Colorado River and Grand Canyon

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From Vegas, we headed east through the desert to the Hoover Dam, which holds back the Colorado River on the border between Nevada and Arizona. This 80-year old structure and Lake Mead upstream of it provide the life-blood to the region, in terms of water and electricity. The massive structure contains two and a half million cubic metres of concrete (enough to build a 2-lane highway east-west across the whole USA!), and at 776 feet the dam is almost as high as the Eiffel Tower.

Then a few more hours driving east to another sight that truly defines the word "awesome" - the Grand Canyon. 'Grand' seems a totally inadequate description of this natural wonder - it's a monster of almost indescribable beauty, etched from the desert landscape by the Colorado River over millions of years.

Patricia was brave enough to get up at 5.30am, scrape the ice off the windscreen and drive the 10km from the hotel to the South Rim to see the sunrise over the canyon. The rest of us stayed in bed and instead chose to see the sunset later in the day! Both spectacular.

From here we drive west into California, heading for the Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park...

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