Route 66 and some bad business tatics.

Grand Canyon is too much touristy. We went south to seek for better weather to stay, reaching a town 'Williams' of Arizona. The RV park we stayed was very nice. the owner let us stay at a carpeted ground. first night was very cold, reaching -8 degres celcius. out of goodwill, the owner took a electric heater that warm us up on the 2nd night. Williams was a cool and quiet town. the main attraction was part of the Route 66. This road on 66 wasn't fun to ride on but the towns that glued on were historical and very old west American.

There were many 'world famous' things in USA. I guess it's the freedom of speech in USA where people can say anything about everything. I went inside to have a look, nothing special. It's just some marketing strategy by putting up the signboard, self claimed 'world famous'.

Lots of oldies stuff to see along the town of Route 66.

The first non american bikers we met in USA. He was supposed to travel alone in this 650 but met the girl along the way and they hooked up. good luck my friends.

Harleys: something very american. These riders were very special breed of bikers...quoted by my friend.

Joshua tree!

There were north rim of grand canyon, south rim and west rim. most tourist went to south rim and some go to the west rim, just because they saw a photo of an over hanging glass bridge that can overlook the grand canyon. Sam and i saw this picture few months ago and was determine to go and have a look. we saw catalogs of this glass bridge in many places but these catalogs do not have any pricings. the road to this glass bridge was bad dirt road. not friendly. reaching this place, we saw many helicoptors and private airplanes for tourist to view the grand canyon. i told sam that we will not be taking these airplane stuff, it should be expensive. we just want to walk on the glass bridge.

intresting? i just downloaded these pictures were from their webpage. no cameras were allowed on the glass bridge.

so we went to the counter and check if need to buy any tickets for west grand canyon (GC) as we already had a ticket from the north rim GC, it's valid for 7 days thro out the whole GC. we also used it at the South rim of GC. we assumed that this ticket is also valid for west GC, which is this glass bridge. but......

the counter lady said:

the glass bridge walk cost US$29.95 per person. but a Hualapai Legacy tour package MUST be purchased before we can buy the glass bridge ticket. the Hualapai Legacy tour Native american villages and see how they live (for the tourist).

so to go for the glass bridge, we must pay:

$29.95 for Legacy tour

$29.95 for glass bridge visit

$4.20 for 7% tax

$3.00 for fuel charge

$8.00 for impact fee

GRAND TOTAL PER PERSON = US$75.10

i wanted to point my middle finger at everybody here on this moment. we walked back to Hope Too, ate our sandwich went off.

this is the marketing strategy of USA style. the catalogs we saw everywhere did not have any pricing. they made the road so bad that after traveling this road, visitor realised the price, thinking that it's a hard way here and they will pay for the $$$$$$$ for glass bridge.

we are not doing this. we were really pissed off. infact, the 7days GC ticket does not apply to this place.

Disappointed, we went to a RV site to camp. Sam got off Hope Too and went into the RV office while i was idling Hope Too on the thick gravel road. most RV campground laid their roads with thick gravel, it's too RV friendly, not Hope Too friendly. i made a slight left turn with Hope Too and the rear tire dugged into the thick gravel, slided to the right, Hope Too fell on the left and i was thrown out of the bike. at the same time my right knee hit the windscreen (bought in Argentina) and broke it.

I was very angry. why am i coming to this shitty place and i am very sure that the windscreen would not be avalible for sale in USA.

To neutralize all these anger and dissappointment, we met Bill. He came from the northern state and came here for his hobby. he stayed in his RV with his dog. seeing us cooking our dinner, Bill came and said hello and find more about us. To our surprise, he is a fan of Teresa Teng. He bought a chinese magazine about Teresa and we translated some paragraph for him.

Bill had an intresting hobby, that is gold hunting. He took off on his ATV with his dog, Coco, together with the metal detector and equipment, he would spend many hours to walk the desert with to find gold nugget.

On the next morning, he gave us one of his gold nugget, that would simply cost about $100-$200.

check out Bill's webpage:

http://prospecting.50webs.com/1prospecting.html

Hoover Dam seprates Nevada and Arizona. It generates most of the electricity that Las Vegas would need.