was but by the time we finally got there, I was petrified!! The good news was, our guides for the afternoon were awesome! One was very calm, quiet and strong (which I found out later was a very good thing!!!) The other one was a punk from California, with tattoo's and a bleached blond mohawk. His sense of humor endeared him to me and we were instant 'best friends'!! Haha, after finding out how many children we had, he decided to call me "Mama-son' for the rest of the day. Not sure how that makes any sense but we were buddies from then on out. We laughed our heads off the entire time! Usually when Sabrina and I are together, there are laughs non-stop but this time, we weren't the ones telling the jokes! The bus ride up the mountain to get to the lines was so freaky! It was a narrow strip of gravel that they called a road. I can't tell you how many times I peeked out my window and couldn't see the road under us! I seriously could not wait to get off that bus! By the time we got to the top, I figured I could do anything after surviving the bus ride up!
Nothing can prepare you for being pushed off a cliff. Nothing. There was a father with his two teenage kids and then the two of us in our group. They went first and then it was our turn! Holy Guacamole! Sabrina went and then it was my turn......as he pushed me, I felt my heart stop briefly and then instinct kicked in and I reminded myself that I was still alive! Haha...then I started to enjoy the ride! On the first line, we dropped 450 feet in 15 seconds! Sounds crazy but you don't feel like losing your lunch or anything! Before I knew it, it was time to pull on my brake and slam into the platform! I was totally pumped after that first line! What an amazing feeling to be flying through the sky!! The third line was a little crazy....it was one of 2 negative lines, meaning it had a downward slope and an upward slope in it. Because of the high winds and our size, we didn't make it to the platforms, which means one of our guides has to shimmy his way out to us, tether us to him and then shimmy his way back, hand over hand while he's hanging upside down! This is where his strength came into play! :) It was about 109 degrees up there, and the wind was whipping pretty hard but he was a beast! It's a little unnerving to be sitting out there, half way between where you started and where you should be, a hundred or so feet in the air and have no control over your circumstances! I totally planned on how I would tuck and roll if I needed to. Sabrina got stuck out there the longest because she is sooo tiny and was so far back. He rescued everyone else first and finally went for her. She too had planned how to land if she fell (not that you would but that's the only thing you can think about when you are up that high for so long!).
After doing all four runs (totaling 8,000 feet!), we headed back to the hotel! We were so exhausted and had used so many muscles that we had forgotten about, we were ready to collapse on our beds....again.
We were looking forward to Wednesday...all we had planned was a 2 hour horseback ride up on the canyon rim! Wait....the rim???? Yipes, what were we thinking??? After getting matched with our horses and saddled up, we headed out....straight up! It was amazing how stressful it was, sitting on a horse that can probably do the ride in his sleep but I was constantly wondering if he was going to trip/slip at any point! Sabrina got the slow and steady horse in the bunch. They kept telling her to go ahead and give him a good, hard kick to get him going a little faster but it did no good. In fact, she is sure it just made him go slower. He knew the routine. It was hot and he wasn't going to put out any more effort than he needed to. My horse on the other hand, knew the routine, knew how hot it was and wanted to be done as quickly as possible! He insisted on biting the bums of every horse that was in front of us. Any time we stopped, he would continually push his way to the front! I wrestled with that stinker the entire time! He hated me, I was sure but the feeling was mutual! I was just glad I had him and not the cute little girl from Japan. She had never touched a horse, let alone ridden one and couldn't keep her horse on the trail. I thought for sure, she was going over the edge a time or two! Her horse was easy to steer back onto the trail.....if you understood English and knew what the Wrangler was telling you to do! He just kept yelling his instructions louder to her and funny thing, no matter how loud he yelled, she still didn't understand him! :)
Once again, we learned a ton about the history of the area we were in! I got stuck behind the Wrangler for awhile and I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know! It was interesting though. We enjoyed our ride but were more than happy when we saw the corrals come into view! My rear end is still sore from that darn ride!!
After getting back to the hotel and collapsing on our beds, we realized it had started pouring down rain! We waited for it to stop so we could make one last stop at the M&M Factory! We needed treats for all the kids back home! It was so humid as we made our way down the strip. After fighting through the crowds of people, we were headed back to our hotel when all of a sudden, a kid went running past us. Someone was chasing him and everyone was screaming and yelling! Security guards came out of the shadows and everything went in to slow motion! Another kid came running past us and he was covered in blood! We ducked into a store to grab some water and when we came back out, we started piecing together what had happened. The kid that was all bloody must have said something or bumped into the other kid that had ran past us. That kid took a glass beer bottle and cracked it over the kid's head, shattering the bottle! The kid was bleeding so bad, plus he wasn't wearing a shirt and had claw marks on his shoulder where the kid must have grabbed him before shattering the bottle on his head! Paramedics could be heard in the distance and we knew the kid would be ok, we just couldn't believe we had been stuck smack dab in the middle of all the chaos!!! Soooo scary!
After all that excitement, we decided these Idaho girls were ready to head back home.
We brought home a ton of memories! We did things that we wouldn't normally do! We lived on the edge for just a brief time and lived to tell about it!!!! :) Definitely a trip to remember!!! As we laid on our beds exhausted one of the days, I looked over at Sabrina and said, "Can we please just go to Hawaii next time and lay on the beach??" Haha, I wouldn't have traded it for anything! Her quest for adventure let me forget my age for a few days and I loved it!!!!
Ok, here are the pics in the order of our adventures!! Hopefully they are pretty self-explanatory!!
Hanging out at the hotel.
The Excalibur!
Getting ready to hit the pavement!
Such a cool looking hotel!
At the Venetian!
Trying to rest our feet at Caesar's!
The Rock and Sabrina!
Inside the beautiful Bellagio!
Getting ready to hit the trails!
Sabrina!!
Soooo excited to get going!!
A leftover prop from a movie they shot at the old mine!
The old Techatticup Mine!
The entrance to the mine!
Inside the mine!
Made it out alive!
Crazy house by the mine!
There were so many cool old cars and antiques at the property!
Soooooo cool!!!
And yet another cool old truck!!
Out in the middle of nowhere!!!
The old store at the mine! The current owners live here and the inside is all set up like a museum! So amazing!
Cool old building!
Such a cool shot! The country singer, Luke Bryan did a photo shoot at the same spot! See below!
Such a warm day out in the desert! But soo much fun!
On top of the world!!!! Sooooo scared in this shot! Haha...
One of the landing platforms!
Those coils help slow you down as you come screaming down the mountain! Plus I love the shot of the lake in the background!
This is the view from the first platform! That first run was 1864 feet long! Felt like you went forever!!!
Coming in!
Hard to see, but if you look really close you can see Sabrina stuck waaaaay out there! That's how far our guide had to go to bring her back in! Poor guy earned every penny of our tip!
Flying through the sky!!!!
Cowgirls ready to saddle up!!! The cute little non-English speaking Asians in our group kept taking pictures of Sabrina! They loved her outfit!!
We were so glad we brought our boots and jeans with us! We knew it was going to be hot there but there was no way we were going riding without them! I could not believe how many people wore shorty shorts to ride horses and ATV's!!!! These cowgirls knew better! ;)
2 comments:
Wowza my heart stopped beating just reading about all your adventures.
What a wild time! I fear I would be the woman being life-flighted outta there.
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