Day 35: Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon
Another city, another Greyhound. So far we’ve spent a lot of time on buses and it’s all gone quite well – so we were due a rough one! We were meant to go from San Diego to Vegas with a bus change in a place called Santa Ana. We got the first bus to Santa Ana and waited for about half an hour, only to be told the second bus wouldn’t be arriving, they told us the best thing to do was catch the next bus back to LA, and then catch a bus from LA to Vegas, so we did.
On the bus to LA I was sitting beside an older guy who looked Mexican (is that ok to say?), anyway he was holding two cowboy hats stacked together in his hand. I spent the journey wondering is he was going to wear them both on his head, stacked on top of each other. Turns out when we got to LA he did. Grant and I both laughed.
We had to wait for about 3 hours in LA for the next bus to Vegas. After we’d been there a few hours I saw two hats again eating some fried chicken, not sure where he was heading to.
Eventually got to the hostel in Vegas at about 1am. We wanted to do a tour to the Grand Canyon the next day as we only had a couple of days in Vegas, asked if we could still book it, we could but it would pick us up at 6am, off to bed it is then!
Picked up outside the hostel just after 6am then dropped of at a coach and away we go to the Grand Canyon, about 5 hours drive to get there. Stopped at the Hover Dam on the way but we stopped at the top of a hill behind the dam, so you couldn’t see the face of it which seemed silly.
Before we got to the Hoover Dam there was a security check point, they have them at all major infastructure sites in the states post 9/11 we were told. The bus driver told us a security guy would come on the bus and just have a look around and he joked that we just shouldn’t look suspicious and we would be fine. An American guy a couple of rows behind said in a normal voice out loud, “if you’ve got a tuban on, you’ll look suspicious”. Only in America.
Got to the South Rim of the Canyon at about 1pm and walked the 3 mile trail along the rim to the Grand Canyon Village. The Canyon is obviously massive and looks fairly epic, where we were it was more than a mile deep it’s so big that you really have nothing to judge the scale of it on. We wandered along the trail and took plenty of photos. There’s no fence or anything along the way, so if you dare you can take pretty ridiculous photos like this… (No-one show my Granny)
At the Grand Canyon Village we had some food and a beer then got back on the bus, another 5/6 hour drive back, eventually we got back to the hostel at about 10pm. We were knackered but had such a short time in Vegas we got changed and headed up the strip. Spent the night wandering around and taking it all in and trying our luck in a few casinos to limited success. Admitted defeat and retired to bed about 3am.
Long lie the next day, then skyped home to Mum and Dad biggest news was that Dad’s got an iPhone. Glad I’m 5000 miles away as he would have made me set it up and teach him to play Angry Birds. In the afternoon we went up the strip again, Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, did some shopping, then picked up the tickets for the evenings entertainment. In Vegas you can walk down the street with an open beer in your hand, which was strange, you can also smoke in the bars and casinos which took us a bit of getting used to!
Back to the hostel and changed into our kilts before turning round and heading back up to the strip. Time for a quick go on the slot machines at Caesars Palace before going to see Rod Stewart. Pretty certain we were the youngest people there. It was an amazing show though, really good fun to watch. Ridiculous amount of references to Celtic all the way through.
Some more gambling then we went to ‘Pure’, the nightclub in Caesars. Ended up staying there quite a while and talking to a whole load of people – the kilts went down very well! Although it did lead to a lot of Americans coming up to you and telling you how they are 1/10th Scottish, or that their Granny once visited Oban and expect us to be amazed or something. After Pure things get a bit hazy, but I’m sure there was more gambling, again with limited success. No idea when we got to bed.
Had to check out by 11am the next day but alarms failed to wake us up. Grant woke up by chance at 10.30am and woke me up. We still had to pack and shower, so it was a bit of a rush. Luckily the hangover hadn’t kicked in yet and we were both still fairly drunk. Quick turnaround and made it to the bus in time, 6 hour Greyhound back to LA. It was a rough journey!
Made it to LA, then back to the hostel we had stayed in before in Santa Monica as it’s fairly close to the Airport. Had some wings at Hooters before bed, seemed a fitting last dinner in the states. Early to bed!
Up in the morning and packed our bags, flight to Auckland at night. Checked out the hotel then spent the day wandering along Santa Monica and Venice Beach. Killed some time in the afternoon at the hostel then headed out to LAX, killed yet more time there before the 10pm flight, 5 weeks to the day since we left the UK!
I enjoyed the states a lot, visited some really great cities I would love to come back to, but it was a tiring and fairly expensive time, although we knew it would be. Favourite city was probably San Francisco, but really enjoyed California as a whole, Grant wants to road trip it in a soft top Mustang one day, who knows. I think we’ll end up saying we want to go back to a lot of places over the next year! Honorable mentions for Boston and Chicago as places we really liked as well, and New York is just New York.
We counted up that we’d spent about 85 hours traveling on buses in the US – I’m looking forward to not having to endure another one for a while!
13 hour flight ahead of me, hope the films are good.
