Today I went on a tour out past Hoover Dam and on to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. I was woken at 4:45am with a wakeup call from the tour company. Given that my tour did not depart until 5:50 I was a touch peeved at this, it does not take me that long to get ready for a bus trip to the desert!

Driving out of Las Vegas you could see just how huge this place is, and growing, we drove past numerous new estates being built. But it is the desert, it just is such un appealing place to live.

After leaving Vegas we drove through Boulder City. This town was built to support the thousands of men who came to Nevada in the 1930's to help build the Hoover Dam. It is now a very quite place with one notable feature, it is the home of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. We drove past, did not see them only the top of a tennis court fence.

After Boulder City we went out to the Hoover Dam. Every car/bus/truck - basically anything that crosses the dam has to be searched by homeland security since 911. Basically they think terrorists will try and blow up the dam.

The dam is huge and very impressive. However, Lake Meade is suffering from 15 years of drought so there is not a lot of water. In the photos you can see the white line where the water used to sit.

From Hoover Dam we headed out to the Canyon. It was a long, hot, dusty, bumpy ride through desert and a forest of Joshua Trees (yes, like the U2 album).

I went on a helicopter ride down into the Canyon and for a cruise along the Colorado river. It was great, the photos just do not do justice to how huge it is. The helicopter ride was awesome, you are flying over desert and then all of a sudden the ground drops away from underneath you with the canyon and you zoom down. You feel like you are so close to the rock face you could reach out and touch it. It was not as red as I expected, was much more brown and sandy. There were not many cactus either.

Words really can't describe, it was well worth the trip.