Vegas Trip - Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon

We joined a tour with Grand-Adventures, for $150 you get a fully guided walking tour, breakfast (McDonalds) and lunch (Arbie's) included. It pretty much takes a whole day because the drive to Grand Canyon, passing through Hoover Dam, is about 5 hours and the drive back is 4 hours. So it helps that you have a tour guide/driver that is dedicated for a small group less than 15 people (thanks Alfonzo!).

 At first I thought the whole drive in is like this - desert rocks and sand, no buildings and maybe just one car following you on the damn straight highway.

But eventually you do see lots of rock formations (not sand dunes... I was a bit disappointed...), and once-in a while a peek of the Colorado River.

But actually once you get to high enough elevation, there are plenty of bushes and eventually evergreen trees. The highway is actually quite busy - Grand Canyon tourists from Vegas like us, and lots of huge trucks transporting goods to Vegas and across the States.

 So here it is, the Hoover Dam. One of the largest human achievement at the time. Over 130 people died for building the dam. There is a sad legend because the last worker died during the construction was the son of the first worker died. The dam generates the electricity for all the Vegas lights, and also all the way to Las Angeles. Apparantly after 9-11 the US government have received intelligence that terrorists plan to blow up Hoover Dam, so all traffic to the dam most pass an inspection point, and a new highway was built to divert traffic away from the site.

 The back of the dam is where you can appreciate how big of an achievement building the dam is. Not easy to see from my photos, but the impressive depth of the dam was over 220 meters. People who are afraid of height should stick to the other side of the concret wall.

 So after 4 more hours of driving we arrived at the Grand Canyon.Yeah... it is huge, billions of years of grans of sand forms into rocks and river carving into the earth. But for some reason I didn't get that OMG moment of "Oh, I am just a speck of nothing compare to the earth~". Some people said seeing the Grand Canyon is a life changing experience? Sorry, didn't happen to me.

 This photo is just to show that b/millions of years ago, the Grand Canyon is really beneath the sea. The rock exposed on the top of the Canyon are rocks made from coral reef.

 We joined the sunset tour, so we get to see the sun set over the canyon. It was really quite a view, and we were lucky that the cloud formation that day was just very unusual. But the temperature drops so suddently after the sunset, so we did not willing to stick around for the 3 hour walking tour promised by the guide.

Overall a great experience, you get so much information about the town of Vegas and all the history of the Nevada and Arizona out of the tour guide. Alfonzo is very experience that he points out all the great view points and even takes great pictures for individual and the group. So if you can sit through the 10 hour car ride then it is definitely worth it.