Sunday: The Grand Canyon, Part 1

I have only one word for my Sunday adventure today: AMAZING.

I started my morning by heading downstairs at the Luxor to wait for my chariot to take me to the wonder of the Grand Canyon. Another woman was waiting and it just so happened that we were both booked for the same tour, a sweet lady in between my parent's ages named Mary from Wisconsin. Cue the accent. After about 10 minutes our van showed up and a tall, long-haired guy named Luis from Chile got out to greet us. We next headed to Caesar's Palace to pick up our next two tour attendees: a young married couple named Rob & Gevy. Rob is originally from Australia, Gevy was born in the Phillippines and they now live in London. Our third stop was the Bellagio for another young married couple named David and Shiri from Israel.  Luckily that was it for our group today so we had tons of open space in our van.  We hit the road and left Vegas by 6:30.

Our first stop was breakfast in Boulder City. It was part of our tour package, so Luis paid. We were right by the Hoover Dam at that point, so we drove on over and walked up and then out onto the recently completely Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Our view of the dam used to require a 4 hour hike to take in...but we walked out on to the bridge in about 10 minutes and enjoyed. We snapped a few photos, listened to Luis explain some different features and stories about the "Hugh-ver Dam" in his thick accent and then headed out again.  It would be nice to come back some day so I can take the actual dam tour, but for now my dam photos will have to suffice.

Our next stop was for gas 50 minutes down the road and then on to Seligman, Arizona another hour away. We had 30 minutes to explore Seligman, which was the inspiration for the Disney movie Cars. Some of the actual cars that live in Seligman were inspirations for some of the characters like the sherriff and Mater. The town is situated on Route 66, and it wasn't much as far as size and mostly consisted of kitchsy tourist souvenir shops, where I bought myself some turquoise earrings. I seriously could have spent all afternoon walking around and soaking in everything in town. Sadly we only had 30 minutes to spend and part of that time included a potty break, but someday I hope I can come back with Nick and Kate. I'm starting to see an Arizona family vacation in our future...

We left Seligman with empty bladders and some souvenirs, and headed back out towards our final destination. Two and a half hours later, we arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.