Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon

On Thursday 30th June we left Vegas and drove towards the Grand Canyon, via the Hoover Dam. What an impressive feat of engineering!

We decided not to do a tour. I remember several school trips through hydro dams when I was a kid, and I'm sure this one works in a similar way, although on a much grander scale!

The dam was built between 1931 and 1936, and at the time, was the largest in the world. More than 100 people lost their lives during construction. Nowadays the dam provides electricity for over 20 million people. The bridge you can see below was built to take traffic off the dam and is the longest concrete single-span arch bridge in the western hemisphere, and the second highest bridge in the States.

Here are a couple of panoramic pics from a couple of different viewpoints on the dam.

We didn't stick around on top of the dam for too long as the skies were starting to look a bit ominous... The temperature was significantly lower than Las Vegas which was a nice change.

We made it back to the car and had just turned onto the freeway to take us to the Grand Canyon when the heavens opened. It was some of the most torrential rain I've seen in a while! Above is the view from the windscreen. Luckily we drove out of it after about 20 minutes.

I had initially tried to book us accommodation in the Grand Canyon Village, but this was completely sold out. Instead we ended up at the Red Feather Lodge in a small town called Tusayan, just a mile away from the South Rim entrance to the National Park. This ended up being a blessing in disguise. The park service runs regular free shuttle buses from Tusayan to the park visitor centre, meaning we could leave our car at the hotel. Once at the visitor centre there are other free shuttle buses to take you to all the points of interest.

The scale of this place is just mind-blowing. It certainly makes you feel very insignificant in the world! It is a vertical mile deep, 18 miles wide at its widest point, and 277 miles long. There is a path right along the canyon rim so you can walk as much as you like, then get on one of the frequent (every 10-15 minutes) shuttle buses when you needed a break. We certainly did a lot of walking! My fitbit showed it was a 25 000+ step day.

The squirrels around the park are far too tame for their own good. They have obviously learnt that if they 'beg' around the popular viewpoints they'll get fed, despite signs everywhere warning not to feed or touch any of the wildlife. 

Phantom Ranch is situated on the canyon floor, and is the only accommodation below the rim. It can only be reached by foot, mule, or by rafting the Colorado river. Mule trains are used to bring supplies to/from the ranch.

It takes a long time to hike down to the canyon floor, and obviously a lot longer to come back up. There are signs at every trail-head warning that if you attempt to go down and up in a day you are likely to die! Yep, the signs don't pull any punches... They also have real-life stories of people who have perished through over-exertion or heat exhaustion. We only had one full day at the canyon so a big hike to the canyon floor was never in the picture. However, we were keen to do a small hike below the canyon rim, and had decided on the 1.8 mile round trip to Ooh Aah Point which starts at the South Kaibob trail-head. We set off, but after about half an hour there was a warning from a ranger that there was a very high likelihood of a thunder and lightening storm in the next couple of hours, and he was suggesting that people turn back. Oh well, at least we had a taste of a 'proper' walk into the canyon. You can just see Will in the pic below on the very bottom switchback.

We literally took hundreds of photos. There were majestic vistas around every corner. I had a hard job narrowing them down to a reasonable amount for this blog post...

The colour in some of the rocks was beautiful.

Here's the obligatory Grand Canyon selfie...

And a couple more posed pics...

And some more pics, just because!

The landscape did lend itself well to panoramic shots.

Once you headed west of the Grand Canyon Village you started to get nice views of the Colorado river, down on the canyon floor.

By now it was early evening and the skies were starting to darken. There was a freaky isolated rainstorm on the far rim. It was very dramatic as the clouds cast shadows over the canyon.

Our initial plan was to stay at the canyon and catch the sunset, but the weather was definitely starting to take a turn for the worse, so we thought we'd better head back to the visitor centre and think about getting a bus back to our accommodation. We just missed a shuttle bus by a minute or so, and had 20 minutes to wait before the next. We walked back out to Mather point, the closest viewing platform to the visitor centre. While here we were treated to a very impressive thunder and lightening storm! The thunder sounded amazing ricocheting around the canyon walls! It would have been awesome to capture some of the huge lightning forks on camera, but no such luck.

We caught a bus before the rain started and travelled back 'home' where we enjoyed some very tasty Mexican for dinner at the restaurant attached to our hotel.

The next morning we packed up and hit the road, travelling towards the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado where we had accommodation booked for the night. Our route actually took us through the Grand Canyon Park for the first few miles. We stopped at the Desert View Watchtower on our way out, as the shuttles we had used to get around the previous day don't take you that far east.

We climbed up to the top of the watchtower and enjoyed vast views over the canyon. The inside of the watchtower is decorated with Indian paintings and relics.

After final photos of the canyon we continued on our journey. We loved our time in the Grand Canyon National Park, it is a magical place. If we return at a time when we aren't travelling the world for 10 months, and aren't down to one salary, we'd be tempted to do one of the helicopter trips that land you on the canyon floor.