Our trip to the Grand Canyon was a day-long bus tour we took starting out in Vegas. Since we were planning on a 4-day-vacation only, we decided that one day in the Canyon might be enough! WORST JUDGEMENT EVER! If I were to choose between the Canyon and Vegas, I would have scooped more time into the nature part of our trip and wouldn’t even have bothered about staying in Sin City for too much longer. Well, I guess now I know for the next time.
I cannot express in words how great the Big Canyon really is. I hope my pictures can speak for themselves. Unfortunately they were taken with a point-and-shoot camera only. For your trip down there I would recommend taking a more professional equipment with you (if you are about as picture-crazy as I am). The scenery is even worth renting a camera kit for this occasion.
Our day started quite early with a shuttle picking us up from the Bally’s at 6AM. Then we were driven to the downtown part of Vegas and hustled inside our real tour bus. All together it took our group a rough 4 and a half hours of driving time to arrive at our first destination (the South Rim). The tour guide/bus driver made 3 stops along the way: First McDonalds (of course, quality food), then a resort in the middle of nowhere, where we could gulp down our lunch (included in the tour package). After this came a rest stop, just for the fun of it (and the chance to buy some authentic Indian jewelry at an amateur Navajo stand along the road).
Jose, our tour guide, was a fun guy, with a great sense of humor. He dropped us off at two locations where we had about an hour each to enjoy the scenery and walk around. This sums up to ca. 2 hours of panorama; an additional hour was spent inside a tourist attraction store – completely overpriced, naturally. But you were able to purchase some colored rocks for 5 bucks a piece – isn’t that a “great” deal?!
On our way back to Vegas we were able to see the completed bridge over the Hoover Dam. This was an awesome view, too, but it was too dark to bother about taking a picture. By the way, it completely resembled the scene in the movie Fools Rush In back in 1997.
German-American Abroad 
You are so brave to stand so close to the edges! Your photos are beautiful! It sounds like you had a really fantastic time!
[…] it a necessity to write me lengthy e-mails anymore. After all, they’ve seen the picture album of me touring the Grand Canyon with my former roommate and read my status update on how I had moved for the quazillionst amount of […]