Grand Canyon Las Vegas
Article by Keith Driscoll
So you have booked your cheap flights to Las Vegas, made sure you have completed the online ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation) to make sure they let you in the United States of America, booked a hotel and rented a car, and now you are wondering what an Earth you will do when you get there!
Well No.1 on the list is obviously the casinos, otherwise why bother going to the World’s gambling capital in the first place? But to be totally blunt with you, once you have seen one casino floor, all the others are pretty much a replica. However it is still worth visiting numerous casinos to view what is on the others floors with places like The Venetian being built similar to Venice including the canals!! Circus Circus is great for kids, and a journey up the Stratosphere gives excellent views of the Las Vegas valley, including the beautiful Red Rock Canyon to the West, well worth a visit if you have rented a car.
Other hotels worth a peak are Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay, while those at the posh end, such as MGM, Bellagio, etc are nothing special from a visitor’s point of view.
One place though many people think of is the Grand Canyon Las Vegas. However many visitors from around the world fail to realise the actual size of the USA, as Las Vegas is in Nevada, while the majority of the Grand Canyon is situated in Arizona. If you look at a map it appears only a couple of centimetres away, no problem travelling to it then eh? Wrong. First of all you have to cross the Hoover Dam into Arizona, and if you are going from midday onwards this can take you a while to get through due to high traffic loads (unless the new road has opened since I wrote this!).
From the dam you have to drive South some way down Highway 93, which isn’t such a bad journey but will have plenty of roadwork’s till around 2011.
Unlike the hotel car parks in Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon is pretty well sign posted, and it is a left turn onto Highway 145, towards the Skywalk. Whatever you do, don’t miss the turnoff; it is miles before the next one. The further along this road you go, the more rugged the terrain, with the road reaching over 5000 feet in places, additional oxygen is not required though! The further along this road you go the more you realise that Las Vegas seems another world away.
A lot of the journey is across an Indian Reservation, and the final leg involves driving on an unpaved road, although they have promised to build a nice smooth one for the tourists who don’t like the rugged natural feel of the desert. Although car hire companies specify you are not allowed to drive off-road, the roads to the Grand Canyon are official roads even if they may appear off-road to some people.
The total travelling distance from The Strip is about 120 miles, and can take anywhere between 3.4-4 hours to complete, so you are looking at a full day, so start out early. Just a separate note, this is the desert, take plenty of water, energy food, and ensure you have a full tank of fuel, tourists have died in the Nevada, Arizona and Californian deserts in the past, do not join the list.
If you have not hired a car, or do not want to drive so far yourself, many other options are available to view the Grand Canyon.
You can find coach tours to the area, and these are comfortable and air-conditioned with toilets, and are good value, but again you are still stuck with the travel time and it is longer on these tours. You also will not be stopping every 10 minutes to take pictures and video as you would if you drive yourself.
One other option that is much quicker is to fly. You may think this is expensive, well in most cases it is. Going by helicopter is certainly not cheap, and will set you back at least 0 per person, but it is a fantastic experience hovering in the Grand Canyon itself, and flying over the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, as well as beautiful views of Las Vegas. A lot of people are not aware though that you can get cheap flights from Vegas to the Canyon and that is by using a prop aeroplane. As with the helicopters, they take-off from McCarran Airport, and pick you up, and drop you off at the hotel, but the price is much lower. I haggled them down to each for a 3 hour flight.
The only downside is that you can’t hover for pictures, and it is noisier than the helicopters, but for the money and experience it is well worth it, and the views are just as spectacular from the air.
One last thing, if you have flown in from Europe, when you leave Las Vegas, if it is a clear day, the pilot usually flies over the Grand Canyon, so you get a free view, although it can be a little misty from the altitude, and you do need a right-hand side window seat.
About the Author
For more information and tips, and Cheap Flights to Las Vegas, and other places, please visit my site http://www.cheapflightstolasvegas.co.uk/
