Monday, 28 April

We are up early to depart Las Vegas to go to the Grand Canyon. The idea is to get away before the worst of the rush hour between 7:00 and 8:30. For whatever reasons, we do not get away until 7:15. Phyllis had already departed so we said goodbye to John and headed out. Actually, except for the junction of I15 and US95 the traffic wasn’t too bad. Once outside of Vegas itself, the car just purred along so smoothly that it was not hard to be doing 80 MPH and not really noticing it.

One of the highlights that we expected from this trip was the transversing of the “new” bridge way over the top of Hoover Dam and the Colorado River. When we got there, one could not even tell that we were on a bridge – it just looked like a normal part of a freeway with high concrete walls blocking out the view of the outside. We continue on smoothly enough although I have to admit that I nearly dozed off a couple of times. I think that I have had enough of long distance driving. We get to Williams Arizona in about 4 hours, when we had expected about 5. We go to the tourist bureau which helps us out a bit, including pointing out that we will be driving about a mile on Route 66 when we leave town.

We go to a local diner as we have not had that much to eat today. We are to call our AirBnB host to give her advance warning of our arrival but the phone company reports that the phone service is out of order. Hmmm, I send an email instead. We order some typical country diner food.

We get our kicks on route 66 i.e. drive on it for a mile or so before the turnoff to the Grand Canyon. We proceed around 30 miles before finding the nearly hidden driveway to our accommodation. We are greeted by our Hostess, Sally. She has not received my email nor my missed call notification – both of which show up much later, very propitious again. Sally is a delightful person and the house is really good. We drop in our bags and then keep going so we can see as much of the Canyon as possible.

So we drive over to the Canyon. The USA Parks Senior pass that I had bought earlier saves us $12 in entry fee. We go first to the Visitors Centre and park the car there depending upon shuttles to get around. We watch a quite interesting movie on the history of the Grand Canyon and its creation. One thing that we note is that there an enormous amount of people around, which happened a lot for tourist destinations in the USA. Also the tourist facilities had been dramatically increased in the 25 years or so since I was last there. Any way, we take a shuttle to the rim.

There was some real excitement, if that is the term, happening. We were not allowed to go toa particular area with a sign saying that the incident response group was in action. You can see them in the background of the previous picture. We heard two different explanations: (1) A man had fallen to his death; or (2) A Woman had climbed the railing and jumped to her death. We learn later from Sally that there is generally around one suicide per month at the Grand Canyon. In fact she has a book, which we did not look at, describing all of the people that had died at the canon.

Any way, there is lots more to see so we take a shuttle to the West end of the park and have a look around. Our plan is to stopp off at a couple of the major stops on the way back. We do notice that the shuttles are getting quite crowded with people. We get off at our first stop where there is a great view of the river below.

We take a number of other impressive shots. We then try to get back to our car using the shuttle but the number of people around is overwhelming. We eventually get there by fighting to the front of queues, etc. Lesson: if you go to the Canyon now, be sure that you are trying to leave early in the afternoon. In any case, we decide to go to a Steak House recommended by our Hostess Sally. It is just outside the Gate to the park. There are some interesting Trophy animals there.

We have a good meal at the Steakhouse.

There was an entertainer there performing solo. While we were there he played only a Banjo but was extremely good. He came by our table and did a solo version of Dueling Banjos which was quite exceptional.

Julie in the mean time had found a very young admirer who came by with her Aunt. Julie explained the various saddles and whips that were at the entertainment stage and Julie’s past life with them. I think Julie could have taken this young girl home.

Any way, we go back to our accommodation, missing the turn along the way. I did not take many photos but here is one of the bedroom.

Sally turns out to be a most gracious and interesting host. Having said that, the girls talk about nothing but make-up for a few hours. We rated Sally very highly on AirBnB. The dog and the cat are fine too. Off to bed, I am buggered after that driving.

https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/24656