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Published: April 8th 2008
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Grand Canyon
It's Grand I tell ye. From Monument Valley it was off to the Grand Canyon. Unlike anywhere else we have been so far, it was swamped with tourists with cameras, but we are still somewhere between Spring Break and Easter so it’s to be expected. The park, again, was massive (it take roughly 5 hours to drive the length of the canyon). Originally I wanted to go to the northern side of the canyon but unfortunately because it’s still winter the north side is still closed to due snow - can you believe it!? So we stuck to the south side. We entered the park from the eastern entrance and drove across west. We stopped off at loads of locations to take a look into the canyon. After seeing it about six times though it get’s a little similar.. big hole.. big hole.. big hole again..
We stayed about 45 mins south from the park as it was expensive to stay in the park and you have to book about a year in advance. The place we ended up at was on route 66. It was like a 1950’s time warp, lots of diners and old style petrol stations. Everything in town reminded you that
you were on ‘Historic Route 66’. Later I found out whilst in a diner having breakfast that Route 66 runs through eight states; Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, pretty much half the country - it’s a long road.
We went back to the park and decided to do a short walk down into the canyon (hey, we bought hiking shoes they have to be used!), but had to come back up because some of the route was in the shade and there was snow and sheets of ice with a cliff drop on the other side. Most people coming back up had special walking poles and crampons on their feet to handle the conditions, so we thought it best not to carry on. If you plan it correctly though you can hike down into the canyon and camp in the valley. The walk takes about a day so you have to spend the night in the valley. The temperature at the top of the Grand Canyon was 6 or 7 degrees at the valley floor (which is a mile below) the temperature is 25 degrees!
After a couple of days we left for
Hoover Dam
That is exactly what I used to say to our Electrolux. Vegas, the drive was pretty uneventful. We drove over the Hoover Dam just on the boarder of Arizona and Nevada. There were loads of tourists and traffic building up over the dam, we couldn’t be bothered to stop and look around as we wanted to get to Vegas to secure a room as we hadn’t booked anything in advance. The Hoover Dam is massive though, not only does it operate as a dam but also an electric power producing facility. How it works? I don't know. I’m sure we could have found out more if we’d stopped. Oh well, Google it if you are interested.
I know I keep going on about the temperature gauge in the car but leaving the Grand Canyon it was only 55. Once we got to Vegas it was a whopping 85 - Nice! The next day, straight to the pool where we both managed to get sunburnt.
Vegas is exactly what we expected. Loads of people, loads of gambling and loads of over the top hotels. Ones styled like Venice, Paris and New York. Apart from having different outsides they are almost all identical inside with loads and loads of blackjack,
Las Vegas
Paris Casino and Hotel. roulette and craps tables and loads of slot machines. Everything is open 24 hours so you can gamble (and lose) as much as you like!
We didn’t stay on the strip with all the big hotels, but a few blocks back. It’s only a ten minute walk to the main places, but our room was huge and only cost $30 a night as opposed to $200 on the strip! It’s called the Tuscany and is themed on Italy. It’s like a villa type setup you’d get in the med and it’s quite nice.
Obviously did some gambling. We did ok, lost a bit, which was to be expected (and was budgeted for) but on the last night managed to win back everything back by using winning tactics on Roulette! I was watching some old lady who was playing for ages and was stinking drunk. She went from $120 down to $60 and up to $790!! I don’t know what she eventually finished on but I copied her style and it worked.
As we left Vegas I noticed our engine light coming on in our car, so I popped into the nearest Alamo to let them know about it before we
Death Valley
One of the parts that didn't look like a construction site. ended up with a broken car in the middle of the desert. After a little chat they apologised and told us we could have any other car we wanted for free? Bit of a result, so I picked a high spec Pontiac and drove that for the rest of the rental. It was a lot faster, but the fuel consumption was rubbish.
So then we headed over to Death Valley as it was on route. By this point wasn’t too bothered with the views. Most of Death Valley looks like a construction site. Lots of piles of strangely coloured sand. We drove all the way though in about 3 hours. We managed to find somewhere to stay on the other side.
The next day we drove round to Sequoia National Park (yes another park!) This one was on route up to San Francisco. Sequoia National Park is home to the worlds largest tree - General Sherman. The Sequoia trees only live at a particular height and conditions. The park is at about 5000 - 8000 feet above sea level. Again, still loads of snow around, but we managed to get out and take a look at some of the
forest and get a photo alongside the Worlds Largest Tree!
After we left we stopped in a cafe just outside the park in a place called Fresno. We altered our plans a little and decided to drive up to Sacramento and then depending on how long it took maybe off to Lake Tahoe. Turns out we got to Sacramento pretty quickly so continued though. The weather turned nasty though. It was dark the rain started to fall, and it was heavy. We went up into the mountains the rain turned to snow. There isn’t much in the way of street lights up there either. We joined a massive queue of cars and slowly drove up. It took ages to eventually get to Lake Tahoe but we did and the next morning legged it to the lifts to head up the mountain for one more afternoon of boarding - board hire and lift tickets were expensive so we only did one afternoon. The conditions were good considering it hadn’t snowed for two weeks though. The runs were cool, it didn’t seem as big as some of the other resorts we’d been to, but if you ever decided to go there
Lake Tahoe
[url=http://www.teamwar.co.uk/blog/laketahoe.jpg] Lake Tahoe - Large [/url] for holiday, there are about 5 or 6 other mountain resorts all within about an hour drive away. Kelly had her cast off and managed to snowboard fine, so everyone was happy!
The day after - realising that we are travelling and not on holiday with money to burn we continued to San Francisco..
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Stooz
non-member comment
Nice!
Good to see you throw a bit of snowboarding in to keep you fresh. All this travelling must be a drag after all.....