1. Las Vegas - Grand Canyon

Fri 12 July
I left a couple of days before Rosanna and flew on the Air NZ charter flight direct from Auckland - Las Vegas.  This whole trip came about because of Flight Centre.  The company sets various targets and I had exceeded mine in the first 12 months of employment so that came with a free trip to the Company Global Gathering which this year was in Las Vegas!  This suited me fine as I'd never been to Vegas before and also had not explored much of the States.  Anyway, there is not normally a direct flight from Auckland - Las Vegas but due to the number of people going we had a charter flight just for us.  The flight was uneventful and before I knew it we were crossing the Californian coastline and then landing into Vegas arriving on the morning of the same day we left.

On arrival, we cleared customs, collected our bags and were then dropped at our hotel - the MGM Grand where we checked in and unpacked then headed out to explore.  We were met by that familiar dry heat of about 33 degrees when we were briefly walking to the bus at the airport but everywhere indoors you'd never know due to the air conditioning.  The first thing we noticed was the colossal size of this hotel!  I had heard it was one of the biggest in the world (6,900 rooms), but the whole complex is enormous.  You can walk for 15 minutes and you're still in the same complex!  This is made up of not just the hotel, but casino, restaurants, foodcourts, shops, wedding chapels, theatres, swimming pools you name it!

That evening there was a pool party and then we retired for the evening.

Sat 13 July

The next morning we were up early and walked down the strip to another venue for breakfast and then the conference.  This is basically just a company briefing of the previous year and plans for the future as well as different acts and usually one high-profile guest who provides a motivational speech - this year was well-known actor Mark Wahlberg!

After the conference we had free time to ourselves so we went and had lunch and then explored a bit of the Strip.  This too is massive, the strip is only one road in all of Vegas but is where the main proportion of casinos and large hotels are all located!

New York New York Casino

In the evening we had a dinner and more entertainment and awards - we were extremely privileged, our area (greater Wellington) got to go up on stage for the Most Improved Area in the World.  The evening was rounded off with another high-profile guest, Calvin Harris a famous Scottish DJ.  

At this point Rosanna had arrived in Las Vegas and managed to find her own way through LA airport and then to the hotel we were staying in Las Vegas by herself!  Here are a few awesome photos of her evening flight in

Sun 14 July

I woke up, checked out of the MGM Grand and then got an uber to the other end of the strip where Rosanna was staying and woke her up (she thought housekeeping was knocking on her door!)

Sunday we spent exploring the strip from one end to the other and gazing in awe at the buildings - very amazing and made to appear like their name-sakes e.g. Venice, Paris etc however the real thing is much better!

The Venetian

Flamingos Hotel & Casino

Paris Las Vegas

Inside Reception at The Mirage

Hell's Kitchen - Gordon Ramsay

In the evening we watched a show although prohibited from taking photos - Cirque du Soleil 'Ka'.  We had no idea what it was about but it completely blew us away, the size and scale of the stage and the performance was incredible!  We wished we'd had more time to see other shows - this is definitely the place to come to see them!  On the walk back to our hotel we stopped and watched the Bellagio Fountain in all it's glory.

Mon 15 July

Today we were leaving Vegas, we both felt although it was great to see, it's not somewhere we would consider going back to again unless we had a reason to.  We caught an uber to the rental car depot (this was mammoth as well, we walked in and felt like we were entering an airport terminal!  We signed the paperwork and then went out to choose our car (yes they say to choose any car in a certain row!)  We stopped briefly on the way out of Las Vegas at a nice cafe Rosanna had found online and then continued on.  It wasn't long before we reached our first stop of Hoover Dam.  Hoover Dam is an amazing piece of engineering, built in 1936 during the Great Depression.  It still today provides most of the power for Las Vegas but also some for the states of Nevada, California and Arizona.  One other thing I noticed flying into Vegas was enormous solar farms - 10s if not 100s of acres of solar panels - an excellent place to get all that energy as it is all effectively desert around here!  This river/dam is also right on the border between the two states of Nevada (left side of photo below) and Arizona (right side).

From here we had quite a drive to the Meteor Crater Natural Landmark.  This was something we had seen online as well as recommended by some people back in NZ who'd been.  It was definitely quite something to see however a little bit out of the way and not much else to do there.  

Typical Arizona roads - long, straight with vast, open skies

We back-tracked then to a nice town called Flagstaff, this is perhaps best well-known for being one of the stops on the famous Route 66.  We got some photos, walked around some of the streets, had some lunch and then continued on to our destination today of the Grand Canyon!

Finally we arrived at Grand Canyon village (700km of driving today!) after a short-stop at Tusayan (the nearest town) to watch an Imax on the Grand Canyon and buy our National Parks Pass so we could enter all the National Parks on this trip.  We checked in (we had this cute little cabin about 20 steps away from the Canyon rim).  We decided it would be a lot nicer staying right here than in the village of Tusayan which is a little cheaper but means a good 15 minute drive to get to the canyon and we weren't disappointed!

Rosanna outside our cabin

We were very eager, once we'd thrown our bags down, to go and see what was just 20 steps away so we did and sat there on the edge of the canyon watching the sun go down behind the far side of the canyon wall in the West.

Tue 16 July

Tuesday we were very excited for!  We had splashed out and pre-booked a 40 minute helicopter trip over the Grand Canyon and it was worth every penny!  There are no photos or videos we could put on here that can fully explain the immensity, the depth, the size, the colours of this place.  You can read about it and see photos and images but these do not come close to seeing it up close nor from the air!

The Afternoon we had decided to walk along the Canyon Rim walk.  They have a system of free buses which circle around the Grand Canyon Village and you can get off and start walking wherever you want.  We timed the bus/walk with sunset so we could finish during the Golden Hour.  So we caught the bus out and walked the 13km back from the along the rim to our accommodation.

Wed 17 July

We were planning to get up early today but not this early!  Around 5am we heard scratching and scrambling from somewhere in our room.  We both woke with a start and wondered what on earth it was!  It seemed to be coming from my backpack which was open so I gingerly got out of bed and tipped it on it's side... nothing... then about a minute later saw something running along the skirting boards and disappearing down a crack in the corner of the room!  To this day we have no idea what it was, definitely a rodent of some kind maybe a mouse or a squirrel - they were everywhere - but it didn't seem that large  We had left a bag of nuts in my backpack which they had obviously sniffed out!  After this excitement we were well and truly awake and since the sun was about to show it's face we decided to get up and go to the canyon to watch it's arrival!

What the rodent was after

We had a quick breakfast and started driving along the rim continuing to head East.  There were still a number of lookout stops to stop at to see different views of the canyon.  At this early hour a lot of the wildlife was out and about too which we wouldn't have seen if we hadn't been up so early!