Hilary Scott, The Grand Canyon, The Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and coming home…
The most beautiful woman in the World, Hilary Scott, sent me the following piece about a visit to the Grand Canyon she made a few days ago when she was in Las Vegas. It’s a superb piece of writing…
A life in the day of….Hilary and Pat
Monday 11th September 2006
Today has been not only a very significant day in the lives of the American people - five years since that devastating day in 2001 (and all the flags here are at half mast), but also a very long day in the lives of Hilary and Pat - a very, very long day!
I was dutifully awoken at 5am Las Vegas time (1pm UK time) by my man in Stratford to make the long journey to one of the most amazing wonders of the world - the Grand Canyon. As I was unsure, however, that my hastily typed email the night before requesting an alarm call would actually get through to my beloved (two previous attempts had failed), I had also set the in-room radio alarm and my cell phone (wow, 7 days and I’m already using Americanisms!). So within 15 seconds of the phone ringing, the whole room erupted into a volcano of sound and my room-mate, Pat, shot up screaming ‘Don’t shoot, I haven’t got my war paint on and my hair’s a mess!!’
After a couple of quick showers - Pat first, as she had to have her rollers in her hair for the statutory 30 minutes - and a wolfed down Danish stolen from the Luxor Hotel’s breakfast buffet the day before, we get ourselves into gear and rush over to the far side of the next hotel, the Excalibur (think knights and jousting) from where we will begin our journey to a mind-blowing wonder.
The first bus takes us only as far as the tour company’s offices where we disembark and have yet another Danish and coffee before meeting with the man who is to take us the 270 miles through Nevada and Arizona to the south rim of the canyon. Larry turns out to be a Stetson-sporting southern Californian with a lazy drawl not unlike Jack Nicholson’s, and what he didn’t know about Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and all points between isn’t worth knowing (the term ‘amusing verbal diarrhoea’ springs to mind!).
About ¾ of an hour into our journey we cross the mighty Hoover Dam (originally named Boulder Dam) built to control and divert the unruly Colorado River, but which now supplies southern California with much of its power. Another result of the damming of the river was the formation of Lake Mead, the watersports playground for the citizens of Las Vegas and its surrounds. Its 100 mile length makes Lake Windermere’s 11 miles pale into insignificance. The border between Nevada and Arizona passes through the centre of this amazing feat of early 20th century engineering. After a brief photo opportunity stop Larry herds us all back into the bus for the onward journey initially to Kingman, a mid-desert town on the original Route 66 for a rest stop, and then on to Tusayan, the nearest town to the south rim of the canyon, whose name means ‘little or no water’.
