Prior to leaving for Vegas, I purchased tickets for us to take a Gray Line tour of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Mike was very iffy about going so I was nervous it was a big waste of money. Thankfully, it turned out to be a fun day.
A bus picked us up from our hotel at 6:30am and took us to the Gray Line headquarters off the Strip. From there, we were signed in, asked to select our choices for our boxed lunches and loaded up on buses to head to the Grand Canyon.
Waiting on the bus…
…sitting next to the entrance to UNLV…
…ready to get the show on the road.
The first stop on our tour was at an observation point over the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam was only an hour from Vegas and turned out to be far more interesting than I had previously expected. Next time we go to Vegas, we’d be very likely to go back for a tour of the Dam.
Approaching the dam. I only have one picture of this side as I didn’t realize that we wouldn’t see it again and that I was only going to have this opportunity to get a shot.
Starting over the bridge…still in Nevada:
Crossing over into Arizona:
Nevada is in the Pacific time zone and Arizona is in the Mountain time zone. As a result, Arizona is normally an hour behind Nevada. Most of Arizona does not observe daylight savings time therefore during the summer months, Arizona time would be the same as Nevada time. Cool, huh? 🙂
New bridge and highway they’re building:
After 9/11, the government shut down all access to the road that crosses over the Hoover Dam. As time went by and security measures were put into place, the road was eventually opened to passenger vehicle traffic as well as tour buses with empty under-vehicle storage space (tour buses like we were on).
Before driving on the Dam, we were routed through a security checkpoint. At that point, Federal agents checked the storage area of the bus while another agent boarded the bus to give us the evil eye. Didn’t really phase Mike or I as we’ve been through worse crossing into Canada. 🙂
As a result of the new restrictions, all tractor trailer traffic and commercial vehicles containing bags in the storage compartments are having to be re-routed to another highway. This highway results in traffic having to go an hour out of the way to by-pass Hoover Dam. As you can imagine, this is a major inconvenience. As a result, a new highway and bridge are being built.
The driver told us this bridge is going to have more concrete reinforcements than any bridge in the world. It’s pretty impressive!
At the observation point!
It was very impressive…much more impressive than the pictures convey.
Mike took video:
I took a self-portrait…
(Lots of squinty self-portraits as you can’t escape the sun in Vegas!)
…then a self-portrait of both of us before we got back on the bus.
One last parting shot….
…and the next stop is the GRAND CANYON!!!!!