Welcome to Thunderdome

1. Homeland Security search of your car as you approach. Can and will pull you over for thorough search.

2. $10 to park.

3. $10 per person to enter the visitor enter.

4. $30 per person to go on the tour, which can only be accessed after you pay $10 to enter the visitor center, and no longer includes the generator room. That tour is $15.

In case you wondered.

Goddamn.

I only mention it because it is the first "visitor's center" out of many, many government parks/monuments we've gone for the last week where you had to pay to get in.

Then $3.25 for a 10 ounce bottle of water at the gift shop.

Guess the dam doesn't make enough $ on its own.

Just overheard and old man in the hotel restaurant in Nevada. "Just got in from the Grand Canyon last night. I wonder where Americans go on vacation."

He speaks the truth. If I went by "conversations overheard," I would bet that 90% of the people between Vegas and Denver are foreign visitors.

Then again, it is the large European families that all speak at the same time, loudly, continuously, while others on the fringes silently look on with "holy shit" looks on our faces.at the sheer obnoxiousness of it. Anyone who ever with snark references " the ugly American" has zero perspective.

Every guided tour: the park ranger is speaking, educating, or describing something. The foreigners can't understand English, so just have their own loud conversation over it.

No idea why no ranger ever told them to STFU. There's a way to say it that transcends the language barrier.

Also foreigners litter everywhere.

And frequently smell bad.

And you say you've had IT jobs.

I remember when people said foreign tourism would be down because they were afraid of Trump, and I was excited by that prospect.

They're all out having one last hurrah before they get deported. So they can come back and keep costing us money when they recross for the umpteenth time. It's the world's most expensive and pointless ping-pong game.