Grand Canyon - It Rocks!!!

In the last entry, our plane had been delayed in San Francisco leaving us surrounded by impatient, well tanned men with mustaches and Hawaiian shirts. No one was more impatient than the both of us - we were chasing after the sun and by the looks of it we would miss the sunset over the Grand Canyon completely and arrive in total darkness.

Everything had been running like clockwork up until this point: we had woken up at 3:45 AM (check), breezed through US customs "So you two live together? Ok well have a nice trip" (check). Then onto the first plane to San Francisco where we would have a layover before catching our second plane for Las Vegas (check). Now unexpectedly, there was a delay in S.F. because of a storm in Las Vegas - this seemed wrong: how can you have a rain storm in a desert?!

Eventually we made it to our drop off point and jumped into our rental car to discover Mandy's GPS Cousin: 'Stacy' (or so we named her). Stacy was worlds ahead of Mandy in navigational ability; she even came with a cute little sound affect of a chime which told you that things were going A-O-K.

I'm sad to say that we missed the sunset by half an hour and were so tired by then that the only 'canyon-like' hole in anything that we wanted to see, was the space between two cars for us to park our car between at the hotel.

Our hotel room was very comfortable and could probably have been better used to house the Brazilian soccer team - it was really that big.

It had a double door to the bathroom, a phone in the washroom, a Jacuzzi tub, Dining room, sit-down bar, and I'm sad to say, more room than our previous apartment had.

All thoughts of getting up at dawn to see the majestic beauty of the  canyon bathed in a warm pleasing glow, were quickly forgotten about -  the best laid plans of mice & tourists, had us both sleeping soundly  that night.

We were up at a respectable hour to visit the canyon: see the view of it from Hermits rest, visit a hermit or two, or maybe just their gift shop. On the way up, one of the mild mannered ranger told us that he gets asked all the time by tourists: "Which view (there were ten stops) should we stop to see, as we are in a hurry?" His answer was that they should see them all. It took nature 6 million years to form the canyon, so they should take all the time they needed to drink in  the beauty of it -  Vegas can wait.  We sheepishly agreed, although we were wondering the same thing.

As you can see from the pictures, it sure is beautiful! One thing that we didn't figure on was the effects of being up at 7000 feet - we found ourselves becoming quite breathless while walking along. Either that, or maybe we should spend less time in the car...

It says in the tour guide that the most common injury at the canyon, is to be bitten by one of the cute, furry, rock squirrels. So be careful up there, especially if you stop to have a snack, where they tend to hang out "begging" for food...

Our next entry will feature Las Vegas and Melissa's birthday celebration!