Day 8

So, today we headed to Vegas. Before we left we wanted to ride the Sandia Tram. This is a car that travels on a cable all the way up the mountain to 10,300 feet about sea level. If you didn't know, I am scared of heights. So it was very nerve racking. Especially when we went over the towers. It made the car sway. It was pretty awazing and very cold at the top. Afterwards we continued our trip to Vegas. But on our way, we stopped to look at the ice caves and a volcano. On route to the volcano we stopped to take a picture at the route 66 historic bridge. While trying to set up the camera, John jumped over the rail and landed on his ankle. If you look at the picture you can tell he is in pain. He is kinda of sticking his right foot out. If you see all the pictures of us together, we had to set the camera on something(a pole, the car etc) and the set the timer. It only sets to ten seconds,so whoever is setting it has to run fast to get to the spot. After the incident, we drove to the volcano. John's ankle started to swell and he could barely walk. We were upset because in order to get to the ice cave you had to climb down a lot of stairs and to get to the volcano you had to hike half a mile there and then half a mile back. Although I insisted he not do it, John decided to take the punishment in order to see what we came to see. And he did. I'm sure it was very painful. The ice cave was awesome. Literally if you took one more step it went from 100 degrees to 31! This cave is open to the elements but some how it keep that temperature. I read on the sign that it is a callapsed lava tube that trapped cold air which keeps the water frozen at 31. It was like stepping into a freezer. Pretty cool, literally. Nature is awesome. The volcano was equally awesome. It was a strenuous hike but we made it. It was huge. It said in the brochure that it erupted 10,000 years ago. It is inactive now but could erupt again. On the highway you could see the lava that had come out of the volcano on the side of the road. Because it took us so long to visit the volcano and ice caves, we didn't get into Las Vegas till 1am. Which wasn't too bad because we were going to the city that never sleeps. We got to see the beam of light on our way. If you don't know what that is, it is a light beam that shoots out of the Luxor which is the hotel that looks like a pyramid. We drove the strip an saw all the big hotel. It was really cool. we were even stuck in traffic, at 2! When we got to our hotel which was the Stratosphere, there were people everywhere playing in the casino. The stratosphere hotel is the one with the big tower that people can bungie jump off of. We had two night booked so we could see vegas. We ate at a diner for dinner at around 4am while we people watched. Saw one girl that had no pants on. Just stockings up to her waist. After our dinner at 4am we got to our beds around 5am and the sun was coming up. We finally went to sleep. What a day!