The last couple of days had been really fun partying it up in Vegas for Stace's 30th, but there's something else we wanted to come to Vegas for and see while we were here, something I've dreamed of seeing for a long time, and something that would really change up our experiences so far. Barely a couple of hours from Vegas was arguably the most amazing scenery the world has to offer in the Grand Canyon, and today, we were going to see it! I woke up this morning in what I would call (clearly, I'm writing the blog) an excited, but trepidatious mood. Even with the trepidation, it's a much better feeling than hangover. I was excited because obviously we were going to see the Grand Canton, but also really nervous because we were going to drive there ourselves. We'd toyed for weeks about how we were going to see it; there are plenty of tours from Vegas to the west part of the canyon, but we wanted to make sure we had as long as we wanted out there and felt that some of the tours looked like they'd be rushed. We even toyed with getting a helicopter out there to give us more time but that was just going to be too expensive, notwithstanding that it would've been fun. And totally befitting of our class. In the end we settled with driving. Not only would we have our own time to do it, but I must admit I was sort've excited to get out on the open road, with the freedom our own car entails, for a bit of a classic American road trip. I was just really self-conscience and nervous about it, given it was a different country with some different rules. Oh and the little thing of driving on the left side of the car and the right side of the road. Oh geez. We were up much earlier than yesterday and down in the hotel just after 8am, at the Avis hire car desk. Stace went off to get some fruit for breaky while I booked the car. Typically, I arranged things last minute, so we hadn't booked anything. Unfortunately, they were out of small cars, which is all we would've needed, and only had a convertible Mustang left. Did I actually just say unfortunately? I take that back! By the time Stace got back, I'd spent a couple of hundred bucks more than we were going to, which she probably wasn't impressed by, but I was excited when we got to the car and immediately thought it was money well spent. It wasn't just a hire car anymore, but a true American experience. With sheer concentration on the approach to the car, I managed to go to the correct side of it first time. That is actually cause for a mini celebration; I can't tell you the amount of times I've gone to get in the driver's door of cars where it's opposite. We settled into the car, which was smallish but pretty sporty, and I got the sat nav (satellite navigation Mum and Dad) ready and meticulously adjusted the mirrors, steering wheel and seat so I was as comfortable in the car as I could be. I was nervous. Finally I was ready to go. I started the car and did a couple of laps of the hotel parking lot to gain a little bit of familiarity with it. On my first turn, I overcompensated so much to ensure I stayed on the right side of the road Stace thought I was going to hit something. I wasn't, but I was hugging the right. When I was comfortable enough, I headed down the car park down-ramp and onto the real road. I was unleashed. In the end, it wasn't all as daunting as I'd panicked that it would be. It did take concentration, but the sat nav made the directions really easy and gave me plenty of time to get in the appropriate lanes, and it's actually much easier to know the correct side of the road when you're in a car flowing with the traffic, than when you're a pedestrian. The hardest thing was knowing my positioning of the car in the traffic lane, as it is really different driving on the left side of the car. But even that wasn't too bad, and in very little time we were on the freeway, out of the city and into the desert. Whoo! After about 40 minutes we passed through a town called Boulder, which was a pretty appropriate name for the town as there were lots of rocks around. Heading over a rise as we left the town, we saw a beautiful massive expanse of blue water, which looked like an oasis surrounded by the desert around it and cliffs behind it. The body of water was Lake Mead, and after another 10 or so minutes of driving we successfully reached the wall holding that water in, and our first stop for the day, the famous Hoover Dam. On the first glimpse of it, it is just awe inspiring. It's huge; a gigantic concrete wall curving around and extending between two giant cliffs either side ifs valley, holding back a huge volume of water. It's incredible. That humans could build this about 80 years ago is amazing. But just as incredible is the massive bridge even further up the valley, linking the freeway to both sides of the cliff. It's hard to imagine that prior to this being built a few years ago, all vehicles had to go over the dam wall to cross the valley. In typical American style, they are super impressed themselves by what they built, and celebrate it at the dam. On this occasion it's easy to understand why, because the Hoover Dam played a massive role in being able to develop the whole west coast of the States by supplying water for irrigation and development. Looking at the dam, it's pretty easy to see how important it is, because in the drought times the western coast was experiencing, it was holding a lot of water. Yet you could also see just how low the water had fallen in the dam by the surrounding marks on the landscape; it's about 50 metres below full, and water hasn't flowed over the spillway in my lifetime. We went for a walk over the dam wall, took some photos and marvelled at its size, before deciding to move on. We got back in the car and decided to take the old highway route over the dam to reconnect to the main road. Bad decision because they closed off the old road a bit after the dam, so we had to turn around. At least we drove over the wall. Twice. The Colorado River below the valley marks the state border between Nevada and Arizona, so in crossing over the bridge we also crossed into Arizona; the home of the Grand Canyon. The hilly and rocky landscape soon gave way to a much flatter expanse, but still with spectacular cliffs at different places. The ground was covered in Joshua Trees, a shrub like tree growing out of the red desert dirt. The whole scene was eerily beautiful. We stopped at a couple of vantage points to gaze over the landscape and get some photos, before continuing our way down the highway, slowly getting closer to the Grand Canyon. I say slowly for a couple of reasons. 1: because all distances are in miles, which are stupid. They are longer than kilometres, so dot tick down as quick and make you feel like you're going slower. And 2: because I actually stuck to the speed limit. Like not one single other person. Stace wouldn't have known any of this, because she was asleep. Honestly, she sleeps more than my grandmother! (Not that it matters, I like that she's comfortable enough to have a sleep) After about another hour and a half of driving, we finally reached the Grand Canyon West car park. The whole drive was absolutely spectacular, with increasingly mountainous desert landscape as we neared our destination. WE EVEN SAW A REAL TUMBLEWEED BLOWING IN THE WIND. Up till that point, that could've been the highlight of the trip for me. But we hadn't seen anything yet. Grand Canyon West isn't actually within the Grand Canyon National Park, as this section of it is owned by the traditional landowners of the area. Around 30 years ago they decided to open it up for tourism, and they run the whole thing. Because if this, there's an admission fee to get in and you can go to the stops they drop you off at, but there's no bushwalking or anything like that, unlike what you'd likely find within the national park. We did toy with going to Grand Canyon South Rim, but it's another couple of hundred miles further away and was just too far for us to go in a day trip. Next time! Either way, it didn't matter. With a few hundred miles of canyon that make up the Grand Canyon, we were never going to see it all, and the one we chose was hardly going to disappoint. And it didn't. We got our tickets and jumped on the bus, which cycles between 3 stops; 2 at different viewpoints of the canyon, and 1 at a tacky western ranch, which was first. Needless to say, we didn't get off there, but continued to the first viewpoint. In the car this morning and even more in the bus, the canyons and cliffs that dot the landscape were amazing. But they had nothing on what we were about to see. Over a rise, there was the Grand Canyon, without a doubt the most amazing natural landscape I have ever seen. I can't even begin to describe it; I just feel that any words won't justify it. What I can describe is the actions of some excited Asian tourists on the bus upon seeing it. I'll paint a picture; in about 100 metres we were about to get off the bus and be able to walk to the edge of the canyon unobstructed. Heck, it was so unobstructed you could just walk off the edge of you felt so inclined. So why they felt the need to clamber all to one side of the bus to take photos over people, through a filthy window, is beyond me. But they did. Not content with that, people were passing cameras to other people on the other side of the bus so they could get them to take dirty window canyon shots. Stace and I were smarter; we rode out the last 100 metres, got off, and took photos directly of the canyon. But back to the Grand Canyon. It's scale and extent were extraordinary, just breathtakingly, spine-tingly and goosebumps generating beautiful. And all that is just a complete understatement. I feel hopelessly inadequate in describing its beauty; it's like nature's version of Stacey. Whatever you do, just go there. Lunch was included in our admission, and both Stace and I were getting hungry so we decided to grab our lunch at this stop. The sandwich was good, though you could really taste the sweetness of the bread (Americans actually put sugar in their bread (no wonder they're fat)), and I had my second piece of fruit for the entire trip, an orange. After lunch, we headed into the viewing platform, which is a glass horse shoe shaped walkway extending out over the canyon. We had to cover our shoes with socks to avoid scratching the glass (we looked pretty cool), and weren't allowed cameras, which sucked a little bit and I think was more a ploy to make you buy their photos instead of a safety precaution, but that experience was pretty awesome as well. It's freaky being able to see the canyon floor thousands of feet below your feet. A little too freaky for Stace, who wanted to stick to the steel parts. Like the tourists we are, we decide to get the photographers to take pictures for us, as it was a good way to get some together. Once that was done, we made our way inside and, of course, purchased the photos. But we know they'll be spectacular. We had a quick look at the traditional Native Indian displays they'd set up here, which were tacky and fake, and then caught the bus on to the next viewpoint. Once again we were greeted with the most amazing views I've ever seen. You could see the full extent of this part of the canyon even more from here, as well as the Colorado River snaking through the bottom thousand of feet below. It was just spectacular - I really don't know how else to describe it. Again, just go there. We walked around this viewpoint for about 45 minutes, climbing up a little hill to get the most amazing perspective of the Grand Canyon surrounding us, before calling it a day - we'd had a really good amount of time to take it all in and enjoy the amazing views, and with a long drive ahead of us, we were ready to get going. We jumped on the bus back to the visitor centre, located our car and headed off. We eventually did stop at the tacky western ranch, which was outside of the park, and it was indeed tacky. It was made to look all old but was brand new, and just looked so much like a setup to bleed more money out of tourists. It really didn't belong, and not did we - we stayed 5 minutes. It was about 5pm when we left there, and with the sting of the blistering sun now gone, we worked out how to open the roof of the Mustang, and cruised back to Vegas with the wind blowing through our hair. And still Stace slept. She could sleep through anything. Cruising down an American highway in a convertible Mustang, after seeing the most amazing scenery in my life, was a pretty decent way to holiday. I was loving it. We hit the outskirts of Vegas at about 7pm, and simultaneously proving to myself that I'm hopeless at setting the sat nav (it was just taking me to the city centre, not the hotel), but amazing with directions, I ignored the sat nav's advice and took my own directions back to the strip, and promptly found my way back. In between that, I filled up the car up, which was more complicated. In America, you can't pump fuel without prepaying, but I had no idea how much I needed. I went inside to discuss with the attendant and he let me know that he can preauthorise an amount over what I need, then that is automatically refunded. Or I could pay an amount in cash, and if I didn't get to that amount, I could go back into the counter to collect my change. I get it, it makes sense in that nobody can steal fuel then, but it's weird! Anyway, I survived that experience and we cruised the last part of our journey back to the hotel, which included a brief length with the roof down, driving along on the famous Vegas strip. That's living! By the time we'd parked the car and made our way back to our room, it was getting close to 8pm, and we were getting very hungry. Or hangry if you're Stace. We quickly freshened up and headed back downstairs to catch a taxi to the Fremont Street Experience for dinner. The Fremont Street Experience is located right up the other end of the strip in one of the older areas of Vegas. Running perpendicular to the strip, it covers a couple of blocks where it's been closed to traffic and has a huge roof, in what has been turned into a massive entertainment space. The roof itself is covered end-to-end with a giant LCD screen, which tonight was glowing purple as a tribute to Prince, who'd died earlier today. There were also Prince songs blasting out along the street. It was a completely different kind of an experience to the strip, but that is not at all the reason we went down there. Oh no, we were there for much 'bigger' reasons than that. When we got there, we saw a zipline that extended along the whole couple of blocks just under the roof. It turns out that this was the zipline that Stace had heard about - not the one that we did - that goes above the Vegas strip. But because Fremont Street is perpendicular to the strip, it doesn't actually go over the strip. Weird marketing really. We walked the length of the Fremont Street Experience, which was packed with increasingly drunk people, right up to the other end and found exactly what we came here for. The Heart Attack Grill. The Heart Attack Grill is an infamous burger joint, now found only in Vegas. They don't try to hide the fact that their food is terrible for you, and in fact they make it as bad as they possibly can. Think fries cooked in pure lard, coke that they import from Mexico for maximum sugar content, unfiltered cigarettes, and milkshakes that they make with buttermilk. But that's nothing on their bypass burgers, made with one pound patties. A single bypass has one patty, a double has 2, and you can keep going up to an octuplet bypass burger. That's 8 patties. Then there's the bacon; 5 slices per patty. So if you had an octuplet bypass burger, you'd have 8 pounds of beef and 40 slices of bacon. Insane. It's all finished off with American cheese, tomato, onion and chilli con carne per layer of meat. Disgustingly awesome. The restaurant is themed to make the most of the fat ********* as it can. The waitresses are dressed as sexy nurses, and when we got there we had to put on hospital gowns as we became the patients. They only accept cash at the restaurant, in case you die before you can pay. But the big one; if you weigh over 350 pounds, you eat there for free. Seriously. This pace is so bad that two people actually have had heart attacks here. Lastly, if you don't finish your meal, you get spanked by your waitress. Sounds pretty fun right? Well we thought it did and that's why we went. We sat down and ordered a couple of beers (which were massive), and Stace ordered a single bypass burger while I ordered the double bypass. While we waited, we saw some massive meals brought out, and some massive spankings served out to people who couldn't finish them. It was hilarious. Across from us, a bloke got what looked to be a massive burger, and I pointed it out to Stace thinking it was a quadruple bypass burger, and thought that he surely couldn't finish it. It wasn't a quadruple bypass burger. It was a double. The same size as I was getting, and the same size I'd have to eat to avoid a spanking. ****. A couple of minutes later our burgers were there. And they were huge. I had no idea how I was going to get my mouth around it, let alone eat the whole thing, but needless to say, I began. For the next 20 minutes I ate. I didn't put the burger down, I just ate. Finally, feeling very full and a little sorry for myself, I did it. Stace too finished her burger, hell bent on avoiding a spanking. We were stuffed. While we managed to avoid a spanking, I don't think the bloke we saw with what looked like the quadruple bypass burger would have. That thing was massive. He got it shortly after we had gotten ours, and had barely made a dent as we left. His **** would've been red raw by the end of the night. Ouch. We rolled out of the restaurant and onto the street. It was starting to get late, and we were so full we were basically disabled, so we decided to jump on the bus next to the restaurant on the strip, which travelled all the way to the other end of the strip where we were staying. The bus was a slow ride, but it was good to travel along the length of the strip at night, with all the lights lit up along it. By the time the bus pulled up at Excalibur, which is where we decided to get off, we could walk again. Our intention was to walk through Excalibur back to our hotel, in an attempt to at least walk some of our food off. That was our intention, but this is Vegas. We ended up catching up with Jenna and Leigh on the casino floor at Excalibur, and yet again proceeded to get drunk. Stace went and played the pokies with Jenna, and I hit the tables with Leigh, losing $50 as quickly as I got it out of my pocket on the roulette table. Leigh did much better, and after a couple of hours, had made a bit of money. We caught back up wit the girls, had a few more drinks, and all of a sudden it was 1am and we were drunk. Again. Completely stuffed, a little drunk and still very full, Stace and I says goodnight to Jenna and Leigh, and headed back to our hotel. Another day done, and even though we escaped Vegas for the most part, it still got us in the end.