TWB July 14th 2018 Experience: Day 7- Las Vegas

Day 7: VEGAS BABY

Wadduppp?? Dopey group here for the last time! Even though we were allowed to sleep in today, we all woke up around 6:00 this morning (thanks to the HUGE crows who have no sense of personal space). We hopped up, showered, and re-organized/packed our bags. The amazing laid-back morning at the campground was continued with breakfast around 9:00 am. The Grumpy group cooked an INCREDIBLE breakfast of pancakes, watermelon, bacon and sausage (including veggie sausage for our resident vegetarians). The meal was the perfect ending to the best mini-vacay at the GRAND Canyon!

Caroline Royals and Hana Blair were both pooped on by a few of the very large crows that we mentioned earlier. After that mess was cleaned up (it was a crappy situation… get it), we all began to get ready for Vegas tonight!!!! We were all very excited and were shocked that we had trouble recognizing each other in nice clothes. It is safe to say we all clean up nice.

After we were all ready to go, our site managers, the Happy group, ran a lost-and-found auction, which included items such as Eno straps, camera cases, neck pillows, and much more. Lucky for us, almost all of the items were claimed. After this entertaining auction, we gathered together for a quick meeting with Grant and the other counselors and reflected on the last week together. We praised each other for our hard work thus far, and talked about ways we can continue making this the BEST TRIP EVER (even though we already feel that way).

We left around 11am and began our short-ish trek to Vegas!!! Many of us were lucky enough to even see tumbleweeds!! A few mentioned that it may even be one of their favorite parts of the trip (and up until today some didn’t even believe that they were real). Out the window, we also saw storms in the distance and drove through a bit of rain. Luckily it was nothing that our AMAZING bus driver couldn’t handle… HOORAH!! On the bus and the vans we sat with our dwarf groups and began to turn our memories from the trip thus far into a song/chant for a competition later tonight at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Our cooks in training, the Bashfuls, helped out with a scrumptious lunch of chicken Caesar wraps and tortilla chips (our current cooks, the Grumpys are all on Carolina Girl planning for the competition). After lunch we made a stop at Walmart so the new cooks (Bashfuls) could get breakfast for tomorrow. We loaded up on the essentials: watches, beach towels, stuff to make bracelets, blankets for the overnight drive, and of course snacks! We hopped back on the bus to head to UNLV where we heard research from our own Will Bradley, Molly Church, and Kendrick Messerich about Nevada, Las Vegas, and UNLV, respectively. Then it was time for the anticipated chant competition!! Each group performed their chant, and our remix of the Phineas and Ferb theme song was definitely the best - although the judges said otherwise. The Sneezys won with their mashup of “Party in the USA” and the “Cups” song.

After the competition, we drove straight down to the Las Vegas Strip, parked the vehicles and went to our first stop, Caesar’s Palace! After a quick group pic, we dispersed into large groups to explore! Some of our favorite memories in Vegas were dancing with old ladies at Margaritaville, the Rainforest Café, the water show at the Bellagio, souvenir shops, Sprinkles Cupcakes, more shops, Planet Hollywood, Gucci, and walking through hotels and taking a peek at casinos! We wanted to keep exploring all night, but we were instructed by our directors to meet back at the vehicles PROMPTLY at 12:00 to embark on our overnight drive.

Can’t wait for the “sleep” on the vehicles tonight – shout out to Joseph for driving all night, and to our amazing co-pilots who helped keep all of the drivers awake and alert while behind the wheel! Tomorrow we’ll wake up at Santa Monica!!!