Yesterday, my Dad and I woke up really early (7:00 a.m. is “really” early to any poker player) to go hike around Red Rock Canyon. My friend Dave Irish and a friend of his came along. The Canyon is about an hour away from the Strip, so by the time we got out the door, stocked up on bottled water, and made it to Red Rock, we were hiking by 9:00.

We drove around for a little while trying to figure out what trail we wanted to hike. The process got a little frustrating because we couldn’t find an “easy” trail (they’re rated easy, moderate, and difficult) that was in the ~2 mile range. After searching for a trail for a while, we decided to just try a “difficult” trail that was 2.5 miles long. We always figured if it proved to be really hard, we could just come back to the car and go search for an easier trail. Whoever makes the decisions on how to rate the trails must have a pretty skewed view of what is truly “difficult”, because none of us had much trouble on the trail at all despite no experience, equipment and mediocre physical fitness levels.

It was a really cool experience and something I hope to do a few more times this summer. Here’s a shot I took while we were hiking. The moon was positioned in between these two peaks. You can barely see it in the picture, but in real life it was quite the sight.

My Dad and I pressed on a little past the blazen path just for fun while Dave and his friend waited back and hydrated. We stumbled upon this old military gear box that was wedged in between two rocks. The chances of stumbling on this thing randomly are pretty low; we had to walk through a bunch of bushes that kind of cut up your arms and stuff. In other words, getting to where this box was located was not somewhere many, if any, hikers would be likely to do unless they were purposefully seeking it out. My Dad kind of thought that opening the box could be dangerous and that maybe we should just carry it down with us and return it to the park officials. I wanted to gamble a little and decided to open the box anyway. Here’s what I found inside:

Here’s a closer view of the note (an even closer view here).

Pretty cool, huh? I had never heard of geocaching prior to stumbling on this box, but I absolutely love the concept. The only thing either my Dad or I possessed that could really constitute as a “trinket” was a $5 casino chip from L’Auberge du Lac in Lake Charles, Louisiana that I had in my backpack, so I left that in the box and notated on the pad of paper the date that we found the box.

The whole geocaching thing seems pretty cool; when I’ve got the time, I might look into seeing if there are other boxes hidden around the Vegas valley. It gives a little more purpose to hiking than just a desire to exercise and be outdoors.

Later in the afternoon, I took my Dad to the Harley Davidson Cafe on the Vegas Strip (he’s really into motorcycles) where we ate a pretty huge meal. We walked off a lot of those calories in the following hours when I showed him around the Strip. We walked from Planet Hollywood north to Wynn on the east side of the Strip then crossed over to the west side and came back down to New York, New York where we rode the roller coaster they have.

All in all, it was a really enjoyable day where I estimate we walked probably about 8 miles. I just dropped my Dad off at the airport a little while ago. After I finish posting this entry, I’m going to head to the Rio where a summer of poker officially starts for me with the $1k event. More about that in the next entry.