The Traveling Pine

It’s Monday morning and we’re headed home! The alarm was scheduled for 4:20 am, but I woke up about 5 minutes early. I slept surprisingly well, but am still looking forward to our own bed. We had an Uber pre-scheduled for 5am, which meant not a lot of time for dilly dally. There was enough time to snack the last of the cake! We were dressed and out the door by 4:45. Unlike the Venetian, finding the Uber/Rideshare pickup point was super easy. There was no Starbucks or other coffee shop open, so no pick-me-up today.   As we waited for our driver, a random Uber driver was trying to give us a ride, but for double the cost. No thanks dude, we’ll wait for our guy. Our driver arrived and we were off to the airport! It was only a quick 10 minute drive. I’m super happy that we dropped the car off last night. The rental car drop off location is noticeably far from the actual airport, and involves catching a rotating 15-minute shuttle ride to the actual airport. Just one less thing to deal wi...

I was hoping to get a good night’s sleep last night since I have been sleeping alright, but not great. I’ll say that it was better than most nights so far, but I had a nightmare, which didn’t exactly help. I’m looking forward to getting back to our own bed. We had no alarm set, but I was awake by 7:30.   Ross woke up a little after I did and we started our day with a little more wedding cake. The cabin had a fridge, so the cake was still good! We only have about 1/4 left. I imagine it will be gone by tonight. After cake, we started packing up our things. Checkout was by 11, but we were packed up and out the door by 9:30. The cabin was a nice retreat away from the hustle and bustle of Vegas. We could see so many stars at night that we can’t normally see at home because of all the light pollution.  After a few last photos, we headed over the Brewed Awakenings again for coffee and burrito. It was much busier today!! We had no timeline for the day, so we relaxed while we waited fo...

  Today started too early for a vacation. The alarm went off at 4:50am. Uuuugghhhh. We booked a guided hike into the Grand Canyon and we needed to meet our guide at 7:30. The canyon is about an hour from our cabin and we needed to factor in time to get coffee and breakfast. We managed to get out the door on time, at 5:30. There is a coffee shop in Williams called Brewed Awakenings that opened at 6, which was perfect. We arrived a few minutes early, so we sat in the car for a moment until that neon Open sign started to glow. I’ve been on a Chai kick this trip, so I stuck with that and Ross with his black coffee. We snagged a breakfast burrito and breakfast bagel. We had a few minutes, so we sat inside to gobble up most of our food. I finished up the bagel in the car. We made it to the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park around 7:20am and found our approximate meeting point. We decided it would be smart to make a bathroom break at the visitor’s center. Lucky for us, our guide was ...

It’s Friday and our time in Vegas is temporarily over. I once again quested for coffee and one Impossible breakfast sandwich. We decided to eat some of our leftover cake for breakfast too. Still delicious! We had a late checkout for 1pm, but we had a photo review appointment at noon, so after eating we started packing. We had time to run our things to the car in a few shifts. A little before noon, we headed to the Celebrations office to see our photos! Donata was ready for us and had our photos ready to go on the big screen. Mary did a great job capturing our day! We’ve already shared some of the photos and plan to share more! We discussed our photo package options and once we settled up, we were outta there! Before departing the hotel, we wanted to grab lunch, so we popped into the food courts to see some quicker options and chose an Indian restaurant that served up a tasty Chana Masala, rice, and Naan bread. Ross tried to convince me to share a Stromboli with him, but it was huge and...

If you’ve been on Facebook recently, then you know our little secret; we got married on Thursday! So here’s the long version of the story and the rest of the information we happened to leave out of previous blog posts... As you already read, we had to book new flights because or Florida trip got cancelled. We booked the trip to Las Vegas without the intention of getting married, but as we thought about it over the next couple of weeks, we figured with COVID, gathering restrictions, and the fact we already wanted something small, Vegas was a no-brainer. So in July, before we actually got engaged, we had started the searching and planning process. We eventually settled on a ceremony at The Venetian (more on that in a bit) on October, 15th. We thought the date of 10-15-20 was fun and easy to remember! On August 5th we officially got engaged. It was fairly easy to fend off questions about wedding dates with COVID still being a huge factor. When discussing our upcoming trip to Vegas, we cho...

  Today we really worked on our social distancing by doing some hikes in the Valley of Fire. We started the day with a stop at Starbucks and Walgreens to grab breakfast and snacks for the day. The Valley of Fire is about an hour drive from our hotel and in the middle of nowhere. We heard and read that it is more recommended then Red Rock Canyon and less crowded. We were all for that! We arrived about 10:15am and it was already very warm. Ross had found some suggested hikes, so we set out for the first one, a secret/unmarked hike, the Pink Canyon. The blog described it as being just off the road after the 5th significant dip in the road. We were not sure what that meant, but soon noticed the “Dip” signs along the way. We counted five and pulled off to the concrete spot just as described. The canyon isn’t much of a canyon, but still pretty neat. It was a short hike and a nice start to the day. We tried to utilize our bouldering skills that we have been working on, but only for a few ...

 Day two in Vegas started a little too early for me. I woke up at 3:45am, 5:45am central time, which is exactly when our cats would be standing on me and staring at me to get out of bed and feed them. I managed to fall back asleep, but woke up a few times before giving in around 7:30-8am. I wrote yesterday’s blog this morning while Ross ran down to Starbucks to grab us drinks and a small breakfast.  We were in no rush, but eventually headed out the door about 10:30. In anticipation of our Grand Canyon hike in a few days we wanted to pick up a hat/sunglasses as recommended by our guide. Ross’ sunglasses never left West Allis and I didn’t even think about bringing a hat or visor for the hike. There is a mall just down the block from our hotel and popped in there to see what we could find. The shops didn’t open up until 11am, so we had about 15-20 minute to kill. While we waited we booked an escape room for tomorrow night - a Saw (the movie) themed escape room! Ross loves haunted...