We went back to the Grand Canyon rim, but headed east this time to a watchtower.
It looked crazy to have this tower at the edge, but it worked. There were better views from the top of the tower! You could see the top of the other side, that you couldn't see from the ground.
Then we drove to the Hoover Dam, and along the way drove a little of route 66.
The dam was another huge impressive feature.
When they made it, they poured concrete constantly 24/7, for 8 days short of two years. At the base the concrete is 660ft (201m) thick. Just incredible.
We went for a little tour inside, down an elevator that dropped 550ft in 1 minute. We walked though tunnels like this. Scary, when you think of all the water around you.
They did a bit of a talk about how it was made, and then showed us some of the generators.
There are 8 generators here, and 9 on the other side of the dam. (This looked much much tidier than NASA!) Then we drove to Las Vegas. By the time we'd driven around in circles a few times to get to our hotel we had to leave straight away to get to a show we'd booked. Luckily it was only about a 15 min walk from the Flamingo, where we are staying. The show was Blue Man, and it was great. It's hard to explain what the show was, but it was these blue guys (not smurfs) who didn't say anything, there was lots of drums, and little skits. They were so deadpan. It was hillarious.
After the show we walked up and down a little bit of the strip, another vast thing. We went in to quite a few casinos, they are just enormous. Little cities all on their own. You could get lost for days in Ceasars Palace or the Bellagio. The Bellagio water fountain show was fantastic. I took a video of it, but it filled up my camera card and I couldn't take any more photos. (Richards card is full too, we'll have to get another one.) We'll get some photos tomorrow night.
Only lost US$28 on the pokie machines. Didn't actually do much gambling, it is just so interesting to wander around and see all the sights.
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