Tour of Grand Canyon from Las Vegas

Sunday, April 28 2013

We stayed in Vegas just for the purpose of going on this tour.  This tour ended up being a huge waste of money and time.  As we had a rental car it would have been so much quicker, cheaper etc etc to bypass Vegas totally and go straight to the Hoover Dam and then the Grand Canyon.

But anyway, we did, so here are the photos to match etc.  We got picked up from the motel at 6:15am in the morning and taken to a bus depot to then catch another bus out to the Grand Canyon.  The bus stopped for lunch at Williams after driving for about 4 hours!!  We got to the National Park where Neil, the kids and I were picked up for the bike ride part of the tour.  Though we realised we could have hired the bikes ourselves, this part was awesome.....  Anywho, we had a private guide which was cool.  Her name was Lorraina and she was from Peru.  We cycled for about an hour and a half along the South Rim.  We were gobsmacked how enormous the Canyon was.  After the bike ride we met back up with the bus, which of course then took another 4 hours to get back to Vegas.  Yep EIGHT hours on a bus for a one and a half hour bike ride.

 

 

 

Our guide Lorraina from Peru

Las Vegas, Nevada

After Yosemite National Park we headed to Las Vegas.  Neil and I were not particularly interested in visiting Las Vegas but we had found a bicycle tour of the Grand Canyon that we thought we really wanted to do and this tour picked up from Vegas.  More on this tour in the next post.

But Las Vegas....  Stayed two nights at The Orleans.  Very nice motel/casino I guess.  We were so nonplussed with Vegas we didn't even venture out at night!

Apparently this pose is reference to an Xbox game!

 

 

 

Lots of pictures of fire trucks over the course of our travels :)

Yosemite National Park, California

Sure, we loved Disneyland and Seaworld.  But sorry, Disneyland was nothing compared to Yosemite.  As it's been so long since I started this post in draft I can now add that all the National Parks were beautiful.  We all took countless more photo's at our first NP than we had at Disneyland etc. We camped for two nights here in Yosemite.  Was supposed to be three nights but when we were told that Las Vegas would be at least a nine hour drive we decided to leave a day early.  We believe the temperature got down to 3 degrees on both nights.  We were all cold the first night but rugged up more for the second night.  I'm a bit freaked how we thought it was so cold when we have colder temperatures coming :)

Don't forget to click on each picture for a bigger version.

Saw the Hollywood sign from a distance on the way out of Los Angeles.

 

You can see the bear proof box in the bottom right hand corner.  We had to put everything in this.

Will slowly add more posts over the next week.  If you are a friend on facebook I plan to create albums there with more pictures of each place we visit, if you wanted to check there also.

Love
Janine

Seaworld

Caught a bus to Seaworld San Diego on Monday.  Absolutely loved it.  Enjoyed Seaworld way more than Universal Studios.  In case some of you don't know, I believe if you click on each picture it will open a bigger version.

 Cheers
Janine

Universal Studios

After picking up our hire car...

we went shopping for all our camping gear.  Thankfully was able to get all that we needed.

On Sunday we drove ourselves to Universal Studios :)

Again, didn't take many photo's at Universal.  Tried to take photo's on the studio tour but not many of them look any good because you are taking them from a open bus.  If you are a fan of Desperate Housewives I guess you would think it was cool to see the street where they film most of the series.

Back soon with photo's from Seaworld, where I took lots more photo's.

Cheers
Janine

Dreams Really Can Come True

Just finished our three days at 'The Happiest Place on Earth'.  Words are not enough to describe how wonderful Disneyland is.  I lost count how many times we all said 'wow'.  We took nowhere near as many photo's as I thought we would.  In one sense this is sad but... having a camera in front of your face means you miss out on actually seeing.

Dream big, make sacrifices and your dreams can really come true.

In love with my family and totally blessed.

Janine