Amanda Rae Was Here...

I’ve toured ceramics centers, cheese factories, champagne cellars, and potato chip fryeries on my travels, but perhaps my most anticipated educational excursion was to Zappos Headquarters in Henderson, Nevada. (I’ve been a faithful customer since 2006—back when they only sold shoes, glorious shoes—and the site has been instrumental in helping me rebuild my collection from the closet floor up.)

Upon entering the building, I noticed two things:

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I set off to Las Vegas last Friday (May 18)—a day later than I’d initially planned—thanks to a forecast calling for rain and wind on Thursday. I wanted to camp out in Bryce Canyon National Park, but I didn’t want to chance it. That left just two days to complete the ~650-mile drive and arrive in Vegas on Saturday afternoon. I’d have more time to hike and explore on the return route…at least that’s what I figured.

450 miles later, I got to Bryce Canyon (above). It was late afternoon, chilly, and breezy—people were wearing pants and parkas! So much for the desert—but that hadn’t deterred campers from clogging all of the campsites in the park. No big deal, I continued on to nearby Duck Creek where I found an eerily desolate campground. I’d bought a boneless pork chop in a market along the way and had some bell peppers I’d rescued from my refrigerator back home, and I was determined to cook dinner on the Weber Baby-Q wedged in my trunk.

As the sun crept closer to the horizon, the wind picked up. You can’t tell from that photo, above, but the birch trees shading my site were shaking, seizure-like. “Have mercy on us!” they seemed to scream, but the wind wasn’t listening. (The irony of being, literally, a sitting duck in Duck Creek was not lost on me.) I finished my meal and packed up camp. It was 45 degrees; I was not about to wake up under a blanket of snow.

The next day, I stepped out of the car at a gas station in Las Vegas, and was hit with 95-degree blood-boiling heat. I headed straight to the pool at Caesar’s. The next few nights were spent wearing as little clothing as possible; daytime called for extra layers in the frosty, AC-cooled conference rooms of the casino.

Even this building in Old Town was melting:

(OK, no, that’s just Frank Gehry.)

On Wednesday, I hoofed it across the bridge overlooking the Hoover Dam in 102-degree, face-melting hotness, and had to turn around halfway for fear of heat-exhaustion/sunburn….

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I should have known when I cut myself picking one up:

[Silver Bear Enterprises, Springdale, Utah, May 25, 2012]

[Las Vegas, Nevada, May 23, 2012]