Donald's Vacation 2011 - Day 19

Today whilst waiting in front of the Venetian Hotel for my tour bus to arrive I was propositioned by a young blonde of about 18 or 19 who asked me a series of questions answering "Kewl" to nearly all of them. May I add that this was at 6.30 in the morning!

The tour bus eventually arrived - painted pink and our tour guide introduced himself. He appeared to be a left-over from the cast of "Hogan's Heroes" as he had the strongest of German accents.

"Gut morrrrrnink prizonerz! Today ve ist goink to ze Grrrrrant Kanyon unt virst you must know zer rrrrrulz unt rrrrregulationz!"

We drove then for miles through desilute desert with a few cacti here and there as the only survivable vegetation. The small townships we passed through have the electricity on but no running water. They have to fetch it from a pump and are charged 75 cents for 50 gallons. Most of these townships are trailer towns and therefore dumps. Little did I know we would be stopping at one of them as a rest stop!

We were over the border into Arizona by this time and soon into Indian territory where we stopped at some place before we transfer into a large shuttle bus to be transferred to Grand Canyon West and the viewing platform area.

This platform has a semi circle of glass jutting out above the Grand Canyon at 4,000 feet - but as it costs $35 to go in and you are not allowed to take a camera, I couldn't see the point as you can take adequate photos from just next door to it.

We seemed to stay forever here and Colonel Klink took some of them off to look at wig-wams, I couldn't be bothered wandering around in the heat - and I've seen wig-wams.

Colonel Klink then took us to some other place that he thought was terrific - he was the only one to think so in our party - and it was obviously only a stop so that we could go to the souvenir shop.

Eventually we got the place we were to have lunch. Another dump. Supposedly it was recreation of a western town. It had some animals and a ring in the centre where the stench from the animals and their residue was obnoxious.

We had a rather ordinary lunch with limited choice sitting on benches at a long table.

After lunch wee were treated to a conjurer with cards. Yawn. then it was outside to wait for others to see some animals - then it started to rain. All some of us wanted to do was get back in the bus and get out of the rain and preferably go to some place interesting - like back to our hotel.

Finally Colonel Klink acceded to our wants and off we went again. Surprise, surprise, we ended up at Hoover Dam which wasn't on the itinerary - so I was quite pleased as I had always wanted to see it. Quite fascinating and something that probably could not be built in this day and age even though we have better means to do it then they had in the3 30's. (The answer is of course, politicians).

We went back to Las Vegas, via Lake Mead arriving there at 5.30pm.

I was worn out, and as I had to get up at 4.30 the next morning, I did just a few things and went to bed.

(The Photoshop programme on my computer has decided to pack it in, so I won't be able to post photos until I return home)