Vacation Ideas

The wife and I are planing a vacation out west in the fall. We can't really decide on where or what to see. We've got about two weeks and are thinking we want to see Vegas. She also wants to see the Grand Canyon and giant redwood trees. She has mentioned hitting National Parks, the California coast, or renting a car and driving back across Rt 66.

Neither of us have been out there and I have no idea how feasible it is to see the things on her list and what else to see along the way. We're open to pretty much anything but she can't be doing too much walking. What do we want to see?

San Francisco is beautiful. After you've seen all you need to there, you can drive three hours through mountains and old mining towns and get to the west side of Yosemite. You can take a short hike in to see the redwoods or just keep driving a little farther to the base of El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. You can get back to SF by the evening. You can also do a day trip down the coast to Pebble Beach and back.

Its on the opposite side of Arizona as the Grand Canyon but the Petrified Forrest and the cliff dwellings in Canyon De Chelly are really neat to see. Plus the Petrified Forrest is right off of Rt66.

Bryce and Zion National Parks are really amazing- but a log way from Vegas.

Still, two of my most favorite parks I've been to in the US.

Go to The Muir Woods, no need to walk much and you get to see huge redwood trees. Zion is cool too.

In two weeks, the Grand Canyon, Redwoods and Hwy 1 is a pretty tall order when you also want to spend some time in Las Vegas.

I would think that you'd either do Las Vegas - Grand Canyon - Bryce - Zion - Vegas (and extend it to Death Valley and Sequoia) or to San Francisco - Monterey - Hwy 1 - Sequioa - Death Valley - Vegas and maybe a side trip to the Grand Canyon from there. Keep in mind it's most of the day just driving from Vegas to the GC National Park and most people on a German tourist & expat forum I'm on strongly recommend against visiting the Skywalk (which isn't over the main Canyon anyway) which happens to be closer to Vegas.

With the latter I'd definitely try to fly into SFO and fly out of Vegas.

If you want to see natural wonders and Vegas is on you list, I would tend to recommend planning on spending a short time in Vegas. It is a spectical, but so is a car crash. Heck, it even has a weak copy of New York in it! (which you are of course are very familiar with). The place is basically a theme park. I would say just skip it. Just my opinion of course.

Regarding Muir Woods: BIG TIP here. If you want to do that, GET THERE BEFORE IT OPENS! It can get ridiculously crowded, and I mean RIDICULOUSLY! Bonus for getting there before it opens (8 am I believe), you don't have to pay. You can also sneak into the park from a few areas. (I grew up in the bay area, but only just recently visited the Murr woods)

A little inspiration for you. Here are a few pics I took. (having the sun come out of course is nice):

From Muir, if you do go there, you can just hop on the 1 and head north and see some nice coastal areas.

BTW, if you get to SoCal, make sure to let us know. I know someone down here who owes you a favor.

Hwy 1 from San Fran heading south for about 4-6 hours was just amazing last summer. We took some side trips along the way and made a full day of it. The ocean views along there burn out your "ooooh, ahhhhh" meter pretty quickly.

The trolley cars in San Francisco were pretty neat, old fashion turntable and brakeman. Big trees were not far away along with some nice state parks on the coast. Wine country tours are a cheap buzz.Las Vegas was just a bigger Atlantic City IMHO.

A friend and I did a week trip that included a flight into Vegas. Spent 2 nights, left with a rental car. Saw the Hoover Dam in the morning and made it to San Bernardino by dusk (in August). Drove to Santa Monica and used San Marcos Pass to make it to San Luis Obispo for the night. We could have used Pacific Coast Highway 1, but my buddy had the eggs at the buffet back in Vegas and still wasn't feeling well so we took 101, but that was still beautiful. The next day we made it to the City Center area of Oakland. It was very nice and we found a hotel really close to the BART (train). We spent the next couple of days around the Bay area. It's a lot cheaper staying in Oakland. Napa valley is a fun day trip. We left the rental car at SFO and flew home. It was a little work finding a one way rental but we had that setup at the same time we got the tickets. After Vegas, we got the hotels the day of. Great fun.

Spend two nights in Las Vegas and bail. Hotels are cheap in Hurricane, Page, etc. Flag is a bit more expensive, but by the time you get there you'll have seen so much it'll be worth it.

Any car guy deserve a weeks long drive through some of the most magnificent spaces in the country.

I have family in the Bay Area, so I have done a few trips from there. You can hike and see Redwoods right in Oakland, but Muir is much more popular. They are actually smaller redwoods than you will find further North up the cost a few hours, so a popular option is to head North through Napa, to the Redwood National Forest, then to Reno for a night then back to San Fran.

Heading South down Rt1 to Monterrey and Carmel is also a great trip. The Winchester Mansion is neat to see, and the Aquarium is always worthwhile.

The Bay Area itself has plenty to see and do of course. Hit Fisherman's Wharf, take a trolley ride, go to Alcatraz (book a few days early) eat in cool places, take the Ferry to Jack London Square, take pictures from Coit tower, see the Golden Gate Bridge...it's a great tourist town.

Slippery wrote: Go to The Muir Woods, no need to walk much and you get to see huge redwood trees.

This. Close to San Francisco.

In reply to Wally:

Hmm, that's a tall order. Vegas can consume 2 weeks just in seeing all of the things to see in and around the place, though she'll probably want to have a wheel chair or mobile scooter thing due to how far away things are (even inside the casinos).

I'm not a huge fan of Vegas personally, so a couple of full days or a few nights are plenty for me since they usually involve a little shopping with the wife, some great food and drinks and a show or two. The rest of the time its either day trips or lounging by the pool.

Grand Canyon was an awesome sight. Truly worth seeing at some point in your life, pictures just don't do it justice. If I had to do our last trip to Vegas again, I'd have either gotten passes to SEMA and hung out there all the time or I'd have booked us a room at the lodge there at the Grand Canyon and just sat on the porch with a cup of coffee every morning. Wish we could have done the helicopter or boat tour as it was just that awesome. The Jeep tour we did was a lot of fun, but a little harder if you have mobility issues getting into and out of the back of a jeep.

Anyway, a trip to Grand Canyon is an all day bus ride to/from Vegas including the Dam tour and pretty reasonably priced depending on the options.

https://www.pinkjeeptourslasvegas.com/

Vegas has the huge ferris wheel observation thing, which is stupid cheap via Groupon and you can get a car with an open bar (how many can you drink in 30 minutes?) and at night the view is pretty damned cool.

http://www.vegas.com/attractions/on-the-strip/high-roller-las-vegas/

A few great car museums as well as Vegas Speedway, perhaps time your trip with a race there or perhaps one of the track excursions they have?

From Vegas to LA its about 4 hours (on a good day), so you could do a couple of days in Vegas, maybe Grand Canyon and some night time stuff before heading West to LA where you could North or South on 101 for a bit.

http://www.fodors.com/news/ultimate-road-trip-from-la-to-las-vegas-7176.html

Or you could fly if you don't have a car and pick one up in LA.

If you go North along 101 you could head to San Francisco. I'd suggest one of the hop/hop-off double decker busses for seeing San Francisco as driving there can be a pain. There's also winery tour bus trips to Napa Valley available which also hit some historic places like the Presidio, etc. Of course Alcatraz is a pretty good day trip, lots of walking for that one, but they allow wheel chairs if needed. In the fall it can be a bit cool and occasionally rainy or foggy in San Francisco, so plan accordingly.

There's the road course in Sonoma which you could hit as a stop on the way to San Francisco, check their schedule and maybe see if there's an event you could line up.

Muir woods: http://www.sftodo.com/muirwoodssanfrancisco.html

Presidio: http://www.nps.gov/prsf/index.htm

Alcatraz: http://www.nps.gov/alca/index.htm

Hop-on/off: http://www.hop-on-hop-off-bus.com/san-francisco-bus-tours

Sonoma: http://www.racesonoma.com/ http://www.karenbrown.com/Trip_Planning_Itinerary/California/San_Francisco_to_Los_Angeles_Via_the_Coast/74.php

If you go South you could hit San Diego:

http://www.sandiego.org/

My personal favorite is walking along the water front and maybe taking one of their night time boat rides around the bay and then spend a day at Balboa park and hit the museums (Air & Space, Automotive Museum, Model Railroad Museum, Science Museum, Natural History, etc.) kick back and people watch for a bit.

http://www.sandiego.org/what-to-do/tours-sightseeing/sightseeing-tours.aspx

http://www.sandiego.org/members/visitor-information-centers/balboa-park.aspx

+1 for only a day or two in Vegas.

To add to the Bay Area ideas:

• Ride the ferry in a full loop. This will give you a very good tour of the bay. (weather may affect how enjoyable this is of course).

• If you are driving, consider stopping off at Treasure Island. It's an old military base in the middle of the bay. Cool to cruise around and get a good view of the bay, including SF and the GG bridge.

• Exploritorium: Its now on the wharf. Only about 200 yards from the BART station. (The old location was a pain to get to) You could spend a LOT of time in there playing with cool science stuff. It can get crowded, so try off hours or maybe the adult only times (still, get there early)

• Marine Headlands: In clear weather, this will give you a great view of the GG bridge and SF. There is an old coastal fortification you can tour there. There is even a restored Nike missile site and cold war museum there (if you are into that).

Out of Vegas, my wife and I did a helicopter ride to The Grand Canyon.
We really hit the jackpot too. We had made reservations for some mid-level, sort of basic package. The day we were supposed to fly we got a call from the Helicopter Tour Company asking if we would be able to go later in the day.

What we figured once we arrived was that there were two couples planned for the afternoon (cheap trip) but that one couple had booked the high dollar Sunset/Champagne trip. The Helicopter holds three couples so they consolidated us down to on full flight rather than two partials. No additional charge for us and savings for the tour company too!

We also were let in on the story. Mr. Big Spender was from The UK and he brought his girlfriend. His plan was to propose. I do remember that they were in their early 30's and they had dated for 12 years!
The tour was in, around and down the canyon. Then, on a remote flat portion, the helicopter was landed. A cooler of Champagne was brought out as we all walked around this area that I suspect was really difficult to reach by car. We remained there until the sun set. We knew of the pending proposal so we secretly kept our camera ready and trained on the couple from a distance. We manged to get their email address and send them shots of him down on a knee and the very moment.

It was a cool way to see The Canyon!

My suggestion would be to fly into Vegas, do your stuff there, then fly to Norcal (SFO or SJC) and fly home from there. Flights are cheap (check Allegiant), and then you don't have to deal with any one-way car rentals.

I deleted my rather long post that added no value since my opinion on Vegas has nothing to do with what you and your wife should do when you go.

Sounds like you two will have a fun two weeks wherever you end up going.

Thanks for the ideas. We started reading and there are so many places that looked good it helps to have some perspective on how near/far they are from each other and what people enjoyed. We were only planing a day or two in Vegas tops just to see it then move on and pretty much everyone confirmed that is the right idea.

My wife and I honeymooned in the Bryce/Zion area and had a blast. We rented a Jeep in Vegas and drove around on some of the fire roads. My recommendation:

Fly into Vegas, spend day, evening, and morning.

Drive to Zion area, spend night, walk park all day, spend night.

Drive to the north rim of the GC, see the lodge, drive the fire roads in the national forest to see more of the GC. Spend night in Kanab.

Spend the next day driving the fire road (cottonwood canyon rd)through Escalante ending up in Tropic for the night.

Spend the next day in Bryce and area.

Next day drive through Dixie forest and stop at Cedar Breaks. Continue down the top of Zion via the Kolab reservoir road, spend night around Zion.

Back to Vegas.

From living in Beatty as a kid:

Leave Vegas heading north to Beatty. Turn west, take some pictures at Rhyolite, then off the blacktop for the drive to Scotty's Castle. Depending on how much you enjoyed that trip, easy is on up to Bishop, harder is down to Lone Pine. From either through the parks from the back side and on to san Francisco. Our next trip is going to be almost all Death Valley and the Wilderness parks in CA, with as much dirt time as we can manage.

Vacation Update:

We went and had a great two days but are home much earlier than expected. We flew from JFK to Vegas sunday night and picked up our mount for the week, a Nissan Sentra. Congratulations to Nissan for building the finest late 90's Cavalier possible. The lack of power, the choppy ride, even where the console digs into my leg was exactly like my Cavalier. From the airport we took a ride on the strip and checked into our hotel. The strip was a bit of a disappointment. In my mind I was picturing Rat Pack/Mob era Las Vegas. I was saddened to arrive in the same pack of chains that ruined Times Square. Does any street need THREE Denny's?

We got a good deal on Trump International of Priceline, $137 for the night. The run a classy place and really shouldn't allow the kind of riff raff that wanders in off the internet. The TV in the bathroom mirror is a nice touch but would be more useful if I could see it from the toilet instead of the tub.

Monday's plan was to see Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon and stay somewhere in Arizona. When we got to the Lake Mead Visitor's Center The Wife realized we left the bag of insulin in the hotel fridge. We called and they said the had it so we headed back to Vegas once again. about noon we set off for the second time to see Hoover Dam. It was an amazing sight. I could have spent the whole day there. I am a sucker for old works projects and none are as impressive as that. From there we pointed the Sentra south and tried to make up time. We filled up in Kingman where the wife mistakenly pointed out a sign for historic RT 66 and suggested we take a look. She also booked the night's room in Sedona, which if you hold the map upside down and squint looks a good bit closer to the Grand Canyon than it really is.

We spent about two hours riding down 66 as night fell stopping here and there for pictures before stopping in Seligman for dinner at The Roadkill Café. Across the street we saw some celebrities:

Then we jumped on the highway towards our room. The last leg of our day, RT 89 leading into Sedona is a beautiful ride. Unless it's late at night after a long day in a tiny car that drives like it has spent most of it's 40,000 miles being driven off cliffs. Then it can't end soon enough.

We woke up Tuesday and headed for the Grand Canyon. Along the way we were side tracked by a number of scenic pulloffs and at the Planes of Fame Museum where we happened to show up as they were firing up Gen MacArthur's Constellation for the first time in 20 years. https://www.facebook.com/wally.m.9/videos/vb.898405499/10156149430730500/?type=3&theater

From there we sailed into Grand Canyon National park for the rest of the day. It was absolutely breathtaking and well worth the ride. It was unlike anything I've ever seen Photos and TV don't give you any idea of the scale and beauty of it. I was so glad we made it out there.

I've got some fantastic pictures on my camera to post in a day or two when I have time.

She had hoped to make the drive from Grand Canyon to Yosemite that night because she is not that good with the geography, and nothing is that far when you can sleep through the boring parts. I ran out of steam around Kingman again and stayed at a lovely little place at the foot of a runway tucked between the interstate and one of our nations busiest rail lines.

We set out bright and early Wednesday to go north to Yosemite. We were going well until we stopped in Boulder City for some drinks and to use the restroom. While I was paying a woman came in to let me know that The Wife had fallen down and seem to be hurt. She is prone to bouts of clumsiness so I figured we'd brush her off and be fine. She wanted to get some ice and continue north but her arm was swelling and very tender. I decided to get it checked out since we were still near civilization. Our insurance company directed us to Desert Springs Hospital, according to the Google the closest one to us. We were greeted with the indifference and lack of concern you would expect from place that seems to specialize in handing scripts and work notes to people that probably don't really need them. The doctor was eventually surprised that The Wife was actually hurt, and convincing enough that he decided to get her Xrayed and that the injuries were not the result of me beating her. Inspite of spending a good 7 hours there we never progressed past the waiting room. I learned about many aliments since almost everyone was treated out in the open lobby. The only person I saw make it past the door to the ER had the good sense to go into cardiac arrest at the admissions desk. They still gave him a minute or two, probably to see if he'd stop thrashing and they could save the trip. Near dinner time they splinted her arm and recommended we find an orthopedist for surgery since the elbow was broken. That put a damper on our plans so we found a room in Vegas for the night and moved our flight up a week and flew home yesterday. We had a nice steak dinner at The Steakhouse in Circus Circus which was great, and more what I pictured Las Vegas to be. We didn't think that with the bum wing I'd have to cut her steak for her which added insult to injury. We checked into Planet Hollywood which was a nice enough place and called JetBlue to change our tickets and for a mere $1100 they let us exchange our tickets home for the last two seats back to JFK. Then I put The Wife to bed and took a tour of the Casino where I spent the remainder of my vacation feeding a slot machine where I had a nice view of a couple young ladies dancing on a bar.

Wow, tough break! Literally.

Hey Ralph Kramden, take good care of Alice.

Ouch. I hope she heals up Wally!

If things stabilize by this weekend, come on down to Gainesville for The Challenge.