Vegas, Grand Canyon, Page

Willikers!! What a long time off the ‘net! Was beginning to get withdrawal symptoms trying to figure out how to organise my life with the complete lack of Battlestar Galactica instant information.

First some explanation – the previous post from Death Valley was in fact drafted a while back, but sat in Live Writer waiting for a proper connection – so I uploaded it today. Sorry, the pictures don’t get bigger if you click on them.

This post will also come from Live Writer, although I might add some pics manually after its done.

Sit back, relax, this is gonna be a long ride.

Vegas Day 1
We arose at around 0530 to ensure our journey out of Death Valley was trouble free, and we’re both glad we did. The heat and steep ascent out of the Valley might have been the death of the Jeep or the Turd had we left later…

Several hours later we arrived in Vegas.

After surveying the lie of the land at the Broadmeadows RSL Sam’s Town (and being served tinned corned beef) we decided that we would spend as little time as possible there.

Thankfully they have a free shuttle bus into the main strip, which is about 5 miles away, along what seems to be a strip of the Vegas Ghetto. We had entertained getting public transport back, but on seeing the other clientele we decided that the 21:30 return shuttle would be the go. Unless I wanted some crack, in which case we would be catching the bus.

It could just be me, but I don’t see what the fuss is all about. Yes it’s large, yes it’s gaudy and extravagant, but…. so what? It’s like a giant glittery Crown Casino, and there’s plenty of bogans to boot.

One thing that seems VERY cool is the fact that booze is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are allowed to drink booze wherever you like (in the streets is fine) and it is LEGAL to be intoxicated – in fact, there are state laws that expressly forbid intoxication to be made illegal by local government.

P’raps it’s one of those places in which you need to spend a truckload of money to have fun. One thing we did spend money on was dinner.

I’d gotten pretty excited at the thought of a Vegas staple – the buffet. After a quick online browse (thanks to whoever had left their Sprint wireless card open to outside connections) there were a few places that were mentioned a fair bit – the Bellagio and Paris.

For our first night we headed to the Bellagio. The amount of food both available and consumed was frightening. I was a bit put off though by watching some of the other patrons. There’s something very wrong about the way some of these people eat – there doesn’t seem to be any pleasure, just the frenzy of trying to stuff as much in your face as quickly as possible.

We returned home, ridiculously full.

Vegas Day 2
The power steering in the Jeep has been playing up recently, and while in Death Valley I’d noticed a fair bit of fluid had been leaking out. A quick diagnostic indicated that the power steering fluid return line was the most likely culprit, so with this in hand I trundled off to Autozone to get a new hose. On the way the pump was making some nasty noises (thankfully just due to low fluid).

To cut a long story short, the hose I bought was about 5cm too short (of course) and I had to ride back to the store to get some more. Finally it was all done successfully, but there went the morning.

I cleaned up, and we headed into the strip again, hoping to win big on a random 20 million dollar jackpot. Unfortunately we didn’t, and soon grew tired of the machines relentlessly eating our money.

So we decided to eat relentlessly. This time at the buffet at Paris.

The food was French themed, and very nice – even better than the Bellagio. Again, we ate too much. By the time we arrived home I was worried I might have a cardiac arrest from too much food.

And thus our time in Vegas was over.

Vegas to Grand Canyon
Here’s a tip from the (now) wise – while Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon appear very close together on the map (they are) there’s nearly 300 miles of road that need to be covered to get there….

….and so we drove. Over the Hoover Dam, and into Arizona. Arizona is frickin’ hot, windy and dusty. It was not pleasant at all.

We pulled into a gas station in Kingman, where a friendly attendant seemed concerned by something under the Turd. Apparently broken shock absorbers are no good.

An hour or so and 800 dollars later we pulled we were on the road again. This time on I40 – surely the least maintained of any US Interstate.

As the sun began to set, we arrived at the Grand Canyon. The top of the canyon is over 7000ft. The undulations of the land in the USA will never cease to surprise me.

Sleep was welcome that night.

Grand Canyon Day 1 – The Rim
Learning from our experience at Yosemite, we decided to do something easy for the first day – so the Rim Trail, which involves barely any up or down, seemed to fit the bill.

Of course part of the trail is closed for roadwork, so we hiked from the Visitor Centre to Hopi Point, which was a pretty leisurely few miles.

We intended to catch the sunset, but…. missed the bus. Oops.

Grand Canyon Day 2 – Kaibab Trail
Kebab trail. Mmm. Kebabs. I was hoping that someone might serve me a kebab when we reached the bottom, but alas this wasn’t the case.

The Canyon is much more interesting when you are actually inside it. The layers of rock are very distinct.

Downhill was very easy. We stopped, had a bite to eat, took some photos, and headed back up.

Uphill was marginally harder, but nothing compared to the falls at Yosemite.

We caught our first glimpse of mules on the trail….

…and I managed to rip off a quick panorama (which I will add at the end of this post!).

This Condor is one of the rarest birds in the world….

….so of course it is in black and white to show this off.

That night we went out to Yaki Point to catch the sunset.

Despite all my fancy equipment, Kat best captured the essence of the sunset in the Canyon.

Grand Canyon Day 3 – Bright Angel Trail
With our appetites whetted by our success on the Kaibab Trail we set off towards the Indian Village, which is at the plateau floor of the canyon. In case you’re wondering, we didn’t get to the Colorado River, in fact we barely saw it – something I was pretty disappointed about, but hey, that’s what you get for not being prepared.

This outcrop is called “the battleship” for reasons that seem quite obvious.

The hike down was quite easy.

Three hours later we were having lunch at the Indian Garden – which is a lovely oasis in comparison with the heat of the canyon.

We decided not to hike on to the edge of the plateau, something we would regret later.

So we started the journey back up. By now it was getting close to 100F.

Boy it was hot. The trail is very steep, and the going was slow. We made full use of the rest houses at 3 miles and 1.5 miles. We met a guy from Phoenix who told us we should have hiked to the edge of the plateau, as it was flat, and the view was supposed to be excellent. Argh.

We learnt that on average 12 people need rescuing each day, of which 4 are by helicopter – and that 2 people a week die in the canyon….

Cheery thoughts on our ascent upwards in the heat.

Finally at nearly 5pm we arrived at the top, half dead. A quick ice-cream sure did hit the spot. We headed to the grocery store and picked up a few well earned beers.

Beer, dinner, bed. What a day.

Grand Canyon Day 4 – Nothing Much
We were pretty knackered after the previous day’s activities, so we took it very easy.

We unhooked the Jeep and went for a quick drive out to the East Rim.

There were HEAPS of tourists there, and it was very hazy in the Canyon – but we did get our first real glimpse of the Colorado River.

One day we’d like to return, as you can do 14 day raft trips down the river through the Canyon – that would be AWESOME.

The vista from the east is totally different to what you see at the South Rim. There’s so much canyon, and so little time. We’ve learned that to fully appreciate it, you’d want to be doing multi-day hikes into the canyon and staying at the bottom.

Grand Canyon to Page
Only around 130 miles to travel today, which seemed like a short drive down the road in comparison with our previous journey. The break from driving had been great and I was feeling refreshed.

The landscape (of course) changes, yet again.

We’re in Navajo land now, and there’s plenty of roadside stalls selling rugs, jewellery and jerky.

Everything is stunning, but hot… so hot…

We arrived in Page just before lunchtime, witnessing some of the worst overtaking manoeuvres I think I’ve ever seen. Double lines? Who cares! Can’t see what’s coming around the blind corner? Doesn’t matter!

The Turd wasn’t doing any overtaking, but was running super strong.

Did I mention it was hot? We checked in with the guy sporting “thug life” tattoos on his fingers, and got set up. A quick trip down to the local auto parts store yielded a brand new power steering pump, and a power steering pump pulley removal tool. Yes they really do have a tool specifically for removing the pulley from a power steering pump.

We did a bit of shopping, indulged in some Smirnoff Vodka Mojito, and met our next door neighbours who have an awesome RV. I trundled off to bed quite wasted.

If you’re reading this you made it to the bottom of this post!

Congratulations! As a bonus, you get to look at (and download if you like) these full resolution panoramas from Kaibab and Bright Angel.

First up Bright Angel. We hiked down to the trees at the very bottom. Phew.

Best to click on this one.... it's large... this is a view from the Kaibab Trail. Best to download the file from Picasaweb if you can.... for full panoramic goodness. Careful though, it's over 7MB.

That should be enough for today I think…. tomorrow I’ll finish up with our time at Page (including the thrilling saga of the power steering pump).