Not Another Dam Road Trip

Despite promising myself not to turn this into a travel-blog, sometimes when we go somewhere, I think oh I’ve just got to share this…..

The teenager had a Monday off school which meant we had an extra long weekend.  What better way to spend it than a road trip.  I got out my map; did a route planner, and worked out that if we left Pasadena straight from school on the Friday afternoon, stopped over night to visit the Hoover Dam, then drove on again the next day we would be at the Grand Canyon for Saturday sunset.

We could then meander back at our leisure and even find time to drive back through the Joshua Tree National Park.  This would then cross off all our remaining  “must-see’s” in one go. 

Our trip started well. We hit the Friday afternoon traffic  but once beyond the LA commuter belt – which stretches for about 30-40 miles east – the road cleared.  Spoilt by the luxury of 5 star Marriot Rewards the teenager was slightly horrified to learn that we would be spending our first night at the comparatively small 1930’s Boulder Dam Hotel in Boulder City.  Built to cater for visiting government officials and dignitaries during the construction of the Dam, the hotel had been lovingly preserved with its original 1930’s name, furniture and at first glance, what looked like the original 1930's staff  until we realised  a few creepy period dressed mannequins had just been strategically placed around the corridors.  

We rose at the crack of dawn and set off for the Dam.  Impressive? Just a tad.  We purchased our tickets for the whole Dam Tour and yes, in an hour’s walkabout you’d been amazed at how many times the guide, and all the visitors, could fit the word dam into a sentence. It was dam good fun.

After following our dam guide up and down the tunnels that run inside the dam and taking a tour of the power plant (which was actually a lot more interesting than it sounds) we then made our way up to the heady heights of the new Colorado River Bridge which gave spectacular views of the whole Dam landscape (it’s actually very hard not to use the word dam when you think about it).

Then we set off for the Grand Canyon.

It’s 240 miles from the Hoover Dam to the Grand Canyon National Park and that’s basically 240 miles of straight road with little sign of civilization. We drove through desserts, over plains and across plateaus.  We drove through Indian reservation country - shanty towns of trailer homes on barren, isolated pockets of land with just a few cactus for company.

As for the Grand Canyon itself, well of course that lived up to all its expectations. The most obvious word to describe it would be “awesome” but awesome is a word that get’s a bit  of over mis-use out here.  I tell someone we’re British, that’s awesome, we regularly visit restaurants where the staff describe  the house special as totally awesome - in fact the hostess at one eatery we visited recently in Pasadena told us her onion rings were so awesome they were going to change our life! (Tasty yes, life changing no!)

A red rock canyon millions of years old, 10 miles wide, one mile deep and 270 miles long, as spectacular as an onion ring?  Probably just slightly more so.  Absolutely  breathtaking.  And ticked off the list too.