Travel Diary: The Grand Canyon & Las Vegas

Enduring the hot, hot heat of the desert

Approximately eight hours of driving and one extremely bug-splattered windshield later, we arrived at Grand Canyon National Park. My parents and I walked along the South Rim Trail for over an hour, stopping to admire the view of the canyon and the Colorado River at several viewpoints. I was excited to see cacti growing by the side of the trail — some were even in bloom! However majestic the scenery of the Grand Canyon was, the weather in Arizona was extremely hot, and soon enough we retreated to the safety of the air-conditioned visitor center.

After wandering around for a bit longer, there was even more driving. We said goodbye to the Grand Canyon and good riddance to the lack of cell reception and Wi-Fi signal, then headed off to Las Vegas.

I did not have an abundance of money to gamble at the casinos in Vegas, so it’s safe to say that I was pretty bored for the few days that we were there. Between window shopping at the designer stores and exploring the fancy hotel room lobbies, we also visited the Ethel M Chocolate Factory where we tasted some of their chocolates and strolled through their impressive botanical cactus garden.

There’s not much else to say about this leg of the trip because I spent a lot of the time napping in the air-conditioned hotel room. The temperature hovered around 40 degrees Celsius the whole time I was there, and every minute I was outside was spent finding ways to go somewhere inside. I was glad when our stay in Vegas was over because it meant heading back to the coast.

Coming up next in my travel diary is my visit to the San Francisco Bay Area. And if you haven’t seen them already, you can read part one and part two of my travel diary here.

*Update June 15, 2018: Read part four here. 

*Update July 12, 2018: Click here to read Part 5. 

Photo by Karen K. Tran/The Ontarion