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Published: September 30th 2011
Our first full day in LV was an early start. Up at 6.15am (after not getting to bed until after midnight) to get ready for our pre-booked 'Sunset Tour' to The Grand Canyon. We were picked up at the hotel by our tour van driver, Julio Perez, at 7.40am and after picking up other passengers headed out through the city into the Nevada desert. We had young couples from Puerto Rica, Chile and India (although they had been working in Houston for 4 years) and a young lady from South Korea, a real UN of tourists.
First stop was at Boulder City at about 9.15am where we had breakfast at McDonalds (all part of the price of the trip) and then headed to the Hoover Dam. What an incredible feat of engineering that is considering it was built between 1931 and 1935. It is massive compared with our hydro dams in NZ. The lake behind it, Lake Mead, gained 26 feet in height after some recent heavy rain in the Colorado River catchments but it still looked empty!!
We then headed further inland through desert country. It is so different to home where no matter where you go you are either
driving through a town, farm land or forestry. Here there was just mile upon mile of nothing except low scrub. No grass and nothing that even looked remotely like land use of any sort.
We stopped at Kingsman for petrol and this is beside the old Route 66 highway and was full of hundreds of old Harley Davidson riders refueling their machines.
We then moved on to a little town called Sellgman (I think that's how it's spelt) that is actually on Route 66 and has been recreated as a Route 66 tourisy spot. Again heaps of Harleys, most riden by Germans and Russian tourists. We wandered around the quaint little touristy shops that gave a 1950s feel to things.
We then headed to the Grand Canyon, arriving there at 3pm after 6 hours on the road. It is a 300 mile drive there from LV.
First up we had lunch, supplied as part of the trip price, lovely big meaty salad sandwiches that we had apparently pre-ordered when we booked the trip.
This was eaten right beside the South Rim of the GC and was an incredible location to have lunch.
The GC is everything that we had seen
in movies and on TV or wherever!!! The colours are amazing and the depth of the canyon is breathtaking. We had about 3 and a half hours on the South Rim taking in various lookouts that our tour guide either walked us or drove us to. Plenty of photos and hopefully I've managed to download a couple on the blog.
The stay at GC finished with sitting and watching the sun set over one of the rims. Some great photo opportunities!!
Then came the return drive, another 300 miles, but this time it was dark, of course, so a chance to have a doze or watch whatever lights we could see in the distance.
We never got back to our hotel until 11pm so it was certainly a day where we got our monies worth.
It was just an incredible day with some amazing sights.
Robyn and Trevor Plunkett had arrived from Vancouver by the time we got back so we have finished the day catching up with them and sharing 'war stories'.
Tomorrow is a walking day in LV so we might start a bit later in the morning.
That's day 2. Only 8 weeks and 2 days to go!!!!!
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Deirdre Malcolm
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GC
What a wonderful start to your trip. My Mark was there 10 yrs ago and brought us home a poster. A real fascinating place to visit. Hope you slower paced tour has been enjoyable. Tension is still a bit tense at schoolo. Just wish some people would get over Dawid's announcement and move on and not be so negative. Looking forward to the holidays. Have had a day in the garden today so have eliminated quite a pile of weeds!!! Have a great next few days and much love. Deirdre