The Grand Adventure!

The Grand Canyon is about 2.5 hours drive from Las Vegas in the state of Arizona. The Colorado river carved it 5 million years ago mainly because of erosion by water and wind. The soil in the area is baked by the strong sun, it is so hard that when it rains, water runs off of it and is not absorbed. That’s how big torrents happen and they carve the sides of the canyon.
The plants there have shallow roots to maximize water absorption but that means they do not stop the erosion.

I went past a few Joshua trees.
Joshua trees are endangered because they need special conditions to live.
They can only live in a certain elevation, they only grow 1.9cm each year and they depend on floods for the seeds to grow.
The Joshua tree got its name from the migrants who came along time ago and thought the tree looked like Joshua from the bible with his arms up to the skies.
When the tree dies the spike like bushes on the end of the branches droops down, they thought it looked like Joshua’s beard.
There are many species of animals and plants here, including 355 bird species and 89 species of mammals.

At the Grand Canyon I started at the Skywalk, the Skywalk is 5 layers of glass placed over the edge of the Grand Canyon cliff. The Skywalk is scary when you look down and it makes you feel dizzy.
The skywalk is suspended 7000 feet above sea level and is higher than the Empire State Building.
Unfortunately no cameras were allowed due to native tribe rules. When walking on the glass you have to wear special protectors on your feet that look like elf shoes.
One advice – if you ever go to the Grand Canyon – NEVER get too close to the edge or this might happen to you…

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We also saw a few native Indian huts and teepees nearby.

I hiked around a few cliffs and rock formations on the edge of the canyon and took a few photos of the absolutely breath taking views and hiked back down. The photos don’t do it justice!

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The tour guide took me down to an old bat guano (bat poop) mine. They collect it to make cosmetics and fertilisers. He explained that a jet pilot from the Air Force was flying in the Grand Canyon without permission, and hit a cable from the mine that ruined the zipline to the caves where they were mining. The pilot made it back to base safely.

I then traveled to Hoover dam, it was almost 50c degrees there and as soon as you step outside you start sweating. It was like being in an oven!! SO HOT!!
I saw all the systems used in the dam and how the water flows through the dam.
They actually make electricity with the water flowing through the hydropower engines at the bottom of the dam. It generated 4 billion KW hours, enough to provide electricity to 1.3 million people.
Workers took 5 years to build the dam (1931-1936) and were 2 years ahead of schedule plus 2 million dollars under budget.
Officially 109 workers died making the dam, mostly from rocks falling on their heads or falling off the dam. But apparently many more died.
Legend says that someone was buried alive in the concrete but that’s wrong because it would ruin the structural integrity and also it takes hours to pour 2 cm of concrete on the dam making it impossible to bury a body without anyone seeing it.
We had a taxi driver who told us that his granddad worked on the Hoover Dam, he said he only got paid $5 a day! It was such a hard and dangerous job.

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We stayed in Las Vegas for a couple of days so we can see the Grand Canyon. Vegas is a city that was ruled by Mafia a long time ago, they have legal casinos and betting laws these days.
The hotels in Vegas are unbelievable! They have little cities inside of them with fake European streets and fake skies. Some have roller coasters inside or zipline or canals with gondolas and the people who operate the gondolas sing opera.

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