Day 39: 6/25/15 (Las Vegas to Grand Canyon via Hoover Dam)
365 miles
After sleeping in the
last few days, our alarms going off at 5:00am was severely unwelcomed. We finally rolled out of bed around 5:30am
and started getting all our things together and packed into the car. By 6:30am we were on the road towards Hoover
Dam. We left a note for Lindsay and
Derek because we didn't want to wake them up.
We figured with a 20-month old son, you don't get a lot of sleep and we
didn't want to deprive them of some precious zzz’s.
The drive to the
Hoover Dam was pretty short so we arrived around 7:30am and practically had the
place to ourselves. Rico was having a
field day between the awesome bridge and the huge dam because it’s all civil
engineering (maybe we can convince his firm that the trip was educational and
get some kind of reimbursement).
On the way to the
Grand Canyon, we stopped for gas and were so excited to see prices under $3.00
again! We also picked up some beef jerky
figuring it would be a good source of protein for the next 7 nights we're spending
in a tent. We're realizing that we
really miss having a refrigerator and cooking real food (aside from all our
friends and family and our cat). Shortly
after entering the park, we caught our first glance of the canyon and couldn't
resist pulling over for some pictures. From
there, we beelined it to the only first-come-first-serve campgrounds hoping we
would find a campsite. Lucky for us,
there were several available! We snagged
one and started setting up the tent under the hot hot sun. We didn't even bother using the rain fly or
using sleeping bags. The sun was beating
down on the tent so we grabbed the sun shades from the car and rigged them up
on the sunny side of the tent – it looks super ghetto, but we're hoping it
helps prevent the inside from boiling.
Two fun things that happened after setting up the tent was 1) the
sunblock rocketing out of the bottle and getting on Jillian, and 2) Rico
getting his third bloody nose – so fun…not.
We started our day’s
adventure by grabbing some sandwiches from the grocery store up the road – they
weren’t too great, but at least it wasn’t another peanut butter and fluff. We drove down Desert View Road towards the
Village and made a lot of stops along the way at all the vista points. The canyon is so enormous that it’s hard to
make distinctions between each location – it all starts to look the same after
a while. Once we got to the Village, we
took the blue shuttle to connect to the red shuttle which drives along the rim
to areas that are not accessible by cars.
There were a couple astounding panoramic views and a few good views of
the Colorado River. It took a couple of
hours to see all the points so by the time we got back to the village, the sun
was setting.
We tried finding the glass walkway, but clearly we don’t know where it is. We're starting to think it could be on the North Rim. We settled for a few nice pictures of the sunset and started back towards camp. We tried to quickly cook ourselves a late-night dinner consisting of couscous, some nectarines and peaches, and some jerky. Shortly after, we went to bed with just a sheet and a blanket.
Fact:
The Grand Canyon has some
of the cleanest air in the country with visibility averaging around 100 miles
Lesson:
Squeeze some air out
of bottles before packing them so the heat won’t make them explode on you
Eat Well; Travel Often
Rico & Jillian
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