Ok, I didn't get around to posting this last night, but sure enough, given the choice between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, we decided to go with Vegas.
As my friend Ellen pointed out: "Hmm, let's see: stronghold of mormon conservatives, versus promiscuous city of wanton sex and gambling? Tough choice!" ;-)
Of course, the irony is, all we did when we finally got here was find a hotel (the Holiday Inn Express was our first choice, primarily because the Oscar Mayer Weiner Truck was actually parked in the parking lot, but they were out of rooms, so we ended up at some other Marriott variant next door) and go to sleep. Today we'll hopefully spend some time exploring before heading out to LA.
As for the trip from Denver to Vegas, I must say it was interesting. The rockies are impressive, at least once the fog cleared, and while Utah is rather empty, it's nothing if not beautiful countryside. I got some good pictures which will hopefully turn into an impressive panoramic shot of the scenery, assuming I can manage to master one of those programs that stitches such things together. Continuing on we actually managed to run into a brief snowstorm, and eventually ended up passing through a wonderfully twisty and turny road through the mountains of Arizona in the dark. The trip ended with a drive through Nevada (which as EJ pointed out, is the tackiest state in the union, although that's part of its charm) in the dark, which looked pretty much like you're driving through a cartoon. Everything is either black (the road) or pinpoints of light (approaching cars and stars), with silhouetted mountains and a wonderfully gradiented sky. It really did look very cool.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Off to break our tradition of driving someplace as quickly as possible and then leaving ASAP ;-)
