Sunday - Up early today for my trip to the "Hoover Dam", "Joshua Tree National Park" and "The Grand Canyon"!! Pick up was at 7.45am at the hostel. The group set off (Geoffrey- the driver, Me, Andy, Emma, Selpjine, Richard, Pete and 7 others)firstly for the "Hoover Dam". It was 30miles away from 'Las Vegas' through desert, intresting rock formations and very hot conditions. It is 42C here!! When we reached the amazingly huge "Hoover Dam" we had 30mins to walk across the dam. When you cross over the dam you change time zones and states (Nevada to Arizona). It was huge and solid looking sight (thats good with it being a dam and all) and made from white stone. "lake mead" leads into it with its clear green water. From the "Hoover Dam" we drove through the "Joshua Tree National Park", it was really interesting to see the change in scenery. the cactus style trees were everywhere, such funny shapes. When you looked up close at the leaves of the trees they had very sharp teeth running around the edge. The "Joshua tree" was made famous by U2 (the album cover features one) but in reality they serve no purpose whatsoever. Then we set off for the most exciting part of the trip, "The Grand Canyon". It took a further 1h30 to get to it from the National Park. As we drove towards it the red and yellow deeply coloured rocks followed us, and the west rim of the Canyon became visible. we had to take a very bumpy, rocky road up to the entrance to the "West Rim Grand Canyon Parkland". We just visited the west rim as the Canyon is more than 200 miles in length and that is not possible to do in a day! We waited for the "Hualapai Indian" bus (they own the land that the Canyon is on) that was to take us to some of the lookouts over the Canyon itself. Our first stop was "Eagle Point" and we got our first real sight of the Canyon. WOW it was superb to finally see it, what a spectacular view. It was named so due to the rock formation (an eagle) at the site. Also at this point were "Century" plants used in tequila. The Canyon went for miles with its sedimentary rock colours and shapes. the "Colorado river" runs through the whole area but when you look down at it from above it is so small (the Canyon is a fair few miles deep). Next up was "Guarno Point", this was where they used to mine in the Canyon as Guarno (bat poo) was very useful in the make-up manufacture in the 40s and 50s. It was also the site of our BBQ lunch, we had such stunning views over the "Grand Canyon" as we ate. The final view point in the afternoon was our guides choice. We had a small trek to a tiny ledge over the "Grand Canyon" itself, it was well scarey and high! But the view was spectacular. The scale is incredible, such a facinating sight. We left the "Grand Canyon" and it took us 3h to get out of the parkland due to a freak tropical storm (yes, I know in the desert) that washed away the roads. So we ended up having to drive through a river bed, sometimes stopping to pick up very large rocks in the way, all the way back to the main road. What an adventure!