Maybe it's just me, but I always find it difficult to sleep in a new bed on the very first night. Despite crashing at 2 AM, I woke up a few times throughout the night, while eventually getting up at around 7 AM. A few of us were awake, so we decided to take a walk through the neighbourhood. If memory serves me well, it was about 26 degrees Celsius outside in the morning, making the walk quite warm. The sun was also blaring down, but fortunately there was a bit of shade from time to time. I had difficulties differentiating that I was away from Calgary, despite the warm weather. One key object I kept seeing constantly that reminded me I wasn't home were the numerous palm trees planted in each houses' front yard.
We ended up heading to Walmart since we had to grab some milk. The Walmart in Vegas greatly resemble the ones in Calgary... including the price until I remembered that it was in American dollars. They had a larger selection of snacks, so we ended up grabbing some more chips (chips seem awfully expensive in the States compared to Canada). After purchasing items, we saw a nearby Krispy Kreme and headed there to buy a dozen donuts. I can't recall when Krispy Kreme closed down in Calgary, but their glazed donuts were second to none for me back then. The lady serving us gave us four additional donuts at no charge, which helped brighten up our day!
We took an Uber back to the AirBnb and rested for a while before heading back out to the strip to catch our bus to our first event of the trip. We caught a shuttle that took us about an hour away (1.5 hours due to a traffic jam halfway through the trip) to Adrenaline ATV's site out on Moapa Valley. There were a number of other individuals waiting there to ride as well. After getting our helmets and sitting through some safety videos, we got back onto our shuttle to the starting location of our three hour (or nearly three hour) tour. We opted for UTVs instead of ATVs which was a blessing in the hot dessert sun since we had a roof on top of our heads. The helmet and goggles made it hard on my face since it made my glasses dug into my nose.
Like Mari Car, the first hour was a blast as we got to rip around the Valley of Fire provincial park. If I'm not mistaken, the Yamaha YXZ1000Rs we drove were equipped with sequential shifters, so shifting was relatively fast, though clunky at times. We stopped after 45 minutes or so for our first break before heading off to another location for lunch. It was after an hour, that I started to get a bit tired of the bumpiness. The heat didn't help either since I wore long pants and a sweater to keep as dust free as possible. It didn't end up mattering much since I was plastered with dust.
After our tour, we went back onto our shuttle to head back to the hotel where we were picked up. We took an Uber back to our AirBnb (I felt so bad for the driver since we were all covered in dust) to shower and swim in the pool for a bit. As night was approaching, we walked to eat at a restaurant called Nora's. It was an Italian restaurant recommended by our Italian Uber driver we had coming back today. We ordered a bunch of different appetizers, ranging from calamari to what I think was called a crostini. I got a pasta dish that I cannot recall the name of, but it was quite filling.
We were out on the patio since they were full. Fortunately, we finished our dinner just before it started pouring in rain. I never thought I would see rain in Las Vegas. We took an Uber back and proceeded to relax a bit more before heading out for the night.
Our first full day in Vegas was fruitful. Two more full days to go!
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