Journey to Sedona

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The first thing we noticed when we arrived was how friendly the Americans here are compared to Florida when we went there two years ago. US immigration is always traumatic, but where Orlando airport had the obnoxious Gestapo officer ruling her domain (see The Immigration Controller From Hell, But Please Don’t Tell Her That), the lady who was directing the queue in Las Vegas airport was happily chatting to the children.

The second thing we noticed was how hot it was. We had to wait outside for the bus to the hire-car centre, which was a surprising distance from the airport terminal. It didn’t take long, but with very little shade, it was a torturous wait.

Our car was a massive seven-seat van, which our daughter described as “cool”, much to the amusement of the guy in the hire-car office. He had apparently never heard the words “cool” and “van” in the same sentence before. It swallowed all our luggage however, which was quite an achievement.

We drove all the way from Las Vegas to Sedona, which seemed less hassle than trying to get an internal flight to Phoenix and then driving from there. On the way we went over the Hoover Dam, which was spectacular to say the least. Especially the bridge for the new highway that they are in the process of building - which should go some way to relieve the traffic jams as it was a bit of a bottle neck, which was not helped by all the tourists aimlessly wandering around. We hoped to come back when we were next in Las Vegas to see the dam more closely.

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