Spring Break Southwest Road Trip 2023- Las Vegas

We headed to Vegas and tried to check into Mandalay Bay after lunch. However, our room wasn't ready yet so we had to kill a few hours with the kids. March madness in Vegas is crazy. Unfortunately the kids were not allowed in any of the rooms, but it was fun to walk by and see all the big screens with the games on them. 

We had planned on swimming but it was freezing and raining! We decided to check out M&M world, Hershey World and Coca Cola world. It was a little bit of a walk to get there and since it was raining pretty hard we had to go through multiple hotels. We walked through the Luxor, Excalibur and New York New York. The kids thought it was fun to see all the different hotels. 

We checked our Hershey World. All the kids got little bags of different flavored hershey kisses.

We headed to Coca Cola world and got the flight of cokes from across the world. We also got a tray of different flavored floats. The coke floats were definitely the favorite! 

We also checked out M&M world. 

We headed back to the hotel and checked in. We had a penthouse suite and it was huge! We also had a great view of the new arena. 

We took an uber to the Venetian and ate at Buddy V's. It was delicious! 

After dinner we walked to the Bellagio to see the fountains.

We headed back to the hotel and crashed for the night! The next morning we woke up and tried to go swimming. It was freezing out, but somehow they still managed to have fun!

After swimming we came back to the hotel to get ready and check out. Caitie insisted on enjoying the big tub. 

We ate lunch at House of Blues. Then we decided to check out the Shark Reef Aquarium at the hotel. I took the kids while Michael gambled a little. It wasn't a big aquarium but we still had fun!

We took a picture with the Las Vegas sign on our way to the airport. 

We had a blast even though we had terrible weather on this vacation. It was fun to see so many different places and cross off two more states on our map! 

Spring Break Southwest Road Trip- Death Valley (Part 2)

We started the second morning with a visit to Artist's Palette. The drive in was really pretty. 

The morning light and the color on all the rocks was beautiful. The color is from volcano deposits that are rich in minerals. 

 

We went up into the rocks to explore a little bit. The kids favorite part of any hike is finding rocks to climb and different paths to take. 

It was a gorgeous view from any direction that you looked. The salt flats are in the distance of this picture and it was really pretty in person to see. 

We were glad we went early because the crowds started to pick up as we left. The rocks also started to lose a little of their color as the sun went high above our head. 

Next we hiked a portion of the Golden Canyon. It was gorgeous in person and the rocks really did glisten and shine. We didn't hike the whole trail, but took our time and found cool spots on the hike to play. 

The views everywhere were just gorgeous. 

Next we headed to the Mesquite Sand Dunes. The kids really enjoyed playing in the sand. Caitie enjoyed doing all kinds of gymnastics tricks. 

Searching for "fire ants." The kids were so excited when the thought they found some!

It was the middle of March madness and UT was playing, so we searched for a place that we could watch the game. Death Valley is very remote, so we only found one place that we could watch the game. It ended up being a great little spot and our meals were great too. 

After the game we headed to the pool. This was Caitie's favorite part of the whole trip. She has been working hard to swim without her wings and she did a great job. She couldn't stand in any portion of the pool and she had a blast swimming back and forth.

We tried to catch sunset at Zabriskie Point that night before dinner but didn't luck out. We did not have good sunset weather the entire trip. We were bummed we didn't get to see a pretty sunset, but it was a gorgeous spot with beautiful rolling mountains. 

We went back to the Last Kind Words Saloon for dinner and tried out their steaks. It was delicious. 

The next morning we packed up to head to Las Vegas. We had to get a picture with the golf cart before we left. The kids loved that we had our own personal golf cart to drive to our casita each day. It was definitely a highlight for them. 

We also lucked out and saw the properties "pet" coyote. We were told he is very friendly and hangs out on their property a lot. His nickname is "yote." 

It was starting to rain a little as we left Death Valley, but we had to get a picture with the sign before we left. 

We had a lot of fun exploring a very unique place. Off to Vegas!