Daily Narrative    It was a day of contrasts, from the Arizona desert, to the touristy and attractive Grand Canyon, on to the touristy and bizarre Las Vegas strip.  We woke in a heavily wooded (for the area) campsite in the Homolovi Ruins State Park, just outside of Winslow, AZ.  We started early, at about 6:00am, to beat the heat and get to the relatively higher elevations of the Grand Canyon.  The weather forecast for the desert floor was in the 110 degree range, while the forecast for the Grand Canyon southern rim was in the mid eighties.  The tricky piece of planning was in not coming down off of the Grand Canyon rim and heading west too early.  We had plotted out a course that would get us to the west coast before "scorching" (to quote the weather section of the newspaper) heat engulfed the Mohave Desert tomorrow, but it involved us getting to Las Vegas tonight.  Okay, Vegas was an extra hour of driving, but it would be a shame to miss such a natural treasure when we were so close.  Better yet, we found Circusland, Circus Circus' RV campground right on the Las Vegas Strip for $20 a night.  We assumed the worst.  Anyway, off to the Grand Canyon at 6:00...  We crawled up the southern rim from the eastern entrance and stopped first at Desert View, then at the Tusayan Ruins, and then at the Grand Canyon Village tourist corral.  On the whole, it was what Brian remembers from ten or so years earlier, very pretty, very big, and very crowded.  Staying almost four hours, we also eclipsed Brian's previous record by almost three and a half hours.  Trying not to hit the desert floor too long before things began to cool, we hit an IMAX movie on the Grand Canyon (also very pretty and very big, but not so crowded) and a cafe on the way down.  Turns out there was no real way to beat the heat, as the further west we drove the hotter it got.  It was getting dark and hotter at the same time.  We stumbled across Hoover Dam around 10:00pm (who knew they kept it right outside of Las Vegas?) and the temperatures were still around 100 degrees.  We checked into our asphalt campground in the figurative shadow of Circus Circus around 10:30 and prepared to explore the Las Vegas strip.  Brian had actually suffered a little time zone confusion and thought it was 9:30.  We spent two or three hours doing the "Oh! I've seen that." thing and marveling at all of the neon with the throng of tourists marching up an down Las Vegas Boulevard, before hitting the very warm hay at around 2:00am.  The low for the night is forecast at 85 degrees.

The bus sporting the "fauxdobe" look in our heavily wooded site at Homolovi Ruins State Park	Regulation number eight raised some concerns with Theresa
Don't worry about us...	The climb from the desert into the Grand Canyon begins
The eastern end of the Grand Canyon Park, Desert View	A view up at the Desert View tower ceiling
Spokesmodels don't appear to have anything to worry about	Yep, it's really big and pretty.  We'd recommend it
Looking down at the Colorado River	The Tuyasan Ruins
Brian test drives some back up transportation	Theresa works on a Katchina Doll lesson for next year
We both appreciated the integration of technology into a relatively limited menu	Ever the savvy travelers, we were pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the incredible Hoover dam just outside of Las Vegas
Or just a big cheesy casino...	This we are sorry we missed
Welcome home Mr. Las Vegas!  To quote the billboards, that is...	Another place we'd heard of
Our favorite choice of casinos went to Treasure Island, because of the cool props	Sigfreid and Roy Plaza, spooky isn't it?

Click on the picture for a much better spokesmodel and a pretty panorama