Beep Beep! Beep Beep! Once again, we were woken by the damn alarm - this time at 5.15am. We'd booked up to go to the Grand Canyon today and had to get our bus at 6.05am.
The drive out to the Grand Canyon was quite an experience. We had to drive through Arizona and apparently you could buy a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house there for $90,000 (£45,000). The thing was, everything was miles apart, and almost everyone lived in mobile homes on the side of the road.
We had to catch a different bus up to the Canyon as the drive was through the Joshua Tree Forest, which is very dusty and rocky, and I guess the company don't want their nice coaches getting wrecked.
Everyone is dropped off at the Grand Canyon West Terminal, which is a starting point for all of the trips. It's here that you can make your way to the Canyon by bus, plane or helicopter as well as get to other attractions. We caught a bus over to the Hualapai Cowboy Ranch. This place was quite an eye-opener, it's an actual ranch in the middle of the desert where they heard cattle, ride horses etc, some people even live there. They're so far in the middle of nowhere that they have no TV and can only get radio reception somedays! We went on a horse-drawn wagon ride and then made our way back to the West Terminal.
Next we caught the bus up to Eagle Point, which is on the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. WOW! It was amazing. It's huge (the entire Grand Canyon is 277 miles long) and everywhere you look the views are spectacular. The West Rim is where they have built the new SkyWalk viewing platform. It's not the highest point of the whole Canyon but this thing still extends out over a 4000ft drop. Nikki didn't go on, but I did. It was cool. The floor is made of glass and even though you know nothing can go wrong, there are still people holding on who won't look down (wimps). I really enjoyed it!
When I got off, I rejoined Nikki and we had some photos taken together. What really surprised us was that there are no safety barriers. We saw a number of older people who would walk up to the edge, turn to pose for a pic and then start edging backwards to 'get in the shot' - the fools. We asked a ranger and he said that no-one has ever fallen over the edge! (yeah right).
From Eagle Point we caught the bus up to another section of the West Rim called Guano Point. This was just as amazing! We sat eating our lunch about 3ft from the Canyon's edge, again with spectacular views.
On the way home we got to stop on the Arizona side of the Hoover Dam to take some pictures. Apparently, Arizona and Nevada are going through a drought at the moment - it's been going on for 9 years now, and it showed - the water levels of the Colorado River were quite low. When we'd taken some pictures we got back on the bus and came back to Vegas.
Tonight, we went into the Chinese restaurant in the Stratosphere for some food. It was really good. Nikki had Kung Pao Chicken and I had Teriyaki Beef. When we'd finished we went into the casino where we played on the slot machines, took advantage of the free beer and then went to watch some singers in one of the bars.
Wow! What a day.
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