A really grand canyon

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Right well as Gra has used up all of his blogging energy on Vegas Im afraid it's back to me for this one.

The drive from Vegas was desert, desert and more desert and was extremely hot, but after treating ourselves to the Hilton we were back in our budget backpackers mind so only allowed ourselves a blast of air con every 20 mins (do you know how much extra fuel the car uses when the air cons on?!) After about an hour we same across the Hoover Dam which was pretty impressive- and BIG.

After about another 4 hours of driving/melting we arrived in Flagstaff and found our Days Inn motel which we'd already booked as we'd heard it can get really busy at weekends. Unfortunatly when we booked it we didnt realize that the tax was so much higher in Arizona- 14% and then the hotel added another 3% on for a reason we could never quite work out. (If you didnt realize in the US they dont include tax on prices shown, its always added on when you come to pay which to be honest is a bit of a pain in the rear as it changes in every state and we didnt bring a calculator with us so our brains are working overtime, well Gras is anyway). Luckily it turned out to be a nice motel and we spent the rest of the evening just chilling.

We were up reasonably early the next day, mainly because the free breakfast (not just donuts this time) finished at 9 and secondly we needed to get started on the drive up to the Canyon. It took about an hour to get to the park entrance where we purchased our ticket and got all the maps and info we needed. A few minutes up the road and we came across several hundred cars parked along the road and realized we'd come to the first viewing point. And what a view it was! It really was breath taking, the photos just dont do it justice. Kind of felt like you were standing on the edge of the earth or something- and if you have vertigo you really wouldnt want to stand too close to the edge as its about 1 mile down. There were several hikes you could do down to the bottom, and quite a few 2 day hikes where you could camp in the canyon. We werent really kitted up for the camping and considering it was about 85 degrees at the top and it got another 30 hotter at the base of the canyon (not to mention the rattlesnakes) we decided to give all of the hikes a miss and instead walked a couple of miles a long the edge- but not too close as every few hundred metres you came across a sign that told you everyone thats fallen off the edge has been killed, nice! After taking about a hundred photos we headed back to the car which was easier said than done as we kind of forgot to check where we parked- doh! Then we drove to another couple of viewing points in the other direction where we listened in on a guide pointing out bear caves, buddha temples and old mining holes.

It was a great day, but we know now that too appreciate it fully you need to hike down to the base so you can get a true feeling of the size of it- so thats another thing to add to the list of "go back and do things"!

Back on the road headed east....next stop New Mexico and Santa fe.

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