GRAND CANYON : DAY 16

Grand Canyon

Friday, May 10, 2014.... wake up call was at 4 am and departure time from the hotel was 5.15 am.
Today's visit was Grand Canyon in Arizona, a distance of almost 400 miles from Las Vegas. People were ready in the bus and bus left the hotel premises by 5.30am
Journey was long, with stop for breakfast and we reached Grand Canyon National Park by 10.30am The highways are monotonous and boring except for some places, it was picturesque. 

Layers formed

The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in the United States in the state of Arizona. It is contained within and managed by Grand Canyon National Park.

Canyon at the background

The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,000 feet or 1,800 meters). Nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock.

The Grand Canyon is a big fissure in the Colorado Plateau that exposes uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata, and is also one of the 19 distinct physiographic sections of the Colorado Plateau province.

Colorado river

We spent about an hour walking along the rim the canyon, enjoying the beauty of nature, clicking photos. The call back to bus was 12.00 noon and we had hurry back to the bus to joing along with other tourists.
The next stop wa at HOOVER DAM, an engineering marvel.

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam spans the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizona and Nevada, some 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas Nevada. Constructed in the 1930s, the concrete arch-gravity structure was intended to prevent flooding as well as provide much-needed irrigation and hydroelectric power to arid regions of states like California and Arizona.

Dam at the background

It was originally known as Boulder Dam, but was renamed in 1947 in honor of Herbert Hoover, who as U.S. secretary of commerce and the 31st U.S. president proved instrumental in getting the dam built. At 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long, Hoover Dam was one of the largest man-made structures in the world at the time of its construction, and one of the world’s largest producers of hydroelectric power.
After seeing the place, we were heading back to Vegas and reached by 5 pm. Evening walked around the hotel, ate some food went to bed early.
Written Thursday, 29th May 2014 at Bengaluru