Voyages Sans Frontieres: The Grand Canyon

As long as we were in Vegas, Mel and I decided to make a side trip to the Grand Canyon.

We hired a car and Mel very bravely got into the passenger side (after initially going for the driver's side!) and allowed me to take the wheel for only the second time in a right hand drive country (the first time being only a few weeks earlier at Niagara Falls!).

However, the fact that I am posting this shows that we survived and all without a scratch on either us or the car! The drive was about 5 hrs each way, so we stayed overnight at the canyon. The drive itself was pretty uneventful. Mel's superb navigation meant that we got there without incident. I got to drive over the Hoover Dam, and along part of the original route 66!

As we were making our final approach to the canyon, we noticed all the cars in the opposite direction were covered in snow! Hand on a second - this is April in the middle of the desert, surely not! Oh yes, they had had about 2 inches dumped in about an hour and a half only a few hours before we arrived. Excellent - we had packed our summer gear!

We were assured by a friendly park ranger that the skies would be blue and the snow gone the day before. Unconvinced, we continued into the winter wonderland assuming that we would be freezing for the next two days!

One benefit of the snow is that we got a view of the canyon that few others would get. The snow cover created lovely borders for our photographs, as you will see below. We made it in time for a lovely sunset (including a very romatic proposal made by another tourist to his girlfriend - luckily she said yes!).

We got up a 5am the next day for some sunrise shots. It was very overcast, sleeting and absolutely freezing. Unfortuanely the cloud cover meant that we didn't get any great shots. Still unconvinced by our ranger's assurances of a fine day, we went back to bed for a couple of hours only to awake to a beautiful blue sky, significantly warmer temperature and most of the snow melted!

We were able to fit in a spectacular 50 min helicopter ride over the canyon - definitely a recommendation for anyone else who goes there. It is certainly a view you would not be able to get easily any other way.

As for the canyon itself, unfortunately words and even photographs do not show the full impact of how vast and amazing it is. Hopefully the shots below give a small indication.

Mel returns to London tomorrow evening and I am heading to Peru at the same time, so this will be my last post for awhile. I'll be in touch when I can! All the best!