Our itinerary would take us through the Antelope Valley and Mohave Desert to Las Vegas for one night, then to the Hoover Dam and south through the Arizona desert to the Grand Canyon, spending the night in Williams, then further south with a detour through the red rocks of Sedona on the way to Phoenix, where we would be for the next three nights before the long trip home on Interstate 10.

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It’s been a looooong time since I last spent any time in Sin City…like over 30 years, I guess. The Strip still had all the old casinos like the Sands, the Desert Inn, Tropicana, Algiers, I think the MGM had just opened, Circus Circus was on one end and Caesar’s Palace was on the other.

Now it’s like a completely different place. I can’t even see Circus Circus from where we’re staying (the Excalibur), and I can see a sign for Caesars way down at the end. Here it’s Excalibur (with Luxor behind it) on one corner, the MGM Grand on another corner, New York, New York on another, and I can’t even remember what’s on the fourth. It’s all very glitzy and glamorous.

That being said, and all in all, I feel a bit disappointed by it all this visit. Rhonda swears that as soon as we crossed the state line, she could start smelling the cigarette smoke. By the time we got to the room I could taste it in my mouth like I had just taken a big drag. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ll pay the rate for which you booked the room – now there’s a mandatory ‘resort fee’ of $10 a night (standard for all the major resorts), for amenities like two 8-oz bottles of hotel-branded water in the room, high-speed Internet access in the room (not Wi-Fi), pool access, a couple of other things. They gave us $25 in meal credits which we used at the buffet, the food at which was okay, nothing spectacular. Two drink coupons that surprisingly covered the cost of two drinks, and a coupon for an extra $5 in chips when you buy $10…well, we tried that, but they said they were all out of the $5 chips, and to try again tomorrow. Hah.

I wanted to pay a visit to the old part of LV on Fremont Street, but we’d had a long drive today, and another one ahead of us tomorrow, so we just paid a visit to the 4-floor M&M World superstore, played a little video poker and have called it a night. I wanted to play a little blackjack, but they had a $10 table minimum (it had been $5 this afternoon) and that was a little too rich for my blood.

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We were on the road early,  as we had a long way to go before the day was over. I’d always wanted to visit Hoover Dam ever since seeing the final scenes of the B-Movie The Amazing Colossal Man (YouTube link). It was on the way, so off we headed.

We’d been warned ahead of time of road delays heading into the dam area itself, and we did have to stop for 15 minutes or so, but we had a beautiful view of Lake Mead while we were parked. The highway takes you right over the top of the dam, so there were prohibitions against trucks and cars pulling trailers from using that part of the highway. There was also a place where cars could be stopped and inspected before crossing, but we and all the vehicles we saw were just waved through (they’re building a very tall span just south of the dam that will take the traffic off the top of the dam (this satellite view shows the approach roads at the bottom of the picture, but when we were there at the end of May the span was complete over the Colorado River). I wanted to stop on the north side to get some pictures of the classic view, but I couldn’t locate a place where it was allowed. We weren’t able to pull over until we were completely across the dam (crossing into Arizona in the process). We could have walked back, but time was short, and this wasn’t the main objective, so we stopped for a few minutes then headed on south on Highway 93.

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And the drive south was very long, scenic, but very dry, hot and deserty. I made the mistake of not gassing up before leaving civilization, not realizing that roadside man-made oases would be few and far between between Vegas and Kingman. We passed wide spots in the road like White Hills, Big Wash and Chloride without a gas station to be seen. There was one on the northbound  side of the highway, but there was no place to turn around for miles and miles. I do believe we were running on fumes when we finally rolled into Kingman – good thing the road into town was a downhill grade. We picked up Interstate 40 in Kingman, and it was still a good long haul to Williams for the turnoff to the Grand Canyon.

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It’s about 60 miles from Interstate 40 in Williams to the South Rim of the Canyon via State Route 64. During that drive I remarked at how the countryside was pretty flat landscape, desert, a few mesas and such in the distance. There was no hint as to the remarkable geologic feature just a few miles ahead. There were parking lots practically abutting on the rim itself. For as many times I’ve seen the Grand Canyon on TV or in pictures or the movies, nothing can communicate its – well, Grandness. What a huge hole in the ground! We arrived at about 3:30, I think. Here’s a link to the photos I took.

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While we were there we noticed that the US flags were flying at half-staff. We asked the ranger in the visitors’ center as to the reason, and she said that a National Park Service employee was working on one of the trails and had fallen over the side of the cliff and died. One of the frequently-asked questions of the rangers is ‘has anyone fallen to the bottom of the canyon?’. They say that falls from the rim are relatively rare, and that if one does fall, one can only fall about 300 feet (the length of a football field). Doesn’t that make you feel better?

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We took a different road out of the Canyon on our way back to civilization (following 64 east to 89 south to Flagstaff, then 40 to get back to Williams where we had a hotel reservation). On that road away from the Grand Canyon proper, we passed many other smaller canyons in the area. Any one of these would be a huge tourist attraction anywhere else, but here it was just another hole. We figured that if the main event was called the ‘Grand’ Canyon, then these smaller features must be the ‘Eh’ Canyons.

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As mentioned above, we had a reservation at the Canyon Country Inn in Williams, on the recommendation of our friend Bruce who’d recently taken a trip through the area. Due to the long route we’d taken out of the Canyon to get back to Williams, we didn’t arrive until 9:30 PM (we had called ahead, and they’d left the key on the front desk for us to pick up). We found the place with no problem, picked up the key and headed upstairs to our room in the main house. This is the kind of place it was: there was a cute little Teddy bear on each step of the staircase, which ended in a parlor-type room at the top. There were a couple of couches, a piano, family photos on the table, very cute and cozy.

Rhonda was incredulous that this was a hotel that our friend would have stayed at, much less recommend, but it was a nice room; a too-soft bed, but we were tired and it served the purpose.

Weeks later, when Bruce asked about the trip, we discovered that indeed this wasn’t the hotel at which he and his son had stayed (although he had named the hotel when he recommended it to us). I don’t know how the wires got crossed, but all’s well that ended well.

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We’d decided that we wanted to at least drive through Sedona, although I didn’t really know what Sedona was all about. Arts community? Scenic drive? Tourist trap? It wasn’t that far out of the way, and we had lots of time before we had to be in Phoenix, so we turned off Interstate 17 onto state route 89A, following Oak Creek Canyon. And it really was a beautiful drive. It wasn’t long before we were driving through the red rock formations for which I now know Sedona is famous. However, the road is a little windy, and it made Rhonda a little uneasy, so that when we finally arrived in Sedona proper, we decided to push ahead and get to Phoenix as soon as possible. We navigated the many traffic circles in town, and stopped at a Circle-K for some gas and refreshment. That’s the chance I took to take some pictures of the rock formations in the immediate vicinity. Once on the road back to the Interstate, it was like God had drawn a line in the desert, saying ‘no more red rocks’ because that scenery ended abruptly and we were back in the flat desert land for which Arizona is known.

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We got into Phoenix just after lunchtime and checked into our room at the Embassy Suites on the north side of town and immediately headed for the pool. You hear people say ‘it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity’ and in this case it’s completely true. It was indeed hot, in the upper 90s I’d guess, but I was completely comfortable. The hotel’s pool was circular,  huge, but shallow (only 5 feet deep in the middle). But it had a cabana bar, of which I partook more than once.

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We were in Phoenix for the wedding of Rhonda’s godson Mitch, who I met for the first time at the Suite’s happy hour, along with his dad Bruce (I’d met his mom Sharon, Rhonda’s best friend since college days, some months earlier) along with other early arrivals, not to mention Meg, the beautiful bride). The adults all had dinner together at the nearby Macaroni Grill that evening. Afterward, Rhonda and I had another shot at the pool, a very refreshing end to a long day, and the first day of the trip’s main objective.

More soon.