Days 39 and 40 Vegas to Grand Canyon and onto Sedona USA Days 11 & 12

Day 39 Las Vegas Nevada to Grand Canyon Arizona Friday 24 April 2015 USA Day 11

We checked out of Aria at 8:30am and made our way to the airport by taxi to pick-up the hire car J & G had arranged. We got to the car rental place they sorted the paperwork out and we were on the road by 9:10am. You have to hand it to Vegas, there were banks of slot/poker machines in the car rental terminal. Georgie told us that one time she was here they held up a plane while people were cashing in their winnings on the airport slots!!

From now until we fly out of Phoenix for LA, we are in the hands of John and Georgie as our “Tour Directors” and we will be joined by Georgie’s brother John and his wife Yvette in Sedona. Between them they have put together what sounds like an interesting tour for us. We feel very lucky that so many people have made such an effort to show us around their country.

Our destination today was the Grand Canyon, with a few stops on the way.

Our first stop was one of the world’s great Art Deco buildings/structures, Hoover Dam. The dam was built in the early 1930s primarily to supply California with water and power. Today the whole area is in drought and the dam level is astonishingly low, to me it looked like the water level was around 50m below the high water marks at the dam wall!! We walked across the dam, from Nevada to Arizona and back. If it wasn’t for daylight savings, we could have been standing in two different times. The Dam used to form part of the main highway between Las Vegas and Phoenix, but in the early 2000’s a By-Pass Bridge was built just downstream from the dam. It offers an amazing view upstream. From the bridge you can see the hydro-electric power station at the foot of the dam, the sweeping massive concrete wall of the dam, and all the way up the old Colorado River course, that is now Lake Mead.

We left the dam around 11:10am and headed out into the Mohave Desert. We stopped at a town called Kingman for lunch at a Cracker Barrel Dinner. I had a “Fish Fry” for lunch – Catfish, chips(yes, proper chips!), some “Hush Puppies” and a (cornmeal) Muffin, and to John’s envy I also got a “Biscuit” (like a cross between a bread roll and a scone).  Everything was good, but I am still trying to figure out what the Hush Puppy was??

We were back on the road by 1:30 and about an hour later we were at our next stop, Seligman on the old Route 66. Seligman puts itself out there as the origin of Route 66, but I am sure there are lots of other places willing to differ on that. Here is a question for you, How do you pronounce “ROUTE”? The locals here when talking say “Rout”, at home we say “Root”. And in the song about this famous road it is ……… 66!  🙂   Route 66 is a Mecca for Bikers, there are so many people out on BIG Harley’s and other bikes on the roads in, around and on Route 66, it’s amazing to see them all.

Onward we went, and after filling the car up in Williams (a heads up for anyone travelling from Vegas to the Grand Canyon via Williams – DON’T fill up at the first “Gas Station you see, The Clover Hill Shell! It’s about 60c a gallon more expensive than all the other stations in town!! It’s the principle, in $ terms it didn’t really make that much difference. Rant over. 🙂

We drove on north to The Grand Canyon, found our accommodation and then set out to have a look at the Sunset on the Canyon. To get to a spot that we were recommended required us to get 2 connecting shuttle buses. Just after we got on the second, the local Park Rangers decided to block the road in front of us, so cars could get through but not our bus. I guess we were held up for about 15 mins. We finally got going and by the time we got to Hopi Point the sun had sunk into some clouds and we only got a couple of minutes of sunlight on the canyon walls. The bus driver said it would come out from them as it set, but unfortunately it didn’t. So it was a bit of a disappointment. We have high hopes for Sunrise (and a 4:30 am wake-up!!)

Did I mention that it was a bit cold here. Before heading out we all put on our warmest clothes. For me that was a thermal vest, jeans and a New Orleans jumper. Deb grabbed a blanket from our room and took that along. With a good dose of wind-chill it felt like minus 20 on the edge of the canyon after the sun went down!

We are all looking forward to a bracing morning. 🙂

 

Day 40 Grand Canyon to Sedona Arizona Saturday 25 April 2015 USA Day 12

We hope everyone at home enjoyed their ANZAC Day, 100 years since that fateful landing. Lest we forget.

 

Did I mention how cold it is here once the sun has gone down, and even colder after it has been down all night and you get up at some god forsaken hour to watch the sun drag itself up again for another day!!  Well, I guess as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so to save you all a bit of reading. 🙂

Yes, we were up at a tad after 4:30am, and got the 5:15am Blue shuttle that connected with the Orange shuttle to get us out to Yaki Point by about 5:30, 15 minutes before sunrise. There was a very large group of hikers on the Orange shuttle who were all doing a hike down into the canyon (and probably back). Most had headlights on and many were in shorts!!! Yes even I wouldn’t have been in that!! It was VERY cold and cloudy, which made the likelihood of a great sunrise fairly remote.  But we persisted, shivering away, Deb wrapped in a blanket and Georgie wrapped in hers (eventually joined by John). The sunrise didn’t do a lot until about 15 minutes after it rose, then the fingers of light started to appear and a glow came over the eastern skyline. The picture above really does capture it well. The rocks and cliffs of the canyon never really lit up, but I guess you have to enjoy the moment you’re given.

We got the shuttles back to our rooms. The forecast here was for up to an inch of snow, and rain. We only had the one night here, so with the weather closing in it was probably a good thing. (I did feel a bit for the hikers we saw early this morning!!)

After we checked out, we drove along the southern rim towards the East Gates. We called into Mather Point, Moran Point and The Watch Tower to take in a few different aspects of the Canyon. Each one is very unique and offers a very different perspective. It started to rain consistently just as we left the park on our way to Sedona.

The amazing landscape continues all the way back down to the highway at Cameron, and then flattens out to Flagstaff. There are many Indian Reservations all around this area, and all of them have roadside stalls selling Indian Handicrafts. I think of it as the Indians selling back all the beads and shiny things the early settlers gave them, in the Cowboy and Indian days! 🙂

We had lunch in Flagstaff (at an Irish Pub) and then drove onto Sedona. The road to Sedona takes a VERY steep decline from the 2000m+ plateau that hosts the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff down to 1300m+ at Sedona.

The landscape here is ruggedly beautiful, reminiscent of the Australian Outback in its colours but not form. The “hills” here are a bright red colour and made of solid rock, that bursts out of the plains, and the town of Sedona has blended itself into the landscape by adopting many of the landscapes colours into its buildings.

Georgie’s brother and sister-in-law (John and Yvette) arrived around 3:30. I think we are all going to have a great time together, a good mix of minds and sense of humour.

It has been raining since around midday, and looks like it might continue until tomorrow morning.

We had dinner at a local Thai place, with lots of laughs and stories.

After a long day, we called it a night and agreed to meet at 9 tomorrow for more adventures.

 

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