Abyss

After several days in blinking and glittering Vegas, I was ready for some natural beauty and embarked on a packaged daytrip to the Grand Canyon (West Rim). On the way, we stopped at the impressive Hoover Dam, or as the driver referred to it, the "daaaaaaaaamn Hoooooover Daaaaaaam" and also passed Joshua trees that I had never seen and heard of the first time when U2 released their album of the same name. They are very impressive in real life!

With my tour, I had booked one of the optional "add-ons", the Skywalk. Helicopter rides and rafting are also popular, but not for me. You're not allowed to take any personal items on the Skywalk, so no photos with either your own camera or mobile phone are possible. I suspect it's just to be able to sell the professional photos better as you are almost harrassed by "your photo guide" when on there. 99.9% of visitors were Chinese groups and they were as loud as they were annoying. They loved posing for pictures, too. So this is the Skywalk from outside. Even though I'm actually scared of heights a bit, I didn't find it scary to stand on there:

What I found really interesting was that there are no fences anywhere, which is not what I had expected from lawsuit-happy Americans. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the Grand Canyon is owned by the Hualapai Nation and its members might have a more relaxed attitude. Be that as it may, I kept a respectful distance from the edge and my heart jumped every time somebody posed right there. See what I mean, no fence:

Speaking of posing and Chinese, here we have some specimens:

 The rock was a really beautiful red, similar to Petra, Jordania, I found. I also nicked some little stones from the ground for my Dad, pssst:

With some flora in the foreground:

...and a river in the background:

I really enjoyed this excursion and it is quite a humbling experience to see how massively big everything is compared to the humans running around, taking pictures: