Now is the time I fess up about where I have been for the last week. I have been busy making this bag in a clandestine fashion. Knitting all day when I should have been going to the gym & staying up late when I really should have been sleeping. The felting was only a success after borrowing a friends washing machine that, amongst other things, could find it in its heart to actually do a really hot load of washing.After a quick look around Las Vegas in the daylight, we took off to Hoover Dam. This was a fantastic stop over. Hoover Dam sits across the Colorado river on the border of Nevada & Arizona. It is phenomenally large (approx 200m tall, 400m wide & 200m thick at the base) & has an interesting history that is enough to keep you there for a few hours. Included in your entrance fee is a trip down to see one of the sets of turbines & unlimited time in the attached museum. The museum section was full of fantastic info my favourites being the section on how hydroelectricity is generated, the 1:1 scale replica of the inside of a turbine & the stop motion video of the dam going up over the 5 years of construction.
The town of Tusayan, AZ was about 5 hours drive from the dam. It is the last town you come to as you drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is only about 5 miles outside the entrance to the park. We got there just after sunset - which wasn't the plan. Nope. The plan was to drive much faster & get some fab sunset photos. It wasn't in the cards for this trip.
So we booked into the hotel & headed off to find some food. This was Kynans birthday night & we found a great restaurant in Tusayan called "Yipee-ei-o". A steakhouse with large portions, waiters in cowboy garb & a live horse in the car park! We ate rattlesnake - yup - how very cool & American. Rattlesnake, for those who are interested, has no flavour & the texture of badly cooked calamari. Yummo.
The cowboy steak, corn, beans, baked potato & a biscuit (a floury scone).It was a terrificly memorable way to spend his birthday and worth stopping at if you visit the South Rim.
The next morning we were up at 5am. After missing the sunset there was no way we would miss the sunrise. And it was breathtaking. It was surprisingly uncrowded & surprisingly cold (so the desert beanie got a look in!). As the sun rose the rocks went from orange to an intense ruby grapefruit pink. There was a man there playing a native American flute which gave the experience a spiritual profundity that it would otherwise not have had. I couldn't believe how deep it was & will try & get back there for a longer period of time to really enjoy the experience.
Look how ultra-stupidily excited we look!
The next morning we were up at 5am. After missing the sunset there was no way we would miss the sunrise. And it was breathtaking. It was surprisingly uncrowded & surprisingly cold (so the desert beanie got a look in!). As the sun rose the rocks went from orange to an intense ruby grapefruit pink. There was a man there playing a native American flute which gave the experience a spiritual profundity that it would otherwise not have had. I couldn't believe how deep it was & will try & get back there for a longer period of time to really enjoy the experience.
Look how ultra-stupidily excited we look!
The last day of the trip was a mega drive home. 800+ miles & 12 hours of driving punctuated by at stop at Lake Havasu, AZ - home of the original London Bridge. Now doesn't that sound cool? The bridge that Kynan used to cycle over to go to work while we were in London - well, the previous bridge having the same name - sold to an American & relocated to Arizona brick by brick & reassembled. Ohhh - rush me there, it MUST be worth the trip!
Except it wasn't. It really wasn't.
It was sad, sad, sad. Not the bridge exactly. The bridge was lovely & looking very much like other bridges over the Thames (infact, looking much lovelier than the current London Bridge). But the area to one side of the bridge houses the fabulous "London Town" - supposedly a quaint replica of an English town. Fark - what a serious let down. This place makes heavily bombed parts of Iraq look like highly polished urban areas (see the pic below). For Canberrans, it had an air of Canberry Fair. You got the impression that - although never grand - the place used to be a lot busier than it is now. I mean, they used to charge admission & now the ticket office is boarded up. So they don't charge you to look at the fountain with no water, a pub that is boarded up (replaced by a porta-loo & a hot dog stand...ohhh so English), the exquisite bus with bad paint job, smashed windows & deflated tyres, the Hawaiian shaved ice stall & the Gondola ride hut. It was just like being back there....
Dismal. But we needed a toilet stop & to buy some ice. So the trip wasn't a complete waste.
So there you have the story of the long weekend trip. Thanks for hanging in there.
Except it wasn't. It really wasn't.
It was sad, sad, sad. Not the bridge exactly. The bridge was lovely & looking very much like other bridges over the Thames (infact, looking much lovelier than the current London Bridge). But the area to one side of the bridge houses the fabulous "London Town" - supposedly a quaint replica of an English town. Fark - what a serious let down. This place makes heavily bombed parts of Iraq look like highly polished urban areas (see the pic below). For Canberrans, it had an air of Canberry Fair. You got the impression that - although never grand - the place used to be a lot busier than it is now. I mean, they used to charge admission & now the ticket office is boarded up. So they don't charge you to look at the fountain with no water, a pub that is boarded up (replaced by a porta-loo & a hot dog stand...ohhh so English), the exquisite bus with bad paint job, smashed windows & deflated tyres, the Hawaiian shaved ice stall & the Gondola ride hut. It was just like being back there....
Dismal. But we needed a toilet stop & to buy some ice. So the trip wasn't a complete waste.
So there you have the story of the long weekend trip. Thanks for hanging in there.
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