19th June - Grand Canyon

Today we are off to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon so we do not hang about too much before we head off from the hotel.

We grab a cooked breakfast from one of the hotel restaurants, Kahunaville, it is a Hawaiian themed restaurant though we all go for the traditional American ‘3 eggs any style’ option.

It takes about 45 minutes to drive out to the Hoover Dam, there is construction work going on there as they are in the process of building a large suspension bridge for the freeway that will bypass the dam, at present all traffic has to drop down into the valley and cross the top of the dam, in the future only those cars actually wanting to see the dam will have to make that descent, I would also expect they will close the road over the dam in the evenings as at present they have to have a 24/7 security post on the road screening all traffic crossing the dam against terrorist threat.

The sheer scale of the dam is very impressive, it is also architecturally impressive as it demonstrates very clearly its art deco heritage from the 1930s when it was constructed. The building of the new road was also impressive to see and it was interesting to be able to show Baggage the way in which a major bridge is constructed, particularly as she has walked over so many of them during the past 7 months.

We parked and walked across the dam, did the customary one foot in each state, though could not do the one foot at 10am and one foot at 11am stunt as both Nevada and Arizona were on the same time, I guess one of them does not implement summertime adjustment? We also got what will be the final Baggage mode of transport photo, her feet as she crossed the state line.

From the Dam we drove on to Grand Canyon West where the Hualapia Indian nation have opened up there land to tourists wishing to see the canyon and have built the Grand Canyon Skywalk to give visitors to the canyon a new perspective. The drive from the Dam to the canyon was about 1 hour and 45 minutes, 14 of the last 21 miles being off sealed road and on a graded dust track, technically I guess the rental car was not insured for this section! By the time we reached the parking area the car was thick with dust, reckon I will have to lean that off before I return or or it is a bit of a give-away!

Grand Canyon West offers a number of options as to how you can spend your day, there is an entry pass which is $29 each which includes the use of the shuttle buses that takes you to the Skywalk and the lookout spot, it is then an extra $29 to walk on the Skywalk. When buying the tickets they also loaded an extra $11 each for environmental impact and fuel, so for the three of us to get in and walk on the Skywalk it was just over $200. Our first stop after buying the tickets was the Skywalk, this is a semicircular transparent pathway mad of strengthened clear plastic that extend out 4,000 feet above the canyon floor. The first thing you notice is that it does not seem as if you are 4.000 feet above the floor, the canyon is immense and there is nothing to scale it by, it was not until we saw a helicopter flying in front of the opposite canyon wall that we got some idea of the scale. It was fun to do the Skywalk but it is not as large as I expected from having seen it on brochures, you can take as long on it as you want, but to simply walk around would take less than a couple of minutes, not much fort $29 a head. You are also not allowed to take your own cameras on the walkway, they say so that you do not drop them and scratch the flooring, however it just so happens that they will take a photo of you that you can buy in the shop for $30. You really do not get the feeling of being high above the canyon floor, you can see it is a long way down, but I have recently been on top of the Empire State building in New York which is half the height of the Skywalk, yet because you get a good sense of scale looking down on buildings, cars and people the top of the Empire State felt higher.

After the Skywalk I took a walk around the demonstration of Indian home building techniques, Baggage and Lisa opted to stay in the shade, then we got back on the bus and headed to Guano point. Guano point offers the best point for a view of the Canyon within the Hualapia area, it left me wondering why this area was not chosen for the Skywalk, possibly something to do with the significance of Eagle Ridge to the Indians which is where the Skywalk is. From the point you are looking down on a bend in the canyon where it also forks slightly and you have a superb view of the Colorado River coming in down the far fork. Again at first there is no sense of scale and it took a passing helicopter, which was little more than a spec against the immenseness of the far wall, to give it some perspective. We walked right out to the point of the lookout for the best view, at this point there are the remains of an old Guano mining operation, at one time there was a tramway here that descended the canyon, now about the only remnant of it is the cable house and gantry on the side we were on. To make the most of the view I took a number of overlapping photos, at some point I might get around to stitching them together into a panorama.

From here we took the bus back to the car park area where we spent a while, and a little cash, in the gift shop before heading off. We made a quick stop at the Hualapia Ranch on the way out as we wanted to see if we could get a souvenir spoon depicting the canyon and the main gift shop had sold out, unfortunately we could not. The ranch was great, a model of a small western town, complete with Sheriff’s office, saloon and undertaker, it was unfortunate it was at the end of the day, you could easily have spent a few hours here.

On the way back to Vegas we stopped again at the Hoover Dam, this time at the lookout on the east side of the dam where we took a few photos of the sun setting over the dam, not sure how they will come out as the sun was very much in our face. We also stopped at Pizza Hut in Boulder City for a bit of supper as by now it was 8pm and would be far too late to eat if we headed all the way back to Vegas. The food was OK, Pizza hut is pretty dependable but this was not the best we have had.

Back at the hotel we were all pretty tired, it was nearly 10pm when we got to our room so after a couple of beers it was time to hit the sack. I am still working my way through the bottles of Red Trolley Ale, and still enjoying them, in fact they are nicer here where I am not drinking them from a fridge, it would seem this is similar to a bitter in the UK, a beer best not drunk cold.