First of all I want to thank you all for reading our blog, you are about 60 unique visitors a day during the first 9 days of our trip (probably some twice due to work and at home). And for the few who dare to leave a reaction keep up the good work it’s nice to wake up and read something from you too.

Today was the day of leaving Las Vegas and continue our trip. The Venetian was really a great hotel of great quality so if you ever go to Las Vegas, please consider this hotel.

After waking up, packing the suitcases we left the hotel and we went to an IHOP for breakfast. We needed a good breakfast because today was going to be a long day. The plan was to drive to the Grand Canyon via Williams. Reason for that was that our hotel for the night is in Williams. I would be a trip of circa 270 miles. Because Sander felt very tired I decided to take over the wheel and drove the first 200 miles to Williams. Williams is a Route 66 town and that is something you see on almost every sign in the town (Family L. thanks for the tip to stay here).

After checking in we drove further to the Grand Canyon. We arrived there at about 3:30 p.m. The first stop was Yavapai View. This was the first time we really saw the Grand Canyon. And I would have to say it is gigantic. I was really impressed because it was so huge. We walked around a little bit and took a lot of pictures as we drove to our next stop, which was Grand Canyon Village.

We parked the car and enjoyed the views from here and after a while we took the shuttle bus towards Powell Point. And again there was an amazing view from this point. But our goal was to go to Hopi Point because is the no. 1 place to view the sunset in the Grand Canyon.

Our bus driver told us that sunset today would be at 06:14 p.m. and that is was just a short hike from Powell Point to Hopi Point. And the bus driver was right, after a 5-minute walk we arrived at Hopi Point and I can say again, views were beautiful.

As we were waiting for the sun to go down we took a lot of pictures and Sander also found a Geocache at Powell Point (he walked back to find it). As the sun was going down, more shades were coming over the Canyon. I could see the shadows move.

And at 06:14 p.m. exactly the sun went behind the big red rocks and it became dark. We were the first of a lot of people to go back to the Village with the shuttle bus after watching the sunset.

Surprise was that we could see the moon at the other side of the Canyon. It was a big moon because it was almost a full moon. But it was pretty difficult to take decent pictures of this, but for us of was great to see.

Then we drove back to Williams and had to pick a restaurant for dinner. I said to Sander that I would drive back to the hotel so that he could drinks beer or two. He decided to go to the Pine Country Restaurant, a typical American restaurant famous for its pies. We both ordered a steak and Sander asked the waiter which beers they have. The answer to that was: “We don’t serve alcohol in this restaurant”. So he ordered a sweet iced tea and for me there was unlimited pink lemonade. Dinner was not that great but the pies were phenomenal. Sander had a piece of Dutch Apple Pie and I had a piece of the Double Chocolate Pie. This Chocolate pie was huge but delicious!

We went back to the hotel after a quick Geocache at the parking lot. Now we are both enjoying a local pumpkin spiced beer in the bar of the hotel, which we got for free because we are goldmember of Priority Club.

It was a long day, but really a great day. Tomorrow we will leave Williams to go to Scottsdale.

Today we woke up pretty early because we wanted to do a lot today, because today was our last full day in Las Vegas.

First thing on our to-do-list was driving to the south side of The Strip to take a picture of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. We also did the virtual cache there. Unfortunately it was impossible to do the traditional cache because of all the muggles around the sign.

After visiting this sign we drove all up north on The Strip to see the other side of The Strip and visit The World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. We had to wait in line to get in there, but unfortunately “The Stars” we’re not there. The shop is not that big and they also sell a lot of merchandise, particularly from Chumlee.

Next stop were the Premium Outlets Las Vegas North. It was extremely busy here and after picking up my free coupon-book at the Management Desk it was time to get the shopping done. First we went to Polo Ralph Lauren, than Tommy Hilfiger, 7 for all Mankind and Crocs.

Because it is not to far from Las Vegas we wanted to visit the Hoover Dam near the Boulder City, about one hour driving. The Dam itself is huge as if the surroundings. We took a lot of pictures and walked over the Dam from Nevada to Arizona and back. It was also pretty warm here, about 37 degrees Celcius.

We did not take a tour on the Hoover Dam and went back to the hotel. In the meanwhile we looked for a place to have dinner. And along the Highway back to Las Vegas we found a place called “Remedys Tavern”. The food was great and off course the refills were very welcome with these temperatures. During dinner we looked if there were geocaches in the neighborhood which we could look for after dinner. And there were! After dinner we did geocaching the American way. We drove with the car from cache to cache and ended up finding 4 caches. In total we have now found 146 geocaches since september 2011.

It took us about 30 minutes to get back to the hotel and another 20 minutes to get back to the hotel room because the hotel is so huge. At 08:30 p.m. It was time for the Pirates Show at Treasure Island. It was extremely crowded around the Treasure Island hotel and after the 20-minute show was over we went back to the hotel and did some last-night-gambling in the casino.

Tomorrow we will leave this beautiful hotel and this state because we heading for the Grand Canyon in Arizona.