The start of our American "Road Trip"

This is our hire car - Ford Mercury

Well hello Everyone,

Our last night in Las Vegas Nevada was very good, we went to the Beatles Show - which was excellent! Followed by a lovely dinner at Planet Hollywood. We then spent the next couple of hours playing the slots at the Bellagio and still came out with $60 - can't do that at Burswood Casino!


Monday morning it was time to hit the road, we packed up the car and headed for the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. We were amazed how often the scenery changes:

Our first stop was the Hoover Dam, they have just built a new bridge over it.

New Bridge at Hoover Dam



Driving into the Dam

The weather has turned very cold!

The Hoover Dam

From there we were off to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon - It has a Skywalk that hangs out over the Canyon with a glass floor so that you can see straight down! As it is glass you are not allowed to carry anything onto it - so they take photo's for you to purchase, so here they are:

View Above Skywalk

under the Skywalk

It was very good, we had been warned that it was scary to walk out on it - But after the Helicopter ride I was fine :) Here are some other photo's we took of the rim while there:

Checkout the lovely pink Tour Buses!

We will just say right now that no matter how many photo's you take of the Canyon, they just can't capture the wonder of it, it is absolutely amazing - words can not explain.

We then drove on to Flagstaff  Arizona for the night. We were totally exhausted, a huge day again! Dave did a great job driving - I'm still navigating :) We didn't get to look around Flagstaff - too tired, we just got Pizza delivered for tea and did some washing.

Tuesday morning we headed off towards Tuba City via the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. This view was totally different to the others - alot greener! we had been told by several people to go to the IMAX theatre first, which we did. It was at the entrance to the National Park. We were extremely lucky as only 2 days before they opened a bird show there - which of course we had to see:

Condor

Checkout the Wingspan!

Strangely enough America has very strict rules with their birds, so the only American bird was the Condor all the others were "cousin" birds from other countries. But it was a very good show.

Afterwards we watched the Imax film on the Canyon which was excellent and very informative.

Then we were off to the Canyon:



As I said no single photo will ever capture the atmosphere - But here's a look anyway!



We said our final goodbye's to the Grand Canyon and headed of to Tuba City Arizona.
Well Tuba City - not sure how it got the City name! Alot of the area is owned by the Navajo Indians - including the motel we stayed at. The town is a very run down and not much there. The weather has turned very cold and icy wind! Luckily we purchased some warm jumpers in Las Vegas.


Today we headed off about 9 to go to Cortez Colorado, yes crossing another border - not that they put up any huge signs or anything! It was very cold and there was rain in the distance and of course we had to drive through it:

Then it cleared up for a while:

And started again:

We called into the Four State Corners monument -  Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah - of course it was raining for this and we got mud all over our shoes :( Luckily we had brochures to put under our feet in the car. Here is the monument:

It was so cold & rainy that we just took a quick picture and got back in the car :(

We got to Cortez and it was still raining and extremely cold so we checked into our room, turned on the heater and watched TV - only to find out that there is a huge front coming through colorado, with rain, wind and SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am abit scared, but Dave says it will be ok! We are here for 2 days as we had planned on visiting Mesa Verde National Park tomorrow - hopefully weather will allow this!

We walked outside to get dinner and the mountains around Cortez have snow on them:

I know it looks beautiful - but we have to drive through it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well that's all for now will let you all know how we go.

Cheers.
Dave & Shell