I was going to title this post Grand Canyon but then I realised that if I only cover one day in the entry I won’t actually make it to the Grand Canyon. I’m on my second flight of the day, down to Florida and I just purchased internet for the hour which should help with photos and looking at my wise history if needed to help jog my memory. Due to my still out of whack sleep I’m pretty sure I hadn’t had dinner the night before cause I fell asleep early, but I also woke up at about 6.30 and apparently wasn’t going back to sleep, so I got up and went to breakfast at the hotel. I didn’t have a waffle that day but went for yoghurt and a bagel.
I think I figured it was worth getting a fairly early start but after breakfast I might have had a brief nap or something before I packed up and headed out because I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave at 7am! The first port of call was Walmart because I knew there were limited shops at the Grand Canyon and they were sure to be more expensive so I wanted to buy some non-perishable stuff before I left. I knew my room had a microwave and a fridge so I could get some meal stuff but the main things I was after was water, gatorade, protein bars and similar – stuff that I would want when hiking. I also bought a snack for lunch. As usual I think I may have overbought but what can you do. Then it was off toward Seligman, this historical place of Route 66. I stopped there a purchase a few things in the gift shop but I wasn’t there that long.
Then it was off to Williams, with a stop at Macca’s for some food (I feel like Macca’s became a far to convenient regular stop when driving – either that or Starbucks). I realised that I ended up having a fair bit of time (some of the stops didn’t quite pan out) and if I headed straight to my hotel it would be too early to check in. So I looked up something I had seen – Bearizona. It was actually pretty cool, it likes a park that you drive though broken into sections and in different sections you can see different animals. It was a leisurely drive and probably went for about and hour which was pretty good for my timing.
After that I decided it was time and headed directly for the Canyon! I arrived and checked in no problems, the hotel was fairly nice, it had an outdoor pool and hot tub and two indoor hot tubs in a kind of indoor garden and bar that my room looked over. I can’t remember the order, but being tired I thought a swim/tan would be in order and I also wanted to go to the general store to get perishable items (and wine!) The pool was nice but there was a lot of wind, so when I got out of the pool it was pretty cold and I didn’t last that long. I knew the general store would be expensive as it was the only shop but it was really pricey! I decided to break my $100 bill but the guy at the checkout seemed quite put out that I wanted to pay with cash.
Back to the hotel. My memory is I just ate some of the food I had bought and had a relatively early night excited for the Canyon the next day. And that will be the next post.
Ok, onto post 3. Still on the same flight, I’m continuing right on from the previous post. However, we’re starting our descent into Dallas so I’m probably going to have to stop pretty soon and come back to it later. (edit: I was correct. I wrote the first paragraph on the flight. It almost a week later and FPS is over so I’m way behind, but we’ll see how it go) So I’m in Las Vegas, breakfast was included with the hotel, so I decided to take advantage of it. It was pretty good, I had a waffle, half a bagel with cream cheese (saved the other half for later) and orange juice. I was heading down to Kingman AZ which was a shorter drive than yesterday. Although there were some things I was going to do on the way I decided I had time for a quick swim before I left, so I made use of the hotel pool. My first stop was the Lake Mead recreational area which was the man made lake created after the construction of the Hoover Dam. I missed the first view points but I saw as I drove up the hill and it was super impressive. I stopped at a few lookouts on may way to Hoover Dam and I think the pictures will be better than my trying to explain anything – it’s pretty cool.
What the last two photos indicate (which many people probably know) is that the Hoover Dam sits on the Nevada/Arizona border. There’s another photo later to two towers one saying Nevada and the other Arizona with clocks below them (though at the moment it’s the same time in both states – I don’t know if that changes with daylight savings?) My other reflection at this points was it’s hot! It was about 42 degrees as I was looking at the dam – I definitely found summer! I drove around the dam complex a little bit, but given the heat decided against doing another walk around there. I parked and decided to explore the visitors centre. There were a range of tour options so I chose the standard movie/museum entry + the power plant tour. In hindsight it might have been good to do the extra dam tour too. At any rate I enjoyed what I did, the movie was interesting about the dam being developed and built and it was cool to go underneath and see the power generation. There were some pretty good view from on top of the museum too. There will be some more photos but I’ll add them later as uploading the last lot in Starbucks took forever!
After exploring the gift shop it was time to head off so I continued into Arizona into Kingman where I was staying the night. My sleep still wasn’t in great shape so I fell asleep far too early, once again unintentionally forsaking dinner. Well that’s about if for that day and it’s time for me to leave Starbucks and go an check into my Peoria hotel so I’ll pick this up later. I have some more flights tomorrow so maybe I’ll find some time then to do more entries.
I’m currently on my next plane, flying from Las Vegas to Indianapolis via Dallas/Fort Worth. That makes me a fair way behind on the trip, but we’ll see if I can catch up a bit now!
After collecting my luggage at LAX I found the shuttle to take be to the car rental centre. From there I found Avis and it was a quick experience through the preferred counter. I got a Ford Bronco (photos below). It fitted the description of a small SUV, it was a decent size but fairly small in the back in terms of boot space, but more than enough for me and it felt like the right sort of car for a fair bit of driving and going through the Grand Canyon. I had a brief fight getting my iPhone connected (I had to work out how to delete phones as the maximum number had been reached). There were a number of things I quite liked about the car. It had adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist which I find helpful, especially when driving in a foreign place on the wrong side of the road! It also turned out (though it took be a day or so to realise) to have a wireless charging pad which was super useful, wireless car play, but if you put your phone in the right spot it would charge too. I also liked the entertainment system, good sized screen for car play and on the right third you could have other info, some of which it pulled from CarPlay. So i could have full screen google maps, but also see what I was listening to on the right. Google Map directions and song playing also linked into my instrument display and were shown there which was super helpful. I hope the other cars I get on this trip are as good!
After that it was to the hotel, which wasn’t far away. Remind me to check the cost of paid parking at hotels in the future it was US$70 for one night! I wasn’t expecting that. $20 is fairly standard if parking isn’t free but that was ridiculous, next time I’ll use the shuttle and pick the car up the next day! I was pretty tired and this is where my sleep started to get a little bit messed up. I ordered room service for dinner and had a shower. (If you remember back to my US trip in 2022 -see here, I had a real struggle with the shower. I’m not sure if this was the same hotel and it was similarly difficult. However with the aid of the instructions now written above the tap I managed to get in working!) I slept, but not that well. My memory is that I slept for a few hours then woke up and couldn’t get back off for a few more hours. I had a relatively leisurely morning with more room service for breakfast – it was pretty good, yoghurt granola and Starbucks coffee – my firsts of the trip.
It was a longish trip to Las Vegas (somewhere around 5 hours) so I think I set off around 11ish or maybe just before. I was able to checkout on the Hilton app which made like nice and easy. (I didn’t book through Hilton, I can’t remember if it was booking.com or Qantas, but somehow the stay added itself to the app which was clever and handy albeit slightly scary that it can do that. Maybe it was linked to my email?) From my memory the drive to Las Vegas was uneventful. I had planned a few stops along the way and I’m pretty sure one of them was Walmart where I got snack for lunch and some sparkling water. Amazingly, I don’t think I actually got coffee on that drive, but I could be wrong. I’m struggling to remember all the details, so when I have the benefit of internet I can check my wise card and it will remind me what I’ve spent, when and where.
Once I had arrived at Las Vegas I checked into the hotel. I was obviously tired as I somehow walked straight passed the elevators and thinking the hotel didn’t have any I begrudgingly hauled my bags up the stairs. It wasn’t until the next morning i found the elevators did exist. My tiredness had another negative effect – I had booked to go and see Bryan Adams but I was feeling so tired. I decided to take a nap in the hope that would wake me up. I did wake up but I couldn’t muster the energy, and fell asleep almost straight away. I was pretty annoyed as it was a waste of money – I think I need to plan slightly better, knowing I’ll need rest on arrival after a lot of travel. I also missed dinner as I kept sleeping. I had a very broken sleep and was slipping into a less than ideal pattern.
This post is starting to feel long so I’ll end here. This post does’t have many photos sorry, just the car. Don’t worry, future posts will have lots of good ones. I keep meaning to take photos of my accommodation, but routinely forget. I like them, but I imagine you don’t really care much so it probably doesn’t matter.
