USA Part Five - Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon

---

The drive from Bishop to Las Vegas was one of the longer drives of our trip, taking around four and a half hours altogether. It was pretty uneventful and boring – driving through desert along seemingly never-ending roads that just disappeared straight ahead over the horizon. It didn’t help that the radio signal was pretty terrible, leaving us with a choice of country music or Christian rock – not really the type of stuff that we would choose to listen to! We therefore just switched it off and just chatted about random stuff and reminisced on the things that we had seen so far on our trip.

Eventually, our surroundings started to become a bit more built-up and we caught our first glimpse of the Stratosphere tower, followed by the looming buildings of the hotels on the Strip. We were staying at ‘The Quad’ – the same hotel that we stayed at last time, although it used to be known as the ‘Imperial Palace’ and has now had a bit of a facelift and a change in theme! We had booked this hotel months ago, way back when we were still in Sydney, through a special ‘early bird’ offer on Expedia. We paid $28 per night for a Deluxe Room (better than the one that we stayed in before) which included a free breakfast each morning, consisting of $9 each to spend in Starbucks in the Harrah’s casino next door. This meant that we were essentially each paying $5 to stay in a hotel right in the centre of the strip, opposite Caesar’s Palace – crazy, and an absolute steal!

As we went to Vegas on our last trip, I won’t go into detail of everything that we did each day, as it was pretty much the same stuff as last time. We went to see the Bellagio fountains several times, we watched the volcano erupt at The Mirage and we went to see the ‘Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas’ sign and get some pictures. We were usually out quite late at night wandering up and down the strip and around the hotels and casinos (occasionally having a go on the slots but not really winning anything big, unfortunately!), then we would have a lie in the following morning before heading to Harrah’s to buy breakfast. We visited the large Coca-Cola store and the M&M’s store next door on one of the days, and also had a look in the Bellagio conservatory, where there were various weird and wonderful plants and trees to walk around – the ones with faces were particularly creepy!

All in all, we had a pretty fun few days in Vegas, though as we said last time, you do need quite a lot of money to really enjoy everything that it has to offer. Our next stop was going to be a little town called Williams, which would be our base to go and see the Grand Canyon. On our way there, we knew that the Hoover Dam was fairly close to Las Vegas and probably on the way towards the Grand Canyon, so we took a slight detour (it only added about ten minutes to our journey) to go and see it.

We parked up at the top of a hill and walked down to the dam to get some photos. To be honest, we actually thought that it was smaller than it seems in pictures – don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty huge dam, but it always seems absolutely massive in pictures that we have seen before. The border for Nevada/Arizona actually runs through the dam, so as we were driving around it to park (and also as we left), we were constantly passing signs welcoming us in and out of both states as the roads snaked around the dam, which was quite amusing!

Once we were done, we continued our road trip to Williams passing the last sign welcoming us to Arizona for the day! We eventually arrived several hours later, and had a relaxed evening at the Grand Motel (right on Route 66!) before a day sight-seeing at the Grand Canyon. We were up and ready by about 9am the next morning, and set out for the hour drive to the South Rim of the canyon – a nice easy drive as it was pretty much just one road straight up from where we were staying! The time flew by and before we knew it, we were at the little booth paying the entrance fee to enter the national park. We headed first to the visitor centre, where we watched a short film projected on a large globe in the centre of a room, detailing how the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years. We grabbed a map and then had a walk over to one of the view points, which was just a short walk from the visitor centre.

Wow! We’ve seen some amazing views during our trip (it’s a bit of a recurring theme I guess!), but this was probably one of the most incredible. The canyon just spans out in front of you as if you are standing on top of the world, and as you look down you realise that the things that just seem like large rocks at first glance are actually HUGE cliffs – there are just layers and layers of these cliffs that form the canyon until you can eventually spot the Colorado River that runs through the middle. It really is mind-blowing just standing there and looking down into this massive hole in the ground, and there’s not much else in this world that can you make you feel as tiny as you do standing on that rim.

We walked along the rim trail for a little while, stopping off several times at different vantage points to get photos, until we eventually came to one of the shuttle stops. Like Yosemite, there are several shuttle buses that run around the South Rim, into the Grand Canyon village and connecting the various forms of accommodation (mainly campsites and lodges) that are dotted around the area. A bus pulled up shortly after, which we hopped on and rode as far up as it went before turning back around towards the village. There was a different bus that would then continue west along the rim, along a road which is not open to cars. We had originally planned on taking this bus along the canyon, however as we pulled up to this stop, we soon noticed that a lot of other people seemed to have this plan in mind! As it was a Saturday, it was fairly busy, and there was a queue of people standing at the stop which would easily fill at least three buses. The buses only ran every 10 to 15 minutes, so we could potentially be waiting for over 45 minutes to get on one of the buses, so we instead changed our minds and decided to hop back onto the bus that we had just got off and headed back towards the visitor centre and back to our car.

Once back at the car, we had a look at the map and decided to drive over to the east side of the rim instead, noticing that there were plenty of look outs along the way that we would stop off at. We set off and spent the next few hours driving along the route (which was about 25 miles long altogether), but stopping off at every chance that we could to park up and get some more pictures. Where it was safe to do so, we climbed down a bit to get right to the edge of the canyon, where we each sat just dangling our legs over the edge – of course being very careful as we did so, but enjoying the exhilarating feeling of being so high up.

We saw a few large birds of prey flying over the canyon, mainly what we presumed to be Peregrine Falcons. Apparently you can often spot California Condors swooping over, but we didn’t see any during our time there, although we were always keeping a look out for them. We did spot a couple of ravens who seemed to be having a bit of a moment – sitting together on a rock, looking out over the canyon.

As we continued along the rim, we noticed a sign pointing towards ‘Tusayan Ruins and Museum’, so we took the track off the road to go and explore. The museum was free, and we had a wander around the exhibits, which consisted of artefacts that had been recovered from the 800 year old Pueblo Indian ruins nearby, including several tools, weapons and clothing. We were then able to have a walk around the ruins that had been excavated, viewing the foundations of several different ancient rooms and structures.

We carried on along the road, again stopping off at each viewpoint to get more pictures, until we eventually reached the East entrance to the canyon. We stopped off to use the restrooms and also snapped some photos of the view from there, and also of the watchtower that overlooks the canyon. By this point it was about 2:30pm, so we decided to call it a day – we had been there for over four hours and had seen the canyon from every angle that we could. We drove back along the rim towards the visitor centre and the south entrance, where we then exited the park and got back onto the highway.

We drove back to Williams and grabbed some food from the nearby Taco Bell to eat for a combined lunch/dinner meal, as it was now nearing 4pm. We then returned to the motel for our last night at Williams before we would leave the next morning to drive to Phoenix.

---