Category: 2012roadtrip

If the Vegas hotel question bothered me, San Francisco worried me to the point of denial and not wanting to think about it.  I’ve been watching the rates for weeks and they’ve kept going up – but I couldn’t book anything, because I didn’t know exactly when we’d get there. 

When we arrived in Vegas, I could better predict that, so thought that we’d try to leave here (Vegas) tomorrow (Tuesday).  The original schedule called for us to spend two nights between Vegas and San Francisco – somewhere around Sequoia and then around San Luis Obispo.  Because of the unscheduled stop in Austin and the extra nights in Albuquerque, I hoped to change that and make up a day on that leg, arriving in San Francisco on Wednesday (7/11), staying two nights.

When I checked Priceline, I freaked out – 3-stars were $200, $300, even $400 a night.  2-stars ranged from $160 to over $200.  Most 1-stars were over $100.  I had a half-joking backup plan to stay near the airport and take BART into the city every day – it was looking like that might be necessary.

I checked BiddingForTravel and found out there’s a convention with 30,000 attendees in San Francisco through the 12th.  So I changed my  stay to arrive 7/12 – we’ll keep the extra day on the road and take it at a more leisurely pace.

Rates for a 7/12 arrival were still pretty high, with 3-stars still in the $200-$300 range.

Priceline has a huge number of zones for San Francisco, ranging from the city to the airport.  I wanted to stay in the city.

So I started bidding for 4-stars in the zones I really wanted, one at a time (13, 12, 9, and 3 or Union Square West, East, Moscone Center, and Fisherman’s Wharf, respectively).  I started at $70, just in case there was some amazing deal out there – everything was rejected, which left my max bid at $76.  I raised it to $78 and added 3.5-star as an option for those zones.  Still rejected.

This was on Sunday, so I wasn’t too concerned, as I could keep bidding every 24-hours until we arrived there – which is why I started with such a lowball bid.  If I got something, great, if not, try again tomorrow.

But to see if I could get something in my budget now, I kept going.  I had all the zones I was willing to stay in selected and at 3.5-stars, so I started adding zones that only have 3-stars – this let me continue to raise my bid, but guaranteed I wouldn’t get an unwanted location.

When my bid got to $84, it was accepted.  Two nights at the Marriott San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf – showing a rate on the Marriott website of $249 a night for those dates.

	Miles	MPG	Avg. Speed
Today
Trip

Food (today/budget)	Hotel (today/budget)	Trip Savings
$118 / $119	$86 / $150	AAA – $26 PriceLine – $325 Real $$ – $102

Hoover Dam Parking	$7
Ka	$195

The Vegas hotel question has bothered me, because I want to stay someplace really, really nice, but I don’t want to spend any money.  My budget for Vegas is $150 a night for the hotel, which would get a nice hotel during the week, but we’re arriving on a Saturday, which has higher rates.  Pushing arrival to Sunday would muck up the schedule.

For Vegas, I want to stay in the Priceline Zone 9:

This is mostly for bidding purposes, but also because it’s a nicely central part of the Strip.  For bidding, it’s one of only three zones that have 5-star hotels:

Strip North, Strip Vicinity North, and Strip Vicinity South are the only ones that have 5-star properties.  Summerlin has no 5-stars, but it has resorts and Priceline will sometimes book you into a resort in place of a 5-star.  I don’t want that.

Until recently, that zone also had only one 5-star on Priceline: Bellagio.  That’s where I’d like to stay, and what I based my budget on ($149 / night, Sunday – Thursday).  But there’s a new player there, the Vdara. 

Vdara is a non-casino hotel behind Bellagio and run by MGM-Grand.  It’s listed as a 5-star, but their rates are odd.  On their website, the room rates are outrageous ($400 or more a night), but they come up as $169 on Priceline.

So I chose that zone and bid $70 a night.  I also had a Priceline “reward” of $30, which they apply over three nights – so the total was $80, but only $70 of it would be paid by me.  That bid was rejected.

So I started adding the zones that have no 5-star properties one by one and raising my bid $2 or $3 each time.  At $86 ($96 with the Priceline reward), I got Vdara for the three nights.

Which means:

$80 / Econolodge	$86 / Vdara

Market forces at work. 

Once again I was up at six.  Last night I went out for a little while and got a burger and listened to some of the live music around Williams.  Aryn was worn out from the hike and already asleep when I got back.  She was up by 7:00 again, though, so we were on the road by 8:00 after danish and orange juice as the hotel’s free breakfast (Aryn had leftover pie).

On the way, we stopped at the Hoover Dam and a couple scenic overlooks – one overlooking the desert and one Lake Mead. 

At the Dam, we parked and went to the visitor center to get Aryn’s National Parks Passport stamped (it’s not a park, but they have a stamp).  After $7 for parking, they then want $8 per person to enter the visitor center, so we skipped that.  I wouldn’t mind taking a tour and seeing the power rooms, but it was pretty hot (100+ degrees) and crowded.

At the Lake Mead overlook, we found a group of guys with a Ferrari, a Maserati, and a Lamborghini.  All Nevada plates, so I’m assuming they flew into Vegas and rented them.

Aryn spotted this in front of an antique store, so we had to stop.  $700 for a giant, hollow Panda.  Ha!

We got to Vegas and onto Las Vegas Boulevard North of Stratosphere and I drove to Luxor before turning around to go to the hotel near Bellagio – so we got to see the whole thing, from strip clubs and marriage chapels to the “family” mega-hotels, all from the air conditioned car.  109-degrees outside, which is damn hot even if it is dry.

The entry to Vdara is like a freeway interchange.  It goes up from the road, then loops to the left for Aria and then back around for the Vdara entrance.  Very confusing.  Only valet parking, no self parking, but it’s complimentary – that’s practically unheard of, so it must be because they don’t have the space to put a self-park lot.

I don’t think Aryn had a clue about the type of hotel we were going to stay in, so it came as a surprise. 

So we give the car to the valet, the doorman unloads the luggage onto a cart and gives me the claim ticket.  When he told us to just call down after we’d checked in and the bellman would bring it up, that might have been a clue to Aryn that this wasn’t an Econolodge.

I open the door to the room and we walk into the dining/kitchen area, complete with a microwave and two-burner cooktop (as well as a computerized mini-bar that charges you as soon as you take something out).

Then into the sitting room.

The sleeping area, complete with individual reading lamps, and finally the bathroom. 

Aryn: “They have a phone by the freakin’ toilet!” 

This is the same bathroom that Aryn later locked herself into – sadly I didn’t get the video camera running until the very last try when she managed to get out.

We’re on the 38th floor, overlooking the back of the Strip hotels.  Rio and Palms to the left, Bellagio’s pools directly below us, and a slightly obstructed view of Paris and the Bellagio fountains to the right.

$86.  Vegas, baby!

So after Aryn figured out how to unlock a door and I got changed, we headed out to see some of the hotels.  Vdara has a walkway to Bellagio, so we headed there through Bellagio’s shops and the world’s largest chocolate fountain.

The Bellagio conservatory.

And the Bellagio lobby.

And finally out onto the Strip.

First we went over to Paris and walked through the casino and shops, then through the shopping area that connects Paris to Bally’s.  Once through Bally’s, I asked Aryn if she wanted to cross the street to see Ceaser’s or head down to Venetian.  She said both, so I decided to do Venetian first. 

On the corner across from Bally’s where we crossed is a Tix4Tonight outlet.  I stopped and took a quick look at their monitor – the plan was to see Ka and one other show on Sunday and Monday nights, leaving tonight free.  We’d seen a bus ad for Phantom at the Venetian, so I asked if they’d have any for tonight and the guy said yes, so we got in line. 

Then we started talking to one of the other employees working the line – they have people moving up and down the line pitching other shows and discounts.  I asked about Ka tickets for tomorrow and found out that Ka is dark Sunday and Monday. 

So that changed the plans and we had to get Ka tickets for tonight.  The Tix4Tonight girl also gave us some good seating advice, recommending tier 3 seats, the lowest price, for this show, because so much happens in the air above the stage.  We got tickets for the 9:30 show and headed back to Paris – since we were going to a show and hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, it was time to eat.

We got in a very short line for the Paris buffet about 5:00 and bought our Buffet of Buffets tickets – 24-hours of gluttony at the buffets in six different hotels. 

I have had bad buffets before.  I have had bad buffets in Vegas – specifically Ceaser’s, which proves that unlimited cafeteria food is still cafeteria food, and sent me to the ER once.  Paris does not have a bad buffet – it may, in fact, have the best buffet I’ve ever seen.

That would be, counter-clockwise from the knifetip: grilled lamb, grilled pork loin with apples, roast beef, the best sweet potatoes I’ve ever tasted, caramelized pearl onions, green beans and roasted asparagus, sweet roasted root vegetables, and a dinner roll that saw very little action and was mostly left on the plate.

Not on the plate: the coq-au-vin, the duck a l’orange, the mussels and crab legs and shrimps … oh, my. 

The sweet potatoes were quartered with the skin on and roasted – the insides were perfectly done and the skin had soaked up the syrup to become chewy and caramel-like. 

For desert, Aryn got a berry crepe with Nutella and I got a brandy-soaked apple crepe with caramel.

The apples were diced and cooked perfectly so that they were firm, but had still absorbed the brandy syrup.  Then I went back and got half a wine-poached pear with vanilla sauce and some cherries jubilee.

Then we sadly walked around and said goodbye to the other deserts we didn’t have the room for: the crème brulee, the crème caramel, the brownies, cookies, cakes, bread puddings and cobblers.  We will miss you, little crème brulee cups.

It might be worth the drive just for the Paris buffet …

We waddled back to the room for Aryn to get a jacket in case the Ka theatre was cold and then caught a cab to the MGM Grand.  It’s $3.30 to drop the meter here now.  We got our seats assigned – dead center of the fourth row in the upper tier – and wandered around the MGM until show time.

Aryn made a new friend who likes her shoes and jacket.

For the show itself … I have no words.  Somewhere in the world, there’s a guy who said: “I want to build a stage that moves up and down on a hydraulic lift.  And I want it to spin around in circles.  Then I want it to tilt so that it’s vertical to the audience.  Oh, and it should spin when it’s vertical too … and tilt … yeah, spin and tilt.”

Then that guy got somebody to give him the money to build it and found people crazy enough to do things on a floating stage over a twenty foot drop that don’t, frankly, seem possible.

That guy’s a freakin’ genius.

Between Ka and the Paris buffet, it’s worth the drive right there.

After the show we walked back along the strip to see something of Vegas at night.

A wrong turn in the Cosmopolitan’s shops delayed us long enough to be walking by Bellagio just in time for the last fountains of the day.

Midnight on the Strip.

Back to the room and showered.  Aryn’s asleep and I’m ready to go do something, because I don’t sleep much in Vegas.

	Miles	MPG	Avg. Speed
Today	407	45.8	50
Trip	2697	45.8	54

Food (today/budget)	Hotel (today/budget)	Trip Savings
$70 / $146	$80 / $75	AAA – $16 PriceLine – $242 Real $$ – $43

Painted Desert	$0 ($10 but free with National Parks Pass)
Meteor Crater	$24

Using Priceline for the Grand Canyon is difficult.  There are only two zones, one of which is Williams, AZ, an hour away.  There are a small number of hotels at the Canyon itself and even the Holiday Inn Express is $200 a night.

After bidding up to $120 a night for something at the Canyon and not getting it, I switched to Williams and bid $50 for a 1-star, which was also rejected.  Since the lowest published rate for a 1-star in Williams was $70, I gave up on bidding in favor of picking the hotel and room.  One of the downsides of bidding is that the hotel picks the room, so with some of the 1-stars having rooms with single queen beds, it wasn’t worth the chance.  I opted for the Econolodge for $80 a night and two doubles ($70 for a single queen).

At the request of the Queen of Stats Geeks, I’ve added the cumulative delta for real hotel dollars spent versus budgeted.  With tonight’s stay, the trip is $43 under budget for hotels, having mostly gone for nicer, rather than cheaper – and starting with that 2x-budget stay on the first night in Louisiana.

I’m beginning to have doubts about Courtyards, though. Between the ants in Austin and the dripping shower faucet here (and the air conditioner that has to be set at 65 to be comfortable), I’m underwhelmed.

The stop in Austin, then Albuquerque for two nights, and two nights at Grand Canyon, instead of one each and driving straight to Carlsbad, has put us behind schedule a bit, but gets us to Vegas on Saturday instead of Thursday.  And started the trip easier – we still have the San Francisco to Seattle run and Seattle to Yellowstone, but I think we can make up a day between Vegas and San Francisco.

The Vegas Thursday/Friday rates for this weekend were outrageous, with Bellagio hitting $399 for Friday before selling out.  A Saturday arrival is harder to get, because the hotels want to sell the whole weekend, but if they have rooms close to the weekend, they get desperate.

Ideally, we’d arrive Sunday, as that’s the best rate-time, with Bellagio offering $149 for Sunday through Wednesday next week, but that would play havoc with the schedule.  Bellagio isn’t in the cards, but it’s a good bellwether for the rates.

I was going to sleep in this morning and let Aryn sleep in more, but last night was so nice out that we had the balcony door (screened) open all night for the breeze.  Up at 6:00 or so with the sun and the birds singing.  Aryn slept until 7:00, even though I tried to keep the noise down to keystrokes and mouse-clicks.

We were in the car before 8:00 and had breakfast at IHOP before getting on the Interstate – I40 all the way from Albuquerque to Williams, AZ.

We passed some lava fields after about an hour on the road and pulled over to look at them and for Aryn to pick up some rocks.

Then we got into some really pretty country.

I took a lot of pictures out the window trying to capture it as we drove.

Since today was just about getting to Williams, we had the time and opportunity to stop along the way.  The first side-trip was through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.  Aryn kept asking what a Petrified Forest was and I told her: “Scared trees.  No, really.  And we’ll get to hide behind rocks, then jump out and scare the trees even more.  It’s interactive.”

On entering, they asked us if we had any rocks in the car and had to bag Aryn’s lava rocks so we wouldn’t be fined if they decided to search us on leaving.

The Painted Desert was beautiful, but I think we’re both suffering from Scenery-Overload.  At times the drive has been like having your head on a swivel muttering “… pretty … pretty … pretty … pretty … pretty …” as we drive along.

But the drive through the Painted Desert was enough to get Aryn out of the car in her pajamas to look at it, and eventually enough to get her to change into real clothes for the stops.

Later we arrived at some pueblo ruins from around 1100-1300.

It’s a beautiful area to visit, but I think if I was a member of the tribe that lived here …

… first I’d become Chief, then I’d call the tribe together and say: “Look, that Flint-Axe development project is now our top priority, because the guys 50-miles east of here have a lot better shit than we do and we’re going to go there and get out of this freakin’ desert.”

Here are some of the petroglyphs they left behind on the rocks, the one above clearly being their prayer that the Great Crane God come and eat the people fifty-miles east of here so they could take their shit and get out of the freakin’ desert.

And this one where they’re asking the gods to send a herd of antelope to be driven in front of their warriors against the people fifty-miles east of here.  A violent people, the dwellers in these pueblos.

From there we moved into the Petrified Forest area.  It’s hard to wrap my head around the time involved for a forest with massive trees to be covered by rising land, have enough time pass for the wood to absorb enough minerals to turn to stone, and then for the land to erode back down to expose the trees.  They stick out of the hills everywhere and break off when too much is exposed.

You’re not allowed to take any of the rocks or petrified wood out of the park, so we got Aryn a piece at the gift-shop.  Then on the way back to the Interstate, we passed multiple shops selling it – including one that must have had an acre of land covered in petrified logs.  There were even a couple places where big, two and three foot, sections of it were just sitting next to the road.

The next stop was at Meteor Crater – something I’ve always wanted to see.  It wasn’t a long stop, but it was fun to look at for a bit.

Back on the road and maybe it’s the fact that we haven’t seen a full-size tree since Sunday, but the area around Flagstaff was beautiful.  Nothing but mountains and conifers.  I could easily spend a week or two in this area just hiking and enjoying the outdoors.

And then … there’s the hotel … holy … crap …

This is an $80 / night Econolodge.  If it was, like, Joe’s Grand Canyon Motel, I’d feel differently, but Econolodge is a Choice Hotels brand and they’re supposed to have some standards.

Small, a little dirty, with a noticeable odor to the room.  If the reservation could be canceled, I’d go somewhere else – whether to a local, small motel where I wouldn’t mind these conditions, or to pay twice as much for the Holiday Inn Express closer to the Canyon.  If Choice is going to buy what I’m sure was an independent motel and stick their brand on it, then they should spring for enough upgrades and maintenance to maintain their standards.

There are exactly two electrical outlets in the room.  One behind the nightstand and one behind the dresser.

Oh … and the room clock is stuck in some bizarre, Groundhog Day-like loop:

The town of Williams is nice, though.  The street our hotel is on has dozens of little shops and restaurants – touristy, but with character.  We went for a short walk and had dinner at Pine Country Restaurant because Aryn saw pie through the window.  Aryn had a vegetarian shepherd’s pie (made with a garden burger instead of meat) and I had a pork chop and baked potato. 

My pork chop was thin, dry, and crunchy … which most people won’t find attractive, but is exactly how I like my pork chops.  The Dutch cherry pie was pretty good, and no end of main course sins can be set right by a good slice of pie.