Vivaaaaaaaaa Las Vegarse!

Well, let me begin by saying this place makes Surfers Paradise look like a Redcliffe retirement home. Never before have I seen such opulence. Every single hotel on the strip here looks like it's been designed by an architect who was high on LSD at the time. Our hotel for example, Excalibur, looks like a medieval castle, has waitresses dressed like buxom wenches, themed poker machines and even a ground level jousting arena. A jousting arena, with horses, knights, kings, wenches, jokers - inside a friggin' hotel. Insane. Oh, and a gigantic casino downstairs, of course.

Regarding the latter - I am down about a hundred bucks or so, but I guess that's the price of being in Vegas. I figure I'll only be here once, so I may as well have fun. I must say Craps is an interesting game - shame it hasn't taken off in Australia.

It hasn't all been fun and gaming though - yesterday I went out on a bus tour to see the Grand Canyon, which also included a helicopter flyover. The canyon itself is indescribable - one moment you're driving through heavy forest and then it just opens up in front of you. The size of it is astonishing. I've included some pictures taken from both the air and on the ground to give you an idea.

The tour also went past the Hoover Dam, which is an astonishing engineering feat in itself. Unfortunately the angle of the road over the dam meant I could only get a photo of the dam from behind, which doesn't really show you the size of it, but just imagine a dam which is about 60 storeys high of solid concrete, with enough concrete to make a highway from Los Angeles to Washington, and you get an idea of the size of it. Interestingly enough they have pretty heavy security around the dam - primarily because a major highway uses the top of the dam wall as a bridge over the Colorado River, and the dam itself is a major target for terrorism. Apart from being America's greatest engineering achievement, 7 states depend on the enormous lake behind it for water.

They're actually building a new road that will pass in front of the dam, including a new arch bridge over the Colorado River gorge, which will make the dam virtually inaccessible. I honestly don't see what the problem is though, as the dam itself is virtually indestructable. Even Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb would have trouble knocking it down. If some raghead detonated a van full of TNT while driving over it, it's odds on they could just sweep him off.

Anyways, it's been an interesting couple of days. Regarding my further travels, I'm not sure how often I'll be blogging - it'll probably be at least a few days between blogs. Mainly because up until now, the hotels I've been staying at have had free internet connections, whereas on the drive from Jackson to New York I'll be primarily depending on my laptop's ability to sniff out an unguarded wireless connection, or failing that, an internet cafe. However, I will blog as often as I can, and I promise plenty of photos - I haven't forgotten my promise to have a photo taken of me, a Confederate flag and a sprint up Little Round Top.

So, without further ado, here are the dam and canyon pictures...

The cylinders sticking up out of the water are the intakes for the hydroelectric power station at the base of the dam. As I said, this doesn't really convey the mammoth size of the dam. It is beyond belief.



All the photos above were taken from the helicopter.


This photo was taken from the southern rim of the Canyon looking over to the north rim. The distance from south to north rim is about 15 miles or so at this point, which gives you an idea of the immense scale of this canyon.