31/8/22 A Canyon that was Grand

 No update last night because I couldn’t find my card reader to copy the photos and I was pretty knackered after a pretty full day out. 

Not a great breakfast at the hotel, mainly because the breakfast meat looked liked boiled meat patties.  Now, leftover patties from last night’s BBQ is a true delicacy but pretty limp looking mystery meat is where I draw the line.  Also I grabbed the wrong milk substitute and ended up with some some of French Vanilla weirdness in my coffee.

Below I’ll just put some of the 300+ photos I took.  The Grand Canyon is what everyone says it is.  Breathtaking in the size and scale.  It’s just huge and deep and wide and something different and alive wherever you look.  There were squirrels, roadrunners (one of which I almost ran over in the car, and they are fast), deer and all manner of other things rustling around in the bushes.

It’s hard to get across the scale of everything in the photos, but a lot of the wider stuff 

This is a very wide angle photo so at the bottom is looking almost straight down and at the top is almost straight across.  There aren’t too many barriers around the edges, I guess the vast vertical drops are a barrier enough.

If you look very closely and use your imagination, along the skyline just to the left of half way there is a tiny little bump.  That’s the Desert Watch Tower in the photos a little lower down.

 

To kind of show the scale - the rocks at the top right have people standing on it

And these are those people - it’s just so huge!

An actual vulture!

The whole canyon system just went on and on to the horizon.

Buffalo Wild Wings and an American Sports Bar all in one.

We have boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce coating on the left and a “Buffalo Boneless Bar Pizza”.  The barman said he had worked there 20 years and it was one of the best things they’ve ever come out with.  Those must have been some pretty grim years because while this was fine it wasn’t anything special.  The buffalo sauce was too hot for me as well, and the jalapeños were definitely picked off.

The last day of my driving today, going from Flagstaff to Las Vegas.  Arizona did it’s best to ruin the car’s tyres with their potholed roads and poor drivers but I managed to make it into Nevada and the immediately better roads.  I guess the casino money helps, but it was a complete nightmare working through all the lanes and change overs. Much to my surprise and immense relief I parked the car and said a fond farewell - it had seen me through my first USA driving and didn’t let me down.

Now for the madness that is Las Vegas.

Must be a holiday, nobody’s around. I found out why when I stepped out into the sunshine.  

It’s a bit hot here.

Shaky photo but my rum & coke to settle my nerves after that on the Vegas Freeway.  It was very weird having the barman ask if it was to have there or to go.  Drinking in the street is legal here and so many people have large 500ml cans of beer (Bud Light - spew) or bizarre shaped yard glass type things that contain a cocktail.  I don’t think I’ll be doing that, it just seems like such a bad bad idea.

The view from my hotel room.  The roof of the casino does feature heavily but at least I can see sky and some of the surrounding buildings.  The Vegas strip is just past the edge of the roof.

Some sort of Lady performs here, with some of her costumes.  

There was a hat made of a silver lobster which was particularly revolting.

Eataly - the Italian themed posh food hall at the hotel

The strip is a bit wide and crazy - luckily there are walkways over the road, fed by escalators.  I feel very slender here compared to some people around, driving their scooters into shops.  

They weren’t at Walmart, there are here!

The particularly lush strip in the middle of the road is made of artificial grass, although I think the trees are real.  Probably the only real things here.

Raising Cane’s chicken fingers.  Does what is says on the box I guess. They were good, apart from the Texas Toast in the top right hand corner, that was just odd.  And cold.  It was French toast but fatter so I guess it was quite Texan.

Some sort of sports shop, nothing for me here.  I actually took this photo because it was around here that I swear my shoes started to feel a little… melty on the soles.

The Coca Cola store, selling more Coke branded merchandise than you can poke a Pepsi bottle at.

It’s a bit darker outside now so I’m going for a wander down the strip to see the Bellagio fountain in the hopes it might be slightly cooler.

Bollocks it’s any cooler - apparently it’s still 41c outside.