My Winter Vacation

During this winter vacation, I traveled in Nevada, Arizona and Florida. As soon as I was done for my final exam, I went to Las Vegas to see my parents. When arrived there at night, I was overwhelmed by the city filled with a bunch of glaring lights. Since came in U.S., I had not ever seen such a crowd and lively atmosphere. At second day, we went out from hotel to take a walk in the morning, but the city looks totally different from the last day’s one. Only a few people are there and many shops are still closed even just before noon. At that day, we watched some interesting shows hotels held and eat too much at a Buffet restaurant. At third day, we woke up at 7 a.m. to get to the Grand Canyon in a tour package. While it took more than four and a half hours to get to the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas by a van, I was not falling asleep because the road from Nevada to Arizona was interesting to me. As we had been drove from Las Vegas for just the past 15 minutes, the view was totally changed. When we passed by a residential area of about 1 kilometer length, we could see a huge arid area I had not ever seen before. There are no factory, no train and even no housing. I thought Nevada State is literally made up of casino and tourism. After kept going through arid region about 2 hours, we could reach at one small village. There is a gift shop with a barber shop a person who save “Route 66” runs.  Staffs in there are unique and can speak Japanese a little bit. We enjoyed talking with them and taking lots pictures of the historical village and gift shop. After leaving there, a view had been changed gradually. Arid zone came to vast ravines towering. As we drove more, we were surrounded with forests and finally reached the Ground Canyon National Park. We headed to near the Grand Canyon on our feet. When I reached to the top of the canyon at last, I was really impressive for magnificent view. It was so huge that I felt like it absorbed me into the canyon. And luckily, we could see the Ground Canyon with a little snow, which does not happen too much. It was quite beautiful. We got a bus to see the sunset with the canyon and were waiting for the time of sunset more than 30 minutes during minus centigrade. Unfortunately because of plenty of clouds, we could not see the sunset clearly. I want to make it again to see it.  As well as the view of the canyon, I was surprised that I can watch wild animals closer than zoo. When we are waiting for a bus at bus stop, I saw a very big deer of more than 150 centimeters long standing almost next to me. It was exciting for me because there are nothing such as cages in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon came to one of my favorite places in U.S.