Did you buy that Frommer’s Guide to the Grand Canyon I suggested? It’s ok if you didn’t, but let me assure you, it comes in handy when you’re planning a trip to the center of the Earth.

So let’s get on with the trip already… We left San Diego, CA sometime in the afternoon and headed straight for Las Vegas. With an iPod full of great road trip music, beef jerkey and plenty of water, the landscape transformed from mundane desert to glitz, glamour and ridiculously large hotels before we knew it. We’ve all been to Vegas so I won’t bore you with the outrageous sexual proclivities and excessive indulgence. Author’s note: it was truthfully a boring one night stay to rest our weary eyes. There were bigger and better things on our agenda.

Once again, we departed in the wee hours of the morning, heading straight for Arizona (with one important stop). In the spirit of witnessing all things enormous and monumental, we stopped at Hoover Dam. Not to see a damn dam - you’ve seen one dam you’ve seen them all. No, I was hell bent on seeing what is quite possibly the largest, most impressive and equally frightening bottomless hole on the face of the Earth (quite a stretch, I know).

The last time I visited Hoover Dam was when I was a young lad, on a road trip with my Dad to Arizona. The one lasting memory I had of Hoover Dam was a gigantic hole in the side of the mountain. All I remember was this hole - immense, all consuming, black and never ending. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Well, I wanted to confirm these delusions.

See? I am NOT crazy! That hole is massive and downright frightening… to a little boy. I’m a grown man now and not scared of such things. The hole you see is actually a spillway to keep high water levels from breaching the top of the dam. It’s trully impressive and, in my mind, far more intriguing than a wall of cement, but I ain’t one to gossip.

After my death grip loosened and I was peeled away from the protective railing (that’s not really me down there), we continued our journey Eastward, in hopes that the Grand Canyon’s bounty would offer an equally hypnotizing experience.