Hoover Dam & Grand Canyon 8,9 Nov

Sun 8
We decided as we left the campsite that, in fact, we didn't want to go back down The Strip and would prefer to spend our time elsewhere. So we whizzed out of town the 30 miles or so to The Hoover Dam. We went through a very superficial search, basically an officer looked through the door of our van and made us unlock 1 of the 4 outside lockers. If we had wanted to bring a bomb it would be the simplest thing - if that is what they were looking for. There is a huge construction project going on to build a by-pass to the dam and an incredible arch is already in place above the dam. We drove across the dam and then parked above it and walked back down to look at the amazing views and admire the incredible feat of construction. Of course, Celso and Tristan were trying to find the places where some of the Transformers film was shot, (I'm afraid I couldn't help them in the slightest!). It was very crowded with everybody out enjoying the sun so we walked out past the old visitor centre to try and find a quieter spot and there we were accosted by a type of tiny ground squirrel a bit like a chipmunk. As it runs about in the sun it curls its tail up over it back, the underside is white and so faces up to the sun and acts as some sort of sunshade. I was eating some crisps which one jumped up and I had to have a tug of war with. They are obviously very used to people as they just came running up but they were so fast we took about 30 photos to get just a few decent ones. SO cute!
The rest of our day was spent driving the 200 or so miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We drove through desert and as the road slowly rose up it became more and more covered in plants, then bushes, then small round trees and finally big trees; it was nice to see them again! We seemed to spend the whole journey chasing or being chased by a huge lorry, we ended up waving and making signals to each other for about the last 50 miles and it passed the time as we looked out for him behind or tried to catch up with him.

Mon 9
Up at 5am we were at the edge of the Grand Canyon by 5:45 to see the sun rise. We were the first there but soon after 7am there were crowds, we were glad to have had the views to ourselves for over an hour. First an orange glow appeared over the rocks, and then, as the band of light got larger, it turned yellow, then green and finally blue. The colours in the canyon are amazing with stripes of red, pink, maroon, yellow, cream and brown. Th shadows played over the jagged landscape as the sun rose higher and higher. We took loads of photos and have left most of them to see later on the big screen. You can walk right along the rim with very little between you and an enormous drop. Of course, I was very nervous but Celso and Tristan did there mountain goat bit with me grabbing on to Tristan's shirt all the time (much to his annoyance). However, I did feel justified in my caution later when we went to the visitor centre and we found on display a book about all the fatalities at the canyon, mainly from people falling off the edge.
We drove East along the rim stopping to gawp some more at all that the Canyon had to offer and then all of a sudden the road turned south and we had to say goodbye. We passed through Navajo Tribal Lands with loads of native stalls set up on the edge of the road selling pottery and jewelery. Smaller canyons dotted the very flat landscape until everything just seemed to flatten out and fade away.
Soon we turned off the main road to take a detour through two National Monuments. The first was Wupatki which is the site of some 800 year old Anasazi ruins in at least 8 different pueblos scattered across the area. These people lived here during a time with a very similar climate to today, the land was arid and covered in volcanic pumice like rocks and red sedimentary plates of rock, that looked like paving slabs, so it is hard to believe that they cultivated the land. The buildings were made from the two types of rock perfectly slotted together with a mud, water and mystery ingredient mortar (they are still trying to work out what the 3rd ingredient was, or how it was made, though they have made a synthetic version to enable them to stabalise some of the structures). No one knows why the sites were abandoned and as yet no proper excavations have taken place, only surface finds of pottery and tools have been catalogued.
Next we drove on to Sunset Crater Volcano surrounded by the desert landscape with the dark grey of ash between the scrubby low shrubs, we drove past a small lava field with its jagged grey rocks just like in Craters of Moon National Park; then past the perfect cone of the volcano with barren grey ash sides.
We reached Flagstaff and found a campsite and then after dark we drove to the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered and evidence that the Universe was expanding (red shift) was first recorded. We used the very same telescope that discovered Pluto to view Jupiter which is hugely bright in the sky at the moment. We could see 4 of its moons and the swirling brown stripey clouds on its surface - incredible. Through two smaller telescopes we also viewed a group of young stars called 'the owl' and a globular cluster of stars. Great exhibits and a shop kept us occupied for 3/4 of an hour and then a half hour film about anything and everything spacey finished our visit.
I took a photo of a 242kg meteorite that was part of the meteor which fell near Flagstaff about 50,000 years ago (and we are going to go and see the crater tomorrow). The meteor is 92% iron, 8% Nickle with traces of gold, silver, platinum and diamond!