Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Las Vegas Day Two


On our second day in Las Vegas, we had to get up early because we had to pick up a rental car at the McCarran International Airport. We planned to do a road-trip to Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon.

We took the Ace bus to get to the car rental place. It cost $7 per person for a 24-hour all-access pass. I had gotten an estimated total of $21 for the rental and was expected to pay about $50 after paying all the fees.

However, we ended up paying almost $100 after being told that a flat tire could cost us $200 alone. Since we expected to drive for about 12 hours, we thought it was a good idea to buy the insurance.

I had never driven in the United States before so I was really excited about it. We rented a GPS with our car just in case and it came to great use. We arrived at Hoover Dam after driving for about 45 minutes.

People in Las Vegas drive pretty aggressively but most drivers are very skilled and let other drivers change lane easily. Those conditions really helped me to get familiar with the traffic in Nevada.

Visiting Hoover Dam was a powerful experience. The dam is definitely impressive, mostly because of the size of it and because of the way that Nevada has been able to divert traffic around it.

It is hard to describe my experience in words. People will simply have to go there themselves to get a feeling of what it is like. The parking was $7, and was well worth it.

We stayed at the Hoover Dam for a little more than an hour and then continued on to Grand Canyon. We had about four hours of driving to look forward to. I never complained about driving though. The view was spectacular during the whole trip with mountains surrounding us.

Just driving in Nevada and Arizona was an amazing experience. It was also great to see regular Americans going on with their regular lives at gas stations and other places because I do not see that often in New York.

Grand Canyon was absolutely incredible. I had tried to imagine what it would be like before getting there and I thought that I knew what it would be like. However, when I got there, we understood that such an amazing place is impossible to imagine on beforehand.

I hope the picture that I posted with this blog is descriptive because I have a hard time describing my feeling about the Grand Canyon. It simply was a very extraordinary experience.

No comments: