Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon

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Las Vegas - 10th / 11th March
After a masterpiece of forward planning using timetables and maps we walked inside and around most of the major hotels, drawn in by their exterior beauty or their provision of free entertainment.
One highlight was the lions in a glass-bottomed cage in MGM. We stood underneath the glass and watched them chew on enormous dog chews. I have a great photo of one lion licking the glass above me. Another highlight was the fountain display set to music in front of the Bellagio. Jets swayed from side to side and spurted up in a Mexican wave that hid the hotel from view.
The damp squib was the Atlantis in Caesar's Forum. Statues descended and moving figures replaced them and spoke, then the alarm went off and' 'Sorry folks. The performance won't be happening today.' We returned the next day to see it and I'm glad I hadn't seen it before the abortive performance, as the part that had triggered the alarm was very fiery. Sheets of flame shot from one character's sword and leapt up to the ceiling, before being quenched by another character's water streams. I'm still not clear about the story of Atlantis, but it all looked pretty spectacular.

Many of the hotels here have huge shopping malls within them, most of them full of designer shops. If i had the money I could shop in three separate Tiffany's, spend $14,000 on some Beatles memorabilia and buy a 5 foot woolly mammoth. All I bought was a Cirque Du Soleil 'Love!' tee-shirt ($48) and a globe made from semi-precious minerals from Globus Maximus at $20 (half price).
We went on a gondola at the venetian and the pretty US/Italian girl who punted us under the mock Rialto sang 'It's amore'. I don't know whether she felt as silly as we did.
We ate at the revolving restaurant in the Stratosphere 105 stories up and watched the glittering lights of the Strip and the town, which is larger than I expected. But staffing for the industry that is Vegas must be colossal, apparently hotels reckon on two and a half staff for every room.

12th March
We went on a half day tour to Hoover Dam which was built in the 1930's to control the Colorado River, which alternately flooded or dried up completely, decimating crops either way. As a by-product hydro electric power was generated for California, Arizona and Nevada.
We descended 53 stories below ground level into the tunnels used to divert the river so the dam could be built. Several new processes were used which are now used to build other dams worldwide.
We took a last look ar Fremont lightshow and ate a final meal at Hennessey's. Kev got his meal for free as he won the toss of the coin against the chef.

We left Las Vegas that evening and embarked on the trip I'd been dreading. A bus / train / bus journey that would leave us at Williams at 4am, to wait for the 10am Grand Canyon train. Our ticket clerk had told us that there was no waiting room, but there may be a bus shelter. We got off the train at Williams Junction to be met by a minibus for the ten-minute journey to Williams and a chill wind that whipped round my ankles and straight up my trouser legs. We seemed to be in a lumber yard, surrounded by pine trees and the single light went off as the train pulled out. I asked the minibus driver if there would be anywhere to wait. 'You can sit in the lobby of the Railway Hotel,' he said. I had visions of somewhere similar to Amtrak's waiting room at Kingman - an assortment of hard chairs, or stained padded chairs set round the grubby walls with a large stuffed Daffy Duck lookalike in one corner and a restroom (toilet) with a door that didn't shut in the other. Oh well, I thought, at least we'll be indoors. But when we got to the Railway Hotel I found myself in a spacious lobby with enticing pictures of the Grand Canyon round the walls, a good coffee machine and large comfortable sofas set in front of a blazing log fire. Six hours of waiting passed very quickly as I slumbered on while the lobby filled with hotel guests meeting up for the train trip to the canyon. This journey was preceded by a Wild West show of four bandits and a sheriff who hoiked out a hapless member of the audience to join them. The acting was okay, with some comedy and plenty of realistic falling dead from shooting and there's something about a man in cowboy boots and chaps...
There were huge numbers of elderly Americans wandering about, as well as a school party of kids. Schools in the US, unlike Australia and the UK, don't seem to have schol uniform.
many of the elderly were in wheelchairs or have limited mobility. Perhaps they're more visible because the Us seems to have full accessibility. Every bus has a lowered floor and wheelchair housing, and every facility has a disabled toilet. Several people wore oxygen tubes, perhaps necessary at 7,000 feet.
We had a conductor on the Grand Canyon train who gave us a commentary on the area and a strolling guitarist who sang Western songs. He was divinely handsome, a little like Paul Newman, and I was beginning to fall in love, until he asked if there were any veterans on board. there weren't, but he thanked 'our boys, who are doing such a good job of protecting us.' He said he wasn't a veteran but he was a patriot, as if the two were synomous. I quickly fell out of love and was glad to see him move on to the next carriage.
My initial impression of the Grand Canyon was disappointment, the colours were muted and I was expecting something more brilliant than King's Canyon in Australia. The weak sun and the haze over the far rim didn't give the view that I'd seen in pictures. But as we took the free shuttle buses to different viewpoints I began to see and marvel at the scale and vastness. And the helicopter ride we took the following day really made me feel that I was seeing one of the seven wonders of the world (the third this trip - Everest and the Great Barrier Reef are the others). At a mile deep, the Colorado River flows over the Earth's crust with layers on the canyon walls showing deposits laid down by ancient seas and snowmelts over millions of years. The river is a matt-brown colour as it carries sand and sediment, and looks like a thin ribbon, though 300 feet wide in places. What looks like tufts of grass on the ground either side are actually tall pine trees and you could lose Manhattan in the gorge several times over.
I took an afternoon walk along two miles of the south rim and as well as seeing the shadows creep up the canyon walls, brightening the colours above, I also saw three condors, or maybe the same one three times. Either way I was very excited. They have recently been reintroduced back into what was their natural habitat and with their nine-foot wing span and wing feathers spread like an Indian headdress they are distinctive as well as impressive.
15th March
We went to the IMAX cinema and watched a film about the Canyon, showing early Indians living on the rim or down in the canyon, early explorers braving the rapids of the Colorado, and present-day white water rafters. This afternoon we'll go back up for alast look at the Canyon before being collected by bus and taken to Flagstaff where we'll pick up the train to Chicago, a journey of 35 hours.

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