If you’d like to view the photographs click here
Today we left the Grand Canyon and started driving for Las Vegas. The trip was beautiful and the landscape dreamy. In fact I felt that I had left planet earth a few times and entered another planet altogether. It amazes me the different landscapes you see going state to state. On the surface one might resemble another, but paying even a little bit of attention you notice that they are completely different. The mountains and landscape as you get close to the Hoover damn is one such place. I’ve never seen anything like it and the dark colors of the dirt on the hills made it other worldly to me. The pictures we took of this area didn’t really turn out very well due to the 80mph speed and overcast sky. On the way home I plan to stop and take a few still photos which should turn out a lot better.
I was also amazed at how small the Hoover Dam really is. I’ve always seen pictures and imagined it was huge but in real life its much smaller. Still a very interesting place though.
Speaking of the 80mph speed, I have to say that one true pleasure of this trip is that I’ve not once been stuck behind someone driving slower than the posted speed limit. In fact, I’ve found myself a bit stressed just trying to keep up with some of these people. We also noticed that as we got into California (yes, we moved on) people were driving faster in the right hand lanes than in the left. However, with a little adjustment I started passing on the right and just trying to keep up.
Las Vegas was nothing like we had imagined and in fact made us want to move on rather quickly. Elizabeth played a few machines and had informed me that she’d be winning $1000 for our trip. I told her that I’d give her $5.00 (yes I’m cheap and don’t believe in luck) to win this and she said it would be no problem. However, $10.00 later we still hadn’t seen any returns and moved on. Las Vegas was a lot larger than we thought and at the same time the actual Las Vegas you see on TV was a lot smaller. The outskirts of the main strip are rather dirty and run down and the strip itself reminding us of being in Orlando.
After snapping a few shots of the area for posterity sake, we decided to see how far we could make it to California. We made it a couple hours out and decided to call it a night due to the traffic which was terrible. I’d never have imagined so many people would be making the trip on a Sunday Evening but we now know. We plan to finish the last 2 hours in the morning and hopefully make it out to the west coast for the first time ever for either of us.
I’m exhausted and headed to bed so we’ll see you on the other side.
–glenn hancock
The original plan was to spend the day and night in Las Vegas but things changed a bit after arrival. Las Vegas was nothing like either of us had imagined.