Visiting the Grand Canyon, and living large in Las Vegas

"Well, finally”, I can hear you saying. Allright, I may have been a little lax in the timing (not my fault entirely, but I’ll explain as the blog goes on), but you’re going to get an added bonus with this entry, as you will be getting TWO, count ‘em, two entries in one. In this blog entry, I’m going to cover Friday 19th June – our day at the Grand Canyon and subsequent drive to Las Vegas, as well as today, Saturday 20th June and the happenings of Las Vegas. I write this from the air-conditioned comfort of our suite at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, easily the fanciest digs we’ve stayed in so far – I’ve called it the Christine Suite, as it’s a suite that my Mum would feel right at home in.

But let’s rewind a touch, and talk about yesterday (Friday) morning, which started with the crow call – or the train horn, more appropriately – at 6:00am in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bit rude, I know, but the plan was to get up to the Grand Canyon early to try and beat some of the crowds. After getting ready and having breakfast at the Grand Railroad Café (a whopping great New York steak and eggs to fuel me for the day, whilst Sarah had an omelette that Steve Hooker would have a hard time pole vaulting over), we left for the Grand Canyon just after seven, expecting to be there not long after eight. It took a little longer than that though – it was about an eighty-mile trip, and there were some slow speed zones getting out of Flagstaff, so the trip took a little longer than I thought it would – although going past old mate Fred Flinstone at a little town called Valle on the way helped break up the drive!!

We didn’t actually get all the way to the Grand Canyon though, as we stopped at a little town called Tusayan first – about five miles from the Canyon itself, and home of an IMAX theatre playing a show called “Inner Secrets of the Grand Canyon”. We stopped and watched the movie – we had just missed the 8:30am screening, so we hung around for the 9:30am screening. The show was pretty good – as all things in IMAX seem to be – and told some of the history of the Grand Canyon, it’s former inhabitants and the men that first navigated the Colorado River through the Canyon. After the half-hour show though, our appetites for the real thing were sufficiently whetted – Sarah practically ran to the car once the movie had finished – and we set out for the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is in its own National Park, which is governed by a section of the US Government, so there’s an entry fee to get in, which was fully expected. $25 per vehicle was the charge, which is pretty good in my view. We were smart about parking too. We had already figured out that the second car park – Parking Lot A – was going to be the way to go, as we figured that the first parking lot we would come across, near a section of the Canyon called Mather Point, would be choc-a-block with people trying to park at the first lot they saw!! True to form, there was a bottleneck of twenty cars searching for one spot at the Mather Point car park, so we smiled and waved at them as we sailed past (using the term “waved” is borrowing some literary license – I was only waving with one finger!!!) and into the almost-empty Parking Lot A!!!

If you don’t like walking, then the Grand Canyon is not for you, as to get the best views, even from the rim of the Canyon, then a little bit of leg work is required. Ideally, you would spend a couple of days in the Canyon and hike down into it, but walking around the Rim was plenty for a couple of fit specimens like Sarah and I – I was fairly stuffed after a pretty steep ascent at one point!! The Grand Canyon do offer a series of shuttle buses to get you from point-to-point as well, which can be a big help (yesterday wasn’t a particularly hot day, but fatigue can set in pretty quickly regardless). A tip if you’re heading in the Grand Canyon direction – keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water or sports drinks, as there’s not a lot of places to buy them once you’re up there on the Rim looking for the best shots!!!

We explored the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, easily the most popular for tourists, as it is open nearly all year round. The North Rim is only open from May through November, and can be a bit easier to get around, but whilst it is only eleven miles (seventeen kilometres) from the South Rim to the North Rim as the crow flies, the fact that the crow has to fly over a bloody big hole between the two rims means that should you want to drive from the South Rim to the North Rim, then it’s a five-hour, 215 mile drive!! The South Rim is just fine, don’t you worry about that, but I only recommend the North Rim for those travelling directly from states north of Arizona.

So, to the Grand Canyon itself. How do you describe the beauty of the Grand Canyon?? It’s hard to define it under a single term – you really have to see the scenery, and how the hues of the landscape change as shadow sets in and out – to be able to find the right words. I saw it, and even I struggle to define it. “Breath-taking” is a good start – some of the views are absolutely awesome, and we only scratched the surface of it, as we skirted only the rim of the canyon. Below are some of the photos we took – you’ll notice our mugs ruining the landscape in some of the shots, including our “random American” picture, which was actually taken this time by a family from Canberra also holidaying in the States – I nearly shed a tear when I heard the mother’s Ocker twang in her accent – so you can judge for yourself this beautiful part of the American landscape!!!

We spent a good portion of the day at the Grand Canyon (and we have heaps more photos which we will show you when we get back to Oz), with the trusty Altima pulling out of Parking Lot A just after 3:00pm, pointing in the direction of the town of Williams, Arizona, then back onto I-40 and headed for Vegas. The trip, according to our GPS, would take the best part of about four-and-a-half hours, meaning we would be in Vegas by about 7:30pm. Given that we hadn’t stopped for petrol since lunch on Thursday at Grants, New Mexico (which I mentioned in Thursday’s blog, if you haven’t read that yet), I thought I’d pull into Williams and fill up. Wrong move. Advice for young players – make sure you fill up in Flagstaff, or have enough petrol to get you about 20 miles past Williams to some of the smaller towns just off I-40. I think the people of Williams must be reading the blog, and said to themselves “hey, that Aussie fella is passing through here and will probably need petrol, so let’s take him for a ride”. And taken I was – petrol was $3.17 per gallon, easily the most expensive I have purchased in America. As such, I only put twenty bucks worth in, figuring that it would make sure I got to Vegas with no worries. I cursed a fair lick when we got twenty miles down the road and petrol was running at $2.67 per gallon – I thought such words would never spew from the mouth of a naïve, country Victorian, Christian-raised lad!!!! We pulled off Interstate 40 at a little Arizona town called Kingman – again, a place probably no bigger population-wise than Sarah’s home town of Orbost, but with every chain motel, petrol station and fast-food restaurant you could think of – and headed down Highway 93, which takes you 100 miles into Las Vegas, and also over the Hoover Dam. I’m going to quote directly from Wikipedia about the Hoover Dam, as I didn’t know much about its origins until I just looked them up – Wikipedia is a bloody handy resource, an internet encyclopedia for those unaware, located on the internet at http://en.wikipedia.org

“Hoover Dam, originally known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station. This dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce and then later as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Lake Mead is the reservoir created behind the dam, named after Elwood Mead, who oversaw the construction of the dam.”

So there’s the information about the Hoover Dam – another pretty impressive place to view, and we had plenty of time to view it, as well, as traffic is a pain in the proverbial from about twenty miles before the Dam, and then as you cross over it v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in a single lane of traffic at about zero miles per hour!! The Arizona Department of Transport have decided in their wisdom to build a four-lane both ways bridge over the Hoover Dam to ease the traffic congestion for people driving to Las Vegas, and whilst this is going to be a fantastic idea once it is up and running, it wasn’t much help for us driving through their last night, and it took us about forty minutes to drive a couple of miles over the Hoover Dam – having a security checkpoint a couple of miles away doesn’t help, where the pick-up trucks that SO MANY AMERICANS HAVE (Aussies – think utes on steroids) that look the slightest bit suspicious. Knowing what was going on, but not sure if I had to hand over license and registration etc, I wound down the window and gave the young constable organising the show the biggest dose of Ocker I’ve unleashed this trip – a “G’day”, a bit of “what’s goin’ on, mate” and the like, enough to make him smile, explain that it’s a “security checkpoint, sir” and wave me on through!!! The slow drive over the Hoover Dam gave Sarah plenty of time to take photos though, and here’s a couple of them, including the bridge that is being built.

After crossing the Hoover Dam, we travelled the thirty miles into Las Vegas (with the sun in that annoying position that when you flip down the sun-visor on the car, it still gets underneath it), and thanks to the GPS doing a sterling service, drove straight into the Venetian Hotel and Casino and into the self-parking area. After driving around there for about ten minutes and not finding a park, or a way to go to find the upper parking level, I got fed up and drove to the valet level, where the valets parked my car with no problems (and no dollars changed hands, an added benefit). We grabbed our luggage and worked our way through the maze that is the Venetian – past shops, restaurant and the casino floor to the main entrance and the check-in counter. It took us a good twenty minutes waiting in line to get to the check-in counter, so thankfully things were efficient when we got there. We then headed up to the sixth floor of the Venezia tower to our room – a Deluxe King Suite, with a king-sized bed with it’s own flat-screen TV, a sunken lounge room with another flat-screen TV, an L-shaped five-seater couch, a desk with phone, copier and printer (and somewhat dodgy wi-fi – more on that later), and a small table and chairs. Then there’s the bathroom with two sinks, a separate bath and shower and ANOTHER (albeit small) flat-screen TV. Like I said earlier, a Christine suite!! After getting settled, we went downstairs to find something to eat, and got no further than a gelato stand that has twenty-four different flavours of lactose-free sorbet, which saw Sarah go weak at the knees and say “this is my dream shop”!! We had a sorbet, took a walk down the Strip to have a look around, checking out Treasure Island casino and the surrounds for a bit, then came back up to the suite, nice and stuffed after realising exactly how long the day was!!! I put the small apology post on the blog site that you saw below, not having the energy to sit up and pen the above last night, and retired for the night, knowing that the alarm wasn’t going off this morning!!

Now for Saturday, and waking up unassisted at about 9:30am after a fantastic sleep in our king-sized bed!! I got up and started writing this blog entry, but experienced a few problems with the computer, being that one of the drivers (or something like that) that is needed to power the wi-fi connection playing havoc with my laptop and frustratingly causing it to turn the computer off of it’s own accord, which got old very quickly – especially after I thought I had the problem covered and was writing away happily, only for the laptop to just turn itself off again. I’ve isolated the problem – if I turn the wi-fi connection off, there’s no problem, so this blog has been written on Microsoft Word then transferred over to Travellers Point, with the photos transferred the same way!!
At about 11:30am I gave up with the blog, vowing to write it later (reasoning that Australia wasn’t out of bed on Sunday morning yet, so it was OK), and we headed out to see what Las Vegas had to offer. First stop was again the sorbet shop, where the Eating Machine was de-railed after ordering a double scoop, but not being able to finish it off!! After that, first port of call was the Venetian’s replica of Venice’s Grand Canal, to head for a gondola ride. First, here’s some photos of the Venetian, and their re-creation of the streets of Venice. Note that most photos look like we are outside – where you see blue skies and clouds, we are actually inside!!!

The Venetian have two different gondola rides – one inside, under the painted ceiling, and one outside under the real skies of Vegas. Given that the weather was sunny without being too hot (and because we were sensible and had applied sunscreen before we went out), we chose the outside gondola ride. It’s a four person ride, at $16 a head, or you can hire a private two-person gondola for $64. That is, if you are anyone else apart from us!!! We had two groups of three in front of us in line, then only a group of four behind us (it’s usually four people per gondola), so we were bundled into to the gondola on our own!!! The ride was nice and calm, taking about twenty minutes around an artifically-made course, with the gondolier singing in Italian for some of the way around – including an early “Happy Birthday” to Sarah (it’s on Tuesday 23rd, for those of you wanting to send comments, e-mails and gifts of cash and jewellery to save my pocket-book!!) in Italian, which was really nice. Here’s a couple of photos – us on the gondola, and the view from the ride!!

After the gondola ride, we went for a walk down the Strip again, checking out a few of the casinos and just enjoying the vibe of Las Vegas. It’s interesting to see people walking the streets with beers and assorted alcoholic drinks at 12:30pm!! We headed for the Bellagio, which many of you may remember as the casino that George Clooney, Brad Pitt and mates knocked off on the movie Ocean’s Eleven, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Bellagio dancing fountains. We caught them briefly as we crossed over the bridge from Bally’s to the Bellagio, and here’s a few photos from that!!

Knowing that the fountains do their thing every half-an-hour, it gave us a chance to check out the shops at the Bellagio, which are a veritable “who’s who” of shopping. I was led into Tiffany and Co, Chanel, Gucci and a lot of similarly expensive stores, with items that were well outside our price range (Sarah picked up a small Gucci handbag that she had taken a fancy to, only to put it back very quickly when she saw the price tag of $3150!!!). Sarah also snapped a couple of shots of the interior roof of the Bellagio’s shopping strip, which are pictured below.

We were then lucky enough to secure a spot in the shade to watch the Bellagio dancing fountains, a nice routine set against the song “All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago. Here are some photos from the routine, which was pretty cool!!

With the Bellagio in the bag, we walked back to the Venetian, via an outside shopping strip near the Flamingo where Sarah picked up a couple of dresses that can be worn in heaps of different ways, and took five before heading to the Food Court for a quick lunch, then to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum here at the Venetian!!

We picked up our tickets at a place called HalfTix, or something similar, where they sell half-price tickets to shows, restaurants, tours and the like. Instead of paying $25 a head plus tax, we coughed up $38 in total, which included HalfTix’s commission – a pretty good deal!! I really like Madame Tussauds, and their representation of celebrities, sports stars, Vegas personalities and American personalities. Here’s some of the celebrities we encountered in the museum – and yes, I’ll put beneath each of them who we are with to help you out!!

Here’s me with Julia Roberts…

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Shaun and the “Governator”, Arnold Schwarzenger

Sarah with actor Matthew McConaughey

Sarah with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Doing my best “People’s Eyebrow” with The Rock

Throwing out gang signs with rapper Snoop Dogg

Sarah having a casual chat with Cameron Diaz

Sarah with George Clooney

Putting with Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer watching on

An old mate, Michael Jordan

Shooting a two-pointer over Shaquille O’Neal – and scoring!!!

Sarah shaking her rump with Beyonce

Getting an autograph from a young bloke that you may know named Elvis!!

Both of us, one after the other, with Marilyn Monroe

Waiting for a deal at the poker table with actor Ben Affleck

Us with a much older Elvis!

Sarah with Vegas legends Siegfried and Roy, and their famous tiger!!

Shaping up to Muhammed Ali

Sarah with JFK and Jackie O

Sarah with Princess Di

Me walking on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

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The both of us with President Obama

Shooting the breeze with Honest Abe.

And folks, that basically brings you up-to-the-minute with what we are doing – we’ve spent the last couple of hours relaxing – whilst I’ve written this blog entry with ESPN on in the background (watching the score ticker for the Red Sox playing the Atlanta Braves, with the Red Sox winning 3-0 on the back of ace pitcher Josh Beckett pitching all nine innings whilst keeping the Braves scoreless), Sarah has been playing with her new dresses, trying the different styles of dress she can make with them!! We’re going out for dinner shortly (and might take in a quick swim at the Venetian’s awesome pool complex) and will likely have another look around Vegas under lights, but will update you on that tomorrow night!! Wow, that one took a while, but you got two days’ worth in one hit, with some pretty good scenery on the way through, so hope you enjoyed it!!! See you tomorrow night, again from Vegas