Monday, February 16, 2009

Road Trip!!!

After waiting nearly 2 hours to get my hire car, a standard economy car, I was given the keys to a black sports Mustang. As I cruised down the Las Vegas strip the smile on my face could have bridged the Mersey. This 4 litre engined beast was the fastest thing I'd ever driven and I was enjoying myself. I picked Kerry up in my new ride and we headed east on our road trip, passing the Hoover Dam.
Our main objective was to see the Grand Canyon, but after spending the night in snowy Flagstaff, Arizona, we headed a little further south to Sedona, land of red rocks, the scenic drive from the high mountains down to the red desert was breathtaking, but the temperature remained chilly. We camped in the valley on our second night and guess what, the rain came and made big puddles. At 2am we abandoned ship and jumped into the Mustang where we actually had a decent sleep. The rain in the valley was snow on the hills and lots of it. We gained elevation as we headed towards the Grand Canyon and were greeted with a blanket of snow.
Luckily, the roads were well ploughed and we did eventually make it to the Grand Canyon where we were able to see...nothing. It was the most miserable day imagineable but we remained patient and of course were rewarded. Occassionally the cloud broke and rays of light hit the red rock of the canyon below and then just before sunset the whole canyon revealed itself and I was blown away.

With great relief we headed out of the park and back on ourselves to find a place to stay. Meaning a place to park and sleep in the car. It wasn't hard, we parked around the back of a Holiday Inn and I braved the cold outside to boil some water for a pot noodle dinner, I'm sure Michael Palin didn't do this.
We woke early for sunrise at the canyon but the weather had other ideas, altough we did get a glimpse of the sun in between blizzards. On our last stop out of the park at a viewing tower, the weather was again kind to us and the canyon was again on full show. I loved the moodiness of the canyon in this light, a perfect blue sky day would have been to easy, and I left feeling that we'd been given special permision to see a great natural wonder.

We left the Grand Canyon very happy and as we headed east the weather improved instantly as we continued our road trip but the forecast was bad with more snow predicted.



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