Las Vegas

I developed a rash on the legs just as Alaska was ending - must have been all the heat of the long johns I wore. The rash only just cleared up as I arrived in LV. But Laurel has come down with an allergic reaction to altitude and who knows what. Since it is not clearing up and LM can get very short of breath for a short time, so not improving despite a trip to Walgreens for some suitable pharmaceuticals. So we are cutting our stay short by 3 days and sign off with 2 piccys of LV we took from the same spot on the first night here (before and after the Bellargio fountain started up).

See you all soon, hoo-roo, Dennis

. So

Zion national park

Different fom the others, although you might not be able to tell. At least this is the end (almost) of the Canyonlands tour so ... we (and you) have made it through! And we made a couple of US friends in the process, Marlene and Jim from Pittsburgh ... but that's also another story along with some other characters we met along the way. Night for now. Den

And after Monument Valley came ...

...Bryce Canyon, and then, next blog, Zion National Park. Here we sit with Bryce in the background, then in the foreground. Finally, on a loo break on the way from Bryce, a stagecoach of some time ago.

On this tour, the wonders never stopped. Just when we thought we'd seen all that the desert states could provide, along would come yet more, as we hope 3 shots from Zion will show next.

Sorry for the mixed up order of photos...

... you have to be a genius to guess how the post is going to turn out relative to ther blog before it is published. Anywho folks, press on. In this post the order is 3, 1 and 2. The locals provide a horse and rider for photos (in 3 and 1) and you put your couple of $s tip in the bag on a nearby post as a tip! After the tour LM and 3 others took the "optional" flight back and took photo #2 (plus lots others yet to be revealed at homecoming).

What, not another canyon!

So you don't float much closer to canyon walls than on our boat trip around Lake Powell. The earphones were so we could hear the Captain tell us "stuff" about the layers of rock being formed over a gazillion years and about pertrified sand turning into rock and etc etc (yeh, yeh, DM's the skeptic on all that stuff - thinking that no one was there so who can know but take reasonable theory and mix with unlimited time and ... sounds like building as fancy a house {or casino in LV} as you like). To see what we saw from the boat, have a look at the third piccy. That was the end of the canyon - or at least as far as the water went. Can't get much narrower than that without scrapping the side of the boa.

You can guess where we went next by the other photo. You might say it is a bute photo but I don't recall the diff between a bute and a mesa. Oh, by the way, we are in Monument Valley for that pic.

Onwards to Bryce Canyon

The yanks built the Hoover Dam in the 1930s and then did it "again" in the 1960s in the middle of nowhere (well, actually in the Glen Canyon in the middle of nowhere) to create Lake Powell. This supplies water and electricity to the northern states in the south-west USA (if that makes sense) while the Hoover Dam does the same for the southern states. The round visitors' centre at the dam showed films and various exhibits that explained how the dam was built - which fascinated me because an engineer I never will be - and Laurel found an ancient friend too, what's left of him anyway (see left in case you are thinking I meant another of the geriatrics on the tour with us).

Grand canyon, again

The north rim of the GC is 2000 ft higher than the south and still has snow on it. (The Colorado River runs east to west at the stage and does not turn south until LV.) Here are 3 of the 300 we can bore you with when we get home!