Nelson Family Blog: Las Vegas 2024 Day 2- The Grand Canyon

The second day in Vegas was a road trip to the Grand Canyon. John booked a tour bus for us to see the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. The bus came and picked us up right at our hotel at 6:45 am. John and I stopped to get a coffee and then met the bus to leave. We had an old coach bus, and John barely fit in the seat. Our host was a comedian, so he talked a lot about the history of Vegas-and tried to keep things light and funny on the bus.

Our first stop was at the outdoor Welcome to Vegas sign. It was smaller than I thought it would be, and a little underwhelming, but it was fun to get some selfies by it. Then we headed to "The Omlet House" which was basically like a local Perkins. They called in our breakfast orders, so when we got there the food was pretty much ready. Our food was pretty good, and I got some banana bread for the road, and we were off again.

The next stop was the Hoover Dam. It was pretty cool to see. It's crazy how big it is, and how much cement it took to build the Hoover Dam. We hiked up to the pedestrian bridge, took some pictures, looked at it for a while, and then headed back to the bus. I'm glad I got to see it, but I didn't need to stay any longer than we did.

Next up, we made the trek to the Grand Canyon. It took a couple hours to get there, and it was a pretty boring drive. Once we were there though, it was amazing. Our first stop was Eagle Pointe. This was the area that had the overlook bridge made out of glass. So, basically you could walk out on this bridge hanging over the Grand Canyon, and stare straight down. I thought it was awesome. And beautiful. And breathtaking. It was crazy to look down and see birds flying below you. It was hard to comprehend how high up in the air we really were. We were not allowed to bring any belongings out of the bridge, so we had to lock everything up in a locker before we went out, so I couldn't get any pictures from up there. But, it was amazing.

After we were done on the bridge, we walked around to the other lookout points and took all kinds of picture and selfies. Eagle Pointe is named because the rocks look like an Eagle. So, we took all kinds of pictures of that and admired the view for a while.

Eventually, we saw all we needed to see, and we headed to the next point. The next area was called Guano Point. This was really named after bat poop. The story is that in the 1930s, two men floating down the Colorado River looked up and saw a large cave with all kind of guano in it. Guano was a popular ingredient back then in fertilizer, dynamite, and some makeup. So, they did what any normal person would do, and they decided to mine bat poop out of a cave. So, they strung a cable across the grand canyon, set up shop, and started mining. By the 1950s, most of the poop was mined, and then a U.S. Air Force pilot accidentally hit the cable and disabled the whole process. After a lawsuit was settled, the mining company never opened up again, but the mining equipment still sits up on that point.

Guano point does have absolutely stunning views of the Grand Canyon. We ate lunch up there, and then walked around and explored. All of this land is on tribal land, so there isn't much for regulations or anything, so there are pretty much just drop offs everywhere around the canyon. It didn't worry me too much, but if our kids would have been there, I would have been having a stroke.

We walked around, took a lot of pictures, and just took in the sights. It really was awe-inspiring how big and beautiful the Grand Canyon really is. We did fit in a little souvenir shopping, and got ourselves a little crystal cactus that says Grand Canyon on it, and we got Emma an authentic dream catcher. Then, we headed to the bus to go back to Vegas. It was a long drive back, with some napping involved, and then we were back to our hotel.

After going to our hotel room to freshen up, we decided to do some more exploring. We walked the Vegas Strip again. We went to Cesar's Palace, the Mirage, and Venetian and walked through the lobbies and casinos. We also found a place where we could see the Sphere from a ways away and we watched that for a while. Then, we were hungry and ate supper at the Crack Shack. It was really good, and hit the spot. And we even found an Ube Shake there, and it really slapped.

We spent some more time strolling around and checking out the sights, but then we started losing steam. It had been a long day after all. So, we headed back to our hotel and called it a night.