The Great Grand Canyon

There are many Grand Canyon bus tours from Vegas, all costing about $100 each, but checking online I saw that we could rent a car with insurance for less than half that (HotWire was great - thanks Podge!). But the main reason for renting a car of course is the freedom to explore at your own pace.

Sarah was pretty nervous about driving a car in the States, mainly because they drive on the 'wrong' side of the road. On my last big trip I'd driven a motorbike for over 2 months up along the East coast of the States, so I knew driving in the States was a doddle, but it still took a fair bit of persuading to convince Sarah it was the best option.

So we picked up the car late on the night before we wanted to travel so that we could head off very early in the morning, as the journey is about 4 to 5 hours. It also allowed us plenty of time to return the car the following night. The drive back from the car rental place (at the airport) was pretty straightforward, but still a bit daunting for Sarah given the shear scale of the highway system here.

So at 5:30 the next morning we headed off through very light traffic and easily found our way onto the right road. We passed over the Hoover Dam, and although it was still dark we got great views of the huge construction job they're doing there to by-pass the original road (which is very windy and only has one lane in each direction). In fact, we had no traffic to speak of at all on the entire journey to the Grand Canyon, but the landscapes we passed though weren't very impressive unfortunately.

So we arrived at the Grand Canyon park in the late morning, parked the car in a spot along the road and strolled the 100 metres or so to the rim of the Canyon itself. I reckon we must have picked the perfect day to visit, as not only was the traffic in the park very light, the weather was shear perfection. There had been a snowfall the night before, which resulted in the entire rim area being layered in a few inches of beautiful snow. The canyon itself, being at a much lower altitude, didn't have any snow at all, and the clear blue skies illuminated the whole scene spectacularly. The visibility was brilliant, and we could clearly make out mountains 60 miles away.

It was immediately clear why the Grand Canyon is so famous - it really is a spectacular sight. Even though the Colca Canyon in Peru is much deeper than the Grand Canyon (twice as deep apparently), it's definitely not a patch on it scenically. The exposed layering in the Grand Canyon, and rich red hues were displayed perfectly in the clear skies we had, so it was all quite spellbinding I must say. And I wasn't even that disappointed that our camera battery was dead, as any famous picture on the Internet of the Canyon in Winter will do justice to the day we had there.

After strolling along the rim for a bit, we checked out the nearby visitor centre and the ranger there advised us that the best thing for us to do was self-drive along the distant part of the rim.

This section of the rim (to Hermit's Rest) was closed to the free shuttle buses, and so it made a fantastically scenic drive with practically no traffic at all. Along the 10 miles there are 7 lookout points, and having our own car meant we could stop at each and every one of them. Each stop had very few people (some having nobody at all at times), although a couple of half-empty tour buses would stop at the more famous lookouts.

So after a couple of hours of driving along this route, stopping at the nice village (which really felt like a ski resort with all the snow about), and looking-out from all the viewpoints, it was time to head back to Vegas.

Again traffic was really light on the way back, but for some reason we got seriously held up coming back through the Hoover Dam. In all we were stopped for about 1.5 hours, and I've no idea what the hold up was all about (probably just traffic heading to Vegas for New Year's, but also maybe due to the construction work, although I didn't see anything obvious causing such a long delay).

All-in-all poor Sarah had to drive for most of the 16 hours it took us to get to the Grand Canyon and back (we left at 5:30am and got back to the airport about 9:30pm), so it was a pretty exhausting day for her. She was fairly nervous throughout the trip, and at one point towards the end when we had to pull off the highway to refuel, the road system got really confusing. We were on a 4-lane oneway off-ramp, turning left onto a 5-lane two-way road (3 nearside lanes going right and two farside lanes going left). When the traffic light changed Sarah starts driving directly towards oncoming traffic! The road markings and signage weren't very clear at all, and it was now dark, so I was confused myself, but luckily there was no traffic behind us, and so in quite a panicky moment she could reverse back again. On the second attempt all went well, but Sarah was fairly shaken by it all.

Anyway, having the rental car not only saved a good few dollars, it also meant we got to see the Hermit's Rest section of the Canyon, stop and explore the village, see all the lookouts and we could stop for lunch when and where we wanted. It really made for a great day, and was certainly far better than being stuck on a tour bus.

Once we'd dropped the car back to the rental company we had to get a taxi back to hotel, as it was too late for the buses, and of course the guy ripped us off by going around the long way (and he even had the cheek to suggest we book him the next day to get back to the airport for our flight to San Francisco - he said all the other taxi drivers would be charging $50 for New Year's, which of course was complete nonsense!). So anyway, all-in-all it was a very long and exhausting day, but worth every second.