My son and I left Cheyenne...

...last Sunday at a little after seven o'clock in the morning and arrived in Las Vegas about twelve hours later.

As you can see, the two cities are a little different from each other. (For starters, it was over a hundred degrees in Vegas! And, in case you haven't heard, gambling is legal there, too. But more on that later.)

After a quick stop at a Starbuck's in Cheyenne for some rocket fuel (and, yes, they do have Starbuck's in Wyoming), Joe and I got back on I-80 for the next leg of our trip. We were headed for a late lunch / early dinner at Lone Star Taqueria in Salt Lake City after I noticed that J Dawgs in Provo was closed on Sundays. Turns out my research was faulty, however, as both establishments were shuttered on the Lord's day. (Another discovery: apparently, Utah is loaded with Mormons! I learned a lot about America on this trip.)

But it was okay, as we had had a late breakfast / early lunch (our eating habits were a little off on this trip) at a -- gasp! -- McDonald's along the way.

Wyoming, incidentally, is an absolutely breathtaking place. After the cornfields of Illinois, Iowa and most of Nebraska, the land turns into High Plains before the Rocky Mountains emerge about a third of the way into the Equality State (the official nickname of Wyoming -- lame, if you ask me). Red rocks, like in the picture below, are a common sight on I-80.

But the Rockies don't last forever, either, and the terrain in Utah gradually turned into desert. And as we traveled south and west on I-15, the Beehive State got hotter and hotter (and my son and I got more and more tired of what began to feel like an endless drive).

By the way, who gave these states these nicknames? Maybe, since Wyoming was the 44th state and Utah the 45th, all the good ones were already taken (like Connecticut, the Nutmeg State).

But, as I was saying, Joe and I were beginning to get a little cranky by this point. It seemed our moods were running inversely to the level of the mercury. Fortunately, my son saved the day by playing the latest comedy specials by Jim Gaffigan and Bill Burr. Those got us through the rest of Utah, a tiny corner of Arizona and into Nevada, the Silver State (even the nicknames were getting better).

So at about seven o'clock in the evening (and 104 degrees!) we turned off the interstate at the East Flamingo Road exit (with a name like that you know you're in the right place). We pulled on to the Strip and my son's eyes immediately grew to the size of small dinner plates. (I hadn't seen him this excited since the Bulls drafted Derrick Rose.)

But, really, Vegas is an incredible place. So incredible, in fact, that it deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned...