Las Vegas & The Grand Canyon

Tracing back about a week now we landed into Vegas, checked in at the Sahara and had a couple of nights enjoying the madness. It's like a huge adult playground full of OTT indulgence....but we loved it! The hotel casinos on the strip are just too huge to comprehend. Ours was one of the medium sized ones and it had 1700 rooms!! All trip our body clocks have got us up early mornings (which, as you know, is good for us!) so we've really made the most of all our days, but in Vegas its really really hot in the daytime (about 40degrees), but its dry heat so completely different from when we were in the humidity of Thailand at similar temperatures. Most people are up and about early evening till late at night but we managed to check out most of the famous casinos during the day and go on the New York New York rollercoaster; then we got dressed up, saw the Bellagio fountains and Chris played some poker that evening.

Excalibur

The Bellagio Fountains

A few of the displays inside the Bellagio conservatory

In Vegas you can visit, Paris, New York, Venice and the Sahara all in a day! This is Paris Las Vegas that has a half size replica of the Eiffel Tower you can go to the top of.

Just after picking up the car the next day, we headed over to the Rio. Every year we watch the World Series of Poker Main Event on YouTube (cos they wait months to air it on uk tv..anyhoo) and coincidentally it turns out that it was/is on while we were in Las Vegas! Its a $10,000 buy-in tournament that lasts for 10 days where all the pros, some celebs (and some lucky amateurs) play for a like a $9m pot. Geeky as we've got following poker, we've come to know and respect some of the big players so it was like a star safari for us. We were there on day 5 and there were 1,000 of the 6,900 entrants still playing - it was spread over a couple of huge rooms but we managed to get up close and watch some cool players.

A couple fo hours down the road we visited the Hoover Dam. It was a good sight to see but the temperature was unreal. It was 42 degrees so just opening the car door and letting the heat hit you was an experience in itself. There was actually a breeze but Chris accurately desrcibed it as like when you open the oven door cos it was the hottest most surreal wind. 4 hours drive later we turned up at the Grand Canyon and wilderness camped for the night. The next day we had a good tour around the south rim and took in the enormity of the place. Here's some pics. Spot Chris in one of them

There's still loads to tell on Monument Valley, Utah and Yellowstone. I'll try update when we get to San Fransisco in a few days.