Colorado River 2022:
Day 2 - Grand Canyon West


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Colorado River 2022: [Day 1 - Grand Canyon] [Day 2 - Grand Canyon West] [Day 3 - Marble Canyon] [Day 4 - Redwall Cavern] [Day 5 - Little Colorado] [Day 6 - Big Rapids] [Day 7 - Deer Creek] [Day 8 - Matkatamiba Canyon] [Day 9 - Lava Falls] [Day 10 - Las Vegas] [Day 11 - Heading Home]

Friday, June 24, 2022: Jill and Jared were remarkably perky for being up and ready to go before 6:00 AM.
We drove past Route 66 icon Delgadillo's Snow Cap. Sadly, it isn't open at 6:00 AM.
It's so nice to drive rentals with CarPlay. It allows Debbie to connect her phone so we can all sing along to "We Don't Talk About Bruno."
We passed the Kingman Airport & Industrial Park, which is also a boneyard for commercial planes.
Two hours after we left, we were starting to see Joshua trees so we knew we were getting fairly close.
We pulled into the parking lot at Grand Canyon West by 8:30 and were on a shuttle bus to Eagle Point 12 minutes later.
Jill and Jared headed straight to the Skywalk and we waited for them outside so we could take pictures, having already visited the Skywalk in 2018.
This guy kept us company for a while.
Hey guys!
We got a selfie in the mirrored windows of the Skywalk building. See us near the bottom?
When Jill and Jared were done, we stopped in the gift shop briefly (and picked up a Mini Building Blocks set of the Skywalk). They we all went out to the edge to admire views of Eagle Point, named for the eagle shape made by the canyon walls.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived by shuttle bus at Guano Point.
We hurried to the overlook so we'd have the area to ourselves for a while.
These structures are what remain of a bat guano mining operation that was abandoned years ago.
We walked down to the lower level ...
... where we knew a rock that was perfect for taking pictures.
See?
We saw some boats running upstream. These belong to the Hualapai Tribe to take tourists out on the Colorado River.
Speaking of the Colorado River, look at that beauty. Looking down, we could see another structure that points toward the bat cave on the other side of the river.
When we were done with Guano Point, we waited for another shuttle bus ...
... to take us back to the Grand Canyon West visitor center. We bought candy bars; Jill and Jared bought souvenirs.
While heading west, we spotted a very large dust devil moving across the valley.
In Dolan Springs, we passed the store where we would be stopping after our river trip eight days later.
That's Nevada in the distance.
The dividing line between Arizona and Nevada was very obvious as we approached Laughlin, Nevada, with its casinos lined up along the border.
There's the gorgeous Colorado River again, this time lined with palm trees instead of canyon.
And we're crossing the river into ...
... Nevada!
We passed through Lake Mead National Recreation Area on our way to ...
... California! We were here for exactly one reason: to get Jill and Jared to California for their first visit. We stayed just long enough to take some pictures and soak in the ambience of the gravel by the side of the road.
We collected the very first sign in our collection of state-specific seat belt signs.
Just like that, we turned around and headed right back into Nevada.
Hooray for fancy new rest areas!
We saw a huge field of solar panels on our journey north toward Las Vegas.
We made a small side trip to Boulder City even though we had been here just seven months earlier (and had passed Chilly Jilly'z back then too).
It's because we had unfinished business at the Nevada State Railroad Museum.
The last time we were here, we got a picture of the front of Nevada's Merci Train boxcar.
This time, we were on a mission to get a picture of the other side.
Not only was it just as decorated as the other side, ...
... it had an informational sign we had missed before.
There's Las Vegas. Let's go there ...
... and eat their donuts.
Debbie loves Winchell's but was heartbroken that they didn't have any French crullers available.
That didn't stop us from buying a bunch of donuts anyway.
With two Star Wars nerds in the car, it was fate that we would end up driving behind this license plate.
We pulled into the Residence Inn parking lot around 2:15 and were pleasantly surprised to learn that both our rooms were ready for check-in.
The rooms were great. Nice and large, ...
... with full-size refrigerators that came in handy both nights of our stay - this evening and the evening we returned from the river.
Our room overlooked the pool. We decided that we needed to get in that pool as soon as possible.
We had a great time in the pool. We met a fun family of five who turned out to be fellow passengers on our trip. The parents were about our age and their daughter, son, and daughter-in-law were close in age to J&J.
Obviously, we didn't get any pictures while we were all in the pool, and these two were taken after the other family left.
We headed up to Jill and Jared's room, which was in the same location as ours but many floors higher. Here's their great view of the Las Vegas Strip.
That luggage and those labeled eBags sure look familiar, but those are the suitcases and packing cubes we loaned J&J for the trip.
We headed out in the rental minivan again and had In-N-Out Burger for dinner in the parking lot.
On our way to a liquor store, we ran across an Anthem building, so we had to photograph Jill by it.
We bought a single 12-pack at the liquor store, plus a tall beverage for each of us. Tom and Jared went to the airport to return the rental car, then we toasted to a great trip so far when they returned.
Jared's parents were dogsitting Jack and they called so Jill and Jared got to Facetime with their pup. Both sets of children were called or Facetimed as well.
The river trip orientation meeting was held at a room near the lobby at 8:00 PM. There was a stack of boxed breakfasts for us to take back to our room for the next day.
Two Grand Canyon Expeditions employees were there to give us colorful buffs and insulated mugs, tell us what we needed to know about our trip, pass out our ammo cans and gear bags, and and sell us any souvenirs or supplies we might need.
It turns out that Debbie wanted a t-shirt and we needed a second sarong, which turned out to be an excellent purchase.
Our breakfast box contained yogurt, fruit cocktail, oatmeal, burrito, blueberry muffin, and water bottle. We ate some in the morning and some on the bus later on.
We packed our gear and were in bed by 10:00 PM because we had an early morning and exciting day ahead of us.

Day 3 >


Colorado River 2022: [Day 1 - Grand Canyon] [Day 2 - Grand Canyon West] [Day 3 - Marble Canyon] [Day 4 - Redwall Cavern] [Day 5 - Little Colorado] [Day 6 - Big Rapids] [Day 7 - Deer Creek] [Day 8 - Matkatamiba Canyon] [Day 9 - Lava Falls] [Day 10 - Las Vegas] [Day 11 - Heading Home]

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