The
second day started with me feeling guilty about driving Chris away to
the car. I found out I sound like a moose when I snore. All of us
skipped shower that morning except Divyani for we wanted to save time to
do more exciting things. Besides we are on a road trip not some
smell-good contest. The weather was sunny and nice yet again. The place
we stayed at offered decent breakfast for a reasonable price. So I, Sean
and Divyani jumped in to get something to eat before the fun began. Amy
and Chris said they are not used to eating so early and they grabbed
some power bars. We drove for about half an hour to get to the Grand
Canyon's north rim. We had started a game of counting the number of
states we could find on license plates a day earlier. The parking lot at
the Grand Canyon was an absolute treasure for this game. We even saw a
few Canadian license plates.

Amy
had been there before. I was at the south rim with Peter and Beatrice a
few years ago, but I had never seen Grand Canyon from the other side.
Peter and Beatrice are in their sixties and they gave me a place to live
when I was going to a community college in Colorado and couldn’t afford
to rent a place of my own. The north rim was much cleaner and less
crowded. Amy took us on a short trail that provided a scenic overview of
the canyon. It was amazing. The top layer of the rock formation is
called the Kaibab layer. That's the only thing I remember from reading
about the rock formation. We couldn't see the Colorado River though. I
remember seeing that from the south rim. After that short hike, we
decided to go on a longer one which spiraled down to the base of the
canyon. People usually ride on mules on that trail and the trail was
adrift with fresh mule-dung stench. It was the first day Highway 67
which goes to the north rim had been opened. Due to extreme weather
conditions, it is shut down every winter. Amy, Sean and Chris being
athletes had to show off their hiking abilities and so they walked down
quickly. Divyani and I were left behind. We didn't hike for too long.
They were waiting for us at a nice view-point where we took a few
pictures. We rested and talked nonsense for a while, then started
heading back up. The same story all over again. Two of us were left
behind but we were happy to have them waiting for us at the parking lot.
That was the end of Grand Canyon stop.

The
day wasn't over yet. We drove a few hours before stopping by Pizza-hut
for lunch. We saw that place after an hour or two of nothingness. We
couldn't wait any longer. That pizza tasted so good--- probably
something like “bhok mitho ki bhojan mitho maharaj” (roughly
translates to – Hey Royal Ass, if you had to choose between a feast when
you’re really not hungry and simple food when you’re really really
hungry, what would you go for?). Chris and I jumped in for a quick video
game shooting after the pizza. A few quarters into that ugly looking
box to shoot at those fake deer was well worth the money, I thought, as
it cheered us up a bit. Not too sure if it was the pizza or the video
game, but something definitely went right at that pizza-hut. We walked
out of there happy and full.

After
some more driving, we got to Zion national park. We earlier made a
smart move by buying the national park permit at the Grand canyon that
would let us into any park without paying for each of them separately.
That was Amy's idea. Zion was very different probably because we could
drive through the winding roads and look up at all those pretty red
rocks. We had to drive through a tunnel that was more than a mile long.
After all that we parked near the visitor center and then they had a
tour shuttle bus which would take us to all the major trail heads. We
hopped into that and since we were a bit tired already because of
earlier hikes and all the driving, we decided to go on the shortest hike
possible-- half a mile hike to the weeping rock. The weeping rock was
quite something. It was a large curved rock formation which was dripping
water constantly as if the lady-rock had betrayed the poor guy and he's
been weeping ever since. We ran across a Ukrainian guy up there and
later two guys from Boston and New York on the tour bus back to our
parking lot. The two guys had a lot to talk about as they had traveled a
lot. One guy had even been to India a few times.

Just
when we thought the fun part of the day was over, we drove to Las Vegas
where we had a nice comfortable beds waiting for us. Sean's friend's
parents live there and they were very welcoming. They showed us our room
and I wanted to see Vegas really bad as soon as we saw all the lights
while driving into the city. Guys were pretty tired and were reluctant
to go anywhere else. But thanks to Don (Sean's friend's dad), he
convinced us that it was a good idea to go out and check Vegas out at
night and sleep in in the morning. We went to the Belagio hotel and I
lost about 20 dollars on the slot machines and grabbed two free drinks.
After we came back, I rocked myself to sleep on my comfy water bed.
Snoring is not all that bad after all. It at least gave me a room of my
own with the only water-bed in the house. Hooray.