Grand Canyon Here We Come!

---

It's time to get the Traveling Traverse rolling again. We leave Las Vegas and head to the Grand Canyon, with a stop at the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is one of the world's largest dams that controls floods, generates electricity and provides water. It was built during the Great Depression at a cost of $49 million and completed in 1935. The size and vastness of it just reinforces the size and vastness of our travels in this part of the country.

We continue on through the desert and some real ugly landscape. After we pass through Kingman, the terrain starts to green up and look better. We make our first stop on Route 66 in the small town of Seligman. It still has artifacts of a bygone era (Route 66), but you can tell it was a real charmer. Our favorite stop here was Delgadillo's Snow Cap, a roadside snack and souvenier stand. Check out the pix.

Onward we march until we get to Williams, Arizona. It's another small but larger, small town, that has an old west feel. We drive through a couple of times and then park for a stroll and a little shopping. The town is also the base for the Grand Canyon Railroad. We stopped in at Colors of the West which aside from the kitschy Route 66 stuff, had some unique handicrafts from local artists. A few dollars later, we were parched! We stopped in at the World Famous Sultana for a tequila before our final stretch to the canyon.

The landscape is really unusual out here - there will be massive amounts of nothingness and then a random trailer parked in the middle of the nothingness. Fortunately, Sweetie and Asshole like to make up stories so that and the Route 66 soundtrack CD made the trip move along.

It was dark when we pulled into the Park but we found our lodge - Yavapai and got to our room which was very nicely appointed. We tend to forget that the National Park Service puts a lot of effort into offering accomodations for every type of traveller. We're in a typical hotel style room but recently upgraded and really comfortable.

By the way, the temperature when we left Henderson was 86. When we pulled into Yavapai, we were in the low 50s - Asshole had to put on a long sleeve T!

Decided to grab a quick, casual dinner in the Park and headed over to Maswik Lodge at their Pizza Pub. Ordered a huge mixed greens salad and a Supreme Pizza. Both were really good and the place had televisions with baseball, soccer and some sort of weird women's weightlifting/trailer pull competition - a little something for everyone!

Tomorrow is our first glance of the Canyon!

---

Photos

Words aren't Needed
Mountain Goats Ahead

Yet Another Opium Den
Weird coincidences on this trip...