Well the Hoover Dam was on a massive scale and had some nice 1930's architectural embellishments. We took a detour to see it and I think it was worth it. We continued on south along Route 93 until we met Route 66 at Kingman. The Americans' have commercialised Route 66 a little more than I had hoped. A lot of the signs were fancier than they should have been - bright pink backgrounds and brightly coloured text telling you that you are driving along the historic Route 66. Maybe this is something we should do for the M25. The drive itself is nice enough and after doing this section I wouldn't mind doing more at some point. A railway runs parallel for quite a bit of it and we saw numerous freight trains which were far longer than our U.K. freight trains. The towns along the route are all a little run down with old petrol stations and abandoned cafes. I am guessing this is due to modern cars not needing to stop so regularly compared to the cars which would have driven along the road in its hey day.
We then headed north to the Grand Canyon along Route 64 this took a couple of hours which meant that we made it in time to see the sunset over the Grand Canyon. We set ourselves up at Mather Point to see the sunset. The sunset here is spectacular as on the western edge you can see the sunset and then on the eastern side you can see the moon rise. The colours of the canyon edges change as the sun gets lower in the sky from a yellowish hue to a orangish hue at the end. At this time of year it gets cold pretty quickly when the sun goes down so we made our way to our lodge sharpish to warm up! Emma saw a bobcat run past on our way back to the car!
We started our first full day in the park by walking west out of the lodge towards Mojave Point. On the way we stopped at the Kolb Studio, where the photographers The Kolb Brothers worked in the early part of the last century. We made it to Mojave Point and took in some great views of the canyon along the way. We had to get back quickly to the lodge as we had a helicopter tour of the canyon booked as my wedding present from Emma! The helicopter tour was awesome! We swooped over the canyon edges, while it was a good way to get an understanding of the huge scale of the canyon. Once back on the ground we went for a hike down the canyon edge. We walked down the South Kaibab trail, this in total has a 2195m change in elevation from the top. We managed to get to Cedar Ridge, this was the second destination from the top and is at an elevation change of 340m. The distance of the hike was 3 miles and took us around 2 hours. It wasn't too strenuous and if we had more time I think we would have gone lower but time and light were fading fast.
We went and had some very nice dinner in the lodge we were staying in and got ready for our trip the following day to Arches National Park and our visit Monument Valley on the way.
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