USA 2019 - Week 2, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon

Yesterday was our bright and earliest day on the trip because we went to the Grand Canyon! After a false start where our tour bus started smoking like a chimney, we transferred onto one of Maverick's other tour busses and continued on our way. Props to the Maverick bus behind us who saw us stop and pulled over to take us on too, very thoughtful.

The small airport had a cute little cafe where we rushed our coffee and stolen breakfast from last night's buffet, then clambered on to a tiny single file plane. The plane ride was about half an hour, and we had views of the Colorado river and parts of the Grand Canyon. When we arrived, we got straight onto our little tour "trolley" and made our way through the small town of Tusayan where we saw the home of the most expensive Big Mac ($9US), and a coyote!!









It was super cute with it's big fox-like ears.

Our first stop was at Bright Angel lodge, which was close to the Bright Angel Trailhead as well as the upper rim trail and some other lookouts. Our first glimpse of the canyon was breathtaking; I've never seen anything like it, and I'm sure my eyes and brain won't take in anything as magnificent anytime soon. The pictures we took are a pale reflection of what it felt like to stand at the edge.





Andrew braved the icy trails into the canyon (every second person that I watched trying landed on their ass, and one older gentleman couldn't make it up the incline back to safety until his family came to rescue him) while I appreciated the views from a high with a dry bum.

Our second stop was at Mather Point, which we chose to do instead of the optional helicopter tour. The views from this lookout were amazing, we're really glad we did this, but I'm sure the helicopter guys had a blast too, there's no bad option. The highlights here were the sweeping canyon views, standing on top of the lookout rocks, and observing the Chinese family who were clearly seeing snow for the first time; all of their pictures were of the snow and not the canyon!

They actually asked a passer by to take a photo of them facing AWAY from the canyon, to which the passer by reacted by asking "don't you want the views in the background?" and got an "I guess" type reluctant reply from the family who just wanted to get photos touching the snow. Super cute.

We were so excited to see our first "7 Wonder", although googling what the hell the 7 wonders actually are left us quite confused...

Last night we had an amazing dinner at Picasso restaurant in the Bellagio. The food in America has not disappointed, and this was the best meal so far. We enjoyed the Picasso's they had but they were quite obscure so we didn't recognise most of them.

After dinner we headed out to enjoy the Vegas night lift and didn't make it back until 2am, so we're having a lazy and slow start to our morning. We might go enjoy the pool and slowly make our way over to New York, New York for Zumanity tonight, man I love Cirque to Soleil!