Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon...Tuesday 6th Nov 2012

To-day we were woken at 4.30 am to hop on our tour bus by 5am to go to the Hoover Dam and then onto the South rim of the Grand Canyon.
An absolutely amazing 13 hour round trip.

Up at 4.30 am ready to head off to the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam...

Pre sunrise...surprised the pic came out at all!

Under the new bridge, just on sunrise at the Hoover Dam, 35 mins from Vegas.

Out the bus window, going under another bridge at the dam...

Sunrise at the Hoover Dam, with the Colarado river below...

A massive project of stark contrasts...

The Hoover Dam catchment area. Where the movie, the Transformers was filmed...

A bit blowy up top at sunrise...

Our tour group heading for the next viewing position at Hoover Dam at sunrise...

Morning is breaking...

A mountian goat popped up next to the bus. Shat white stripe at the end of the concrete...

Not very good pics, but there's two mountain goats in here!

Across the dam wall at sunrise. The water level is waaay down as you can see by the white area where it's been for years.

The new bridge which cuts one hour from the trip to Vegas from LA...

Beauty at sunrise in the majestic mountains around the Hoover Dam..

A sprawling city in the middle of the desert which is being vegetated quite well...

Then suddenly we were up at 5000 feet and the vegetation changed to conifers...

A typical desert outpost...a few homes, lots of trucks and stuff and nothing for another 20-40 miles...

More vast empty flat plains with those beautiful mountains forming a hedge 360 degrees around...

Then more trees and a sign we were approaching the south rim, 5 hours from Vegas.

Off we all hurried to see this wonder of nature...

Our first view of the Grand Canyon...South rim.

It's so huge, you can not comprehend it...

Over on the point are more visitors...The rangers were burning off this morning causing the smoke haze in the distance.

Smoky canyon this morning at 11am...

Magnificent in any language...See the people as dots on the upper right?

Lookinf down into the valley, bathed in morning sunlight.

31 years later, all remains the same...

Too big to fit in a thousand pictures...

Different colours appearing within a few minutes...

Who knows how this was formed or how long ago...all we know is it is breathtakingly awesome!

Up close and prickly...

Some chose to walk down here onto that point...it is not fenced off and is quite scary closer o the edges...

A bit too steep for me!

We walked about a klm around this rim and rook pics everywhere...

Daredevils heading down to yonder ledge for photo shoots...

Will this tree be here when you next visit? it's cling to the edge of the canyon, but I think it's dead...

I sat under this shady tree and had my lunch, gazing out at the ever changing beauty all around, with the cool breeze from the valley wafting over me...delightful in every way.

Our tour guide called us out of our reverie and back into the real world to continue our canyon experience with a 30 min IMAX movie showing in a theatre 30 mins away, so off we head, back to our bus.

The native Indian name clock of the areas of the Canyon...

Grand Canyon National park...

This was our bus for 3 days...

The IMAX theatre where we saw the most amazing film of the Grand Canyon...a must do experience, only $12 and worth every penny.

Back to Vegas by dark if we are lucky...

Dusk coming on twilight in the wonderful Indian country that I fell in love with...a great journey for sure. Ruggedly beautiful and quite spiritual. We made Vegas by 6pm.

So ends our trip to the Grand Canyon...

To-night we go to the top of our hotel, to the Sky lobby on the 109th floor where people pay $150 to jump off the 1,000 foot high drop to the ground and others pay just $15.00 to actually do the crazy roller coaster rides up there.
Pics in the next post...