The Trickle Down Effect

Time sure flies when you’re having fun.

It’s hard to believe it, but sure enough, last week I was in Las Vegas. I have so many odd little stories that I want to share and some other big news that’s just burning a whole in my blog, but we’ll get to all of that in good time I suppose. For now you’ll just have to read it as it comes and take the words as they trickle from my cluttered brain.

All my Vegas stories will be out of order, but that’s okay, the important thing is that you get to hear them, and I get to write them down so a year from now I can remember all those fun little details.

Two major things happened in Vegas, the second one is that Michelle and I got to see the Grand Canyon.

To say that pictures don’t work would be an understatement. You cannot imagine the enormity of what you are looking at unless you are standing right there. Wait I take that back, even standing right there you cannot begin to fathom the sheer enormity that you are drinking in.

The picture that I posted yesterday is 5 snap shots sown together with Photoshop. To add to the real kicker that isn’t even a 180 degree view, it’s just a little over 50 degrees. The rest of our group was standing to our right and I didn’t really want them in my shot, but if you click on the image you can see it in slightly larger detail.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I booked my trip to Vegas a few months ago, I knew that one the things I really wanted to do was take a trip to the Grand Canyon. Expedia.com offered several different options: Take a tour bus (I’m thinking lots of blue hairs and crying kids – not really my idea of a good time); take a jeep (I’ve ridden in my buddy Bobby’s Jeep a few times and I didn’t know if that was such a good idea); a fly, drive, and boat tour (This one really appealed to me as you flew over Lake Mead, took a ride into Joshua Tree forest, and then took a boat up the Colorado river – but on further consideration I didn’t know if the idea of riding rapids in the winter was such a good idea) or take a 4 x 4 Hummer tour. Well to me, the choice seemed pretty clear, why take a run down Jeep when I could take an awesome Hummer?

So I booked a tour with a company called Rebel Adventure Tours (which is the one that Expedia.com uses) and we were set to go on the last day we were in Vegas (seemed like a good way to end our time there). So when this beat up nasty yellow Hummer with a capper on the back showed up I was a little dismayed.

Kevin (who repeated the same stick to each passenger and normally said it twice) was our tour guide and proved to be quite the interesting fellow. We climbed this dangerous looking metal set of folding stairs to get into the back of the Hummer which turned out to be the exact opposite of what I expected.

See when I say the word Hummer, I think “Bling, Bling” plush Hummer; not Haitian style top-top Hummer. Basically this was an old school Army Hummer with the seats pulled out, a topper added to the back and two long bench seats added to either wall for people to strap themselves to (it would appear that they actually thought they could accommodated up to 12 people in the back of that thing). The ceiling was in tatters and things were not looking good. To add to the discomfort, the weather was cold and rainy in Las Vegas, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, but with the heat cranked on 112 inside the back the windows quickly fogged (we’ll get back to this issue later on).

Our first stop was next door to Treasure Island to pick up Paul and Melanie, who were visiting Vegas from the UK. These guys were around our age and were a total blast. It was just plain fun to listen to their various phrases that they used in comparison to ours (UK Dafyd can back me up on this). People don’t wait in line, they “queue up”. You don’t have a chocolate for dessert; you have a “chocolate for your pudding”. But even though we came from slightly different cultures, they were both very quick witted folks and we had a good time with them.

From there we headed over to the Bellagio to pick up Fran and Ron (who Kevin kept calling Bob, this turned into one of the many running jokes of the day). These guys were just awesome. They were an older couple most likely nearing retirement age, but still a lot of fun.

Our last stop was to the Aladdin to pick up Heather, Christie (her daughter) and Ricardo (aka Fernando, another Kevin-ism).

These were the people that I liked the least and I’m not shy about saying that or why I felt that way. Heather and Christie were from Ireland (no, that’s not why I didn’t like them) and Ricardo was from Peru. Christie (who I swear looked like she was twelve) was wearing a short-ish leather skirt, fishnets and white cowboy boots as well as a silk split shouldered short sleeve shirt, while Heather (her mother) was wearing like a pink winter parka. I mean, honestly, we’re going on a hike of the Grand Canyon, there’s rain and possible snow in the mountains. What are you thinking?

So that was pretty annoying since the only way to de-fog (demist as the Brits like to say) the windows was to reduce the temperature or open the windows, which she then complained about being cold (DUH!). The other really odd part is Ricardo. I still cannot figure out where he fit into the whole picture. Christie seemed really young and he was pretty old, yet he sat next to her and not Heather (who we originally though he was with). At other times he’s completely blowing of Christie and spending time with Heather (the mom) and at the next moment Christie is all over him. So I think in the end, I really don’t want to know what was going on, but needless to say, the bugged the tar out of me.

Okay, so back to Kevin the tour guy. This guy was a riot, but only in the he’s easy to make fun of sort of way. He repeated the same stories over and over again within a span of just a few minutes and he always ended every little tidbit with the phrase, “Truuue story”.

After our first stop in Boulder City, I convinced Kevin to just keep the heat off and that helped considerably in seeing out the windows (which you either careened your neck or stared at the person across from you). From there, our next stop was the Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam was an interesting place. It was amazing at home much work was accomplished and how quickly it was finished. Kevin pointed out the turrets that were used during World War II to defend the dam from invasion and attack as well as the modern day explosion points in the event of a terrorist attack.

It was also fun to see the rams climbing up the side of the mountain (you can see them in the back ground in the yellow Hummer picture). What you might not know is that right now they are working on building a bride to go over the dam to get the traffic off it. When the Hoover Dam was originally built they didn’t plan on that much commercial and residential traffic on it and they are working to get off as fast as they can. The current plan is to have the bridge finished by 2008. Which means if you want to get out there and see it while you can still drive on the dam, now is the time.

Now that we were in Arizona, we started making our way towards the Grand Canyon, but not before we stopped at a few useless pre-planned stops. My personal favorite was the Chocolate Factory.

Don’t let the name fool you as it really wasn’t a factory at all, but rather a run down double wide trailer where a few of the locals sold chocolate out in the desert. However all that having been said, it was nice to get out and stretch my legs and the free sample of white chocolate and peanut butter that I had was pretty tasty.

Being a Michigan/Indiana kind of guy, I was just amazed at the mountains all around me. Now I’ve been to the Smokey’s and through the hills of Kentucky, but those build up pretty gradually and you don’t get quite the same view as you do in Arizona.

You are standing in this flat wasteland and all around you on the horizon all you can see are these towering mountains, it was a lot of fun.

As I mentioned before, it had rained all day yesterday and where we were going the roads weren’t paved. This made for some rough driving as a lot of the roads were swamped, washed out or suffering from the washboard effect. Now to really make things interesting, this is where the windows really started to fog over big time. So you are strapped sideways, in a foggy Hummer bouncing all over the place; how I managed not to spew, I’ll never know. We did get to see the Washed Cliffs (where Thelma and Louise was filmed, as well as almost 80 other movies – Truuue Story) and take a brief break so that was nice.

After another 30 minutes we arrived on the Hualapai (People of the Tall Pines) Indian Reservation. The weather had finally broken and it looked like we’d get a chance to see the Canyon after all.

Just a brief note about this picture here. I saw more rainbows on this trip than I have in my whole life combined. At point there was this giant double rainbow that spanned the entire canyon. “Pictures no work here Kevin, pictures no work.” – Sorry, another story that our tour guide told, over and over and over again.

It turned out that we were really lucky. The day before there had been almost seven hundred people who had shown up to see the Western Rim of the Canyon; today there would be only 18, so we had the whole place to ourselves.

Words and pictures cannot begin to capture the place. There is just no way to understand until you find yourself there. I could have stayed the entire day and just sat there looking out into the distance. The hardest part to capture is scale. You cannot understand how big it really is, but I’ll try. Michelle managed to get a shot of a helicopter flying through the canyon on a tour. If you click on this picture you can see it in context and imagine how big the place really it. The helicopter is that little red dot.

I actually have a few photos of this and another helicopter (a black one) that were taking people on tours. When we go back, and we will, that is one thing that I promised myself that we would do. Take a helicopter tour through the canyon. I cannot even begin to imagine what it feels like to be flying down between those massive walls of rock or see the might river close up.

(Said in my best Kevin the tour Guide’s voice) Just a little side fact for you, the Grand Canyon covers 265 miles. The Hualapai Indians own over 108 miles of that on over a million acres of land. Truuue story my friends.

Our first stop was a place called Eagle Point where the rocks formed the shape of a flying eagle. One of the coolest parts about going to the Western Rim is that it isn’t commercialized yet. Since it’s on an Indian reservation there are no McDonalds, no railings, nothing. Just you and the canyon.

Now, if you’re not careful that can be dangerous as you can fall to your death; much like this poor fellow. Okay, so that was the other tour guy Richard who seemed to be a lot of fun and a total smooze on the ladies, but I digress.

After about 20 minutes or so snapping photos at Eagle point we headed over to Guano Point where they used to mine bat guano in the 1950s. This is another area where we did our best to try and get a sense of the scale of the Cayon.

When we hiked out to Guano point there was a mining tower that they used to swing a large yellow bucket from one side to the other. Half way down the canyon wall there was one on this side, and then another one on the other side as well (same height). You could barly see it. I cannot say this enough, the Grand Canyon is HUGE. The part that still amazes me the most is that I only saw but a small fraction of this massive natural wonder. I kept looking across and thinking, “No man has ever stepped foot on that piece of ground. No one has ever been there before.”

It was such a contrast to Vegas which was just crawling with people; and oh, the silence. There was a moment when we were having lunch on the Canyon were you could not hear a sound. It was fun to think of what the world must have been like then. To sit there alone and just hear nothing but the emptiness of nature around you.

The view here was just breath taking.

I snapped this shot from our picnic table, which turned out to be right on the edge of the canyon as you can see from these two photos below.

It was a very humbling experience. You never realize how big the world is or how small you are until you are standing on the edge of place like this.

The Grand Canyon is a very spiritual place if you let seep into your soul and I know that I shed more than one tear as I stood there looking out. Before we left, Michelle and I both picked up a rock and tossed it into the canyon, our way of reminding ourselves of where we fit into the grand scheme of things.

At some point in your life you simply must “get yourself to the Grand Canyon”.

Oh, and if you are thinking of going, I’d recommend two things:

1) Don’t use Rebel Adventure Tours, use www.PinkJeep.com
2) Go to the Western Rim before it too falls to commercialization