Category: Arizona

Monument Valley Trip

Posted on by MICHELLE N

Due to Covid-19, Japan has closed their border and does not allow any travelers to get in their country, which means our trip to Japan is cancelled.  The Stunning Tours company gave us the option to postpone the trip to next year (Nov 2022) or to take the credit; we chose to postpone to next year.   This meant that we had a full week of vacation with no where to go so we decided to take the road trip to see the Monument Valley, a place where the famous movie was film: The Forest Gump.  This would be our longest road trip ever with the driving of 8.5 hours on the first day to reach to the first destination and the total trip days was 6 days.  Before this trip, we only arranged the trip to drive max of 6 hrs a day and 4 days in total.  This was also the first time that we missed Thanksgiving dinner with our family.

Saturday 11/20/2021: Drive to Page, stop at Las Vegas for lunch and break.   Stay at Home2Suite hotel in Page.

  • There was traffic after we left Las Vegas that it took us 6 hours to get to Page.  By the time we got there, it was so late.  Fortunately Hilton hotel allows us to digitally check in so we went straight to our room upon arrival.

Sunday 11/21/2021: explore Page, stay 2nd night at Page.

  • Horseshoe Bend, Upper Antelope Canyon tour.

Monday 11/22/2021: drive to Monument Valley from Page (2 hrs)

  • First stop was View Hotel, took a quick drive on the scene drive, then Sunset tour of the back country.
  • Check in a Goulding Hotel around 5:30 PM.

Tuesday 11/23/2021: Forest Gump Point, Mexican Hat, Valley of the Gods.  Drive back to Page.

  • It was raining and cold this day but we got a good shot at the Forest Gump Point.
  • Stay at Home2Suite hotel in Page for 1 night.

Wednesday 11/24/2021:  Zion National Park, Las Vegas.

  • On the way back to Las Vegas, we stopped by Zion Park.   Did not know it still had beautiful yellow leaves so we stayed here longer than we planned.
  • Arrive to Las Vegas and check in to Hilton at Resort World, a brand new hotel just opened this year.

Thursday 11/25/2021: Las Vegas.

  • Spent our Thanksgiving at Las Vegas.  Explore the hotel Resort World.  William loved to swim at the hotel pool until they closed at 5:00 PM.
  • Walk to Paris Hotel to see the Effeil tower lit at up night; and Bellagio to watch the dancing water.

Friday 11/26/2021: Go home

  • Check out the hotel and go home, there was no traffic at all so we got home early around 4:00 PM.

 

Grand Canyon West Rim Trip 2019

Posted on by MICHELLE N

After Thanksgiving, we took a road trip to Las Vegas with the main goal is to visit Grand Canyon West which is about 2 hours from Las Vegas. This time we stayed at Luxor Hotel.

About Luxor: The lights are very dim in this hotel which I don’t really like; and it smells! lots of smoke that I could not stand in the lobby for too long; we could smell smoke even inside the room (and the room is non-smoking!). Worse part is the parking: its parking lot is so small: one day the parking attendant re-directed us to the Mandalay Bay hotel parking because this parking was full! We are not familiar with the area so we had so much trouble first to find the Mandalay parking entrance; and then to walk from Mandalay Bay hotel to our hotel is quite a bit, especially it’s late at night! we arrived at the Luxor’s parking lot around 11 PM; and by the time we could park the car at Mandalay Bay and found our way around to get back to the Luxor hotel, it’s 12:00 AM. Unbelievable! I don’t think I’d stay here again.