Day 5 & the Grand Canyon

On day 5 we finally arrived at the Grand Canyon. It was amazing. It's so big. There is so much to see, we wish we had had more time to explore. We also wish that our camera battery hadn't died, but we were able to get a few pictures.
























































The previous series of three pictures are all taken from the same spot but with a different amount of zoom to try to give some idea of the size of the Grand Canyon (to those who haven't been). The first is zoomed all the way in (sorry, it's a bit blurry). The second is about half way and the third has no zoom. The bit of river shown in the first two is roughly in the center of the third pictures.





















We left the Grand Canyon at about 12:30pm had some lunch (and Ice Cream) and continued on our way to Los Angeles. The desert was HOT and long. Luckily, Tim had been looking at the map on Thursday night and noticed that there was a 146 mile gap between gas stations and then another 205 mile gap until the next so we made sure we filled up each time. There really wasn't much out there.

We finally arrived in Los Angeles at about 11pm and couldn't find the front gate of our hotel. We drove around a few times before parking and getting out to walk around. When we did, someone asked us if we needed any help, we asked where the front gate was and they pointed us in the right direction. We think the guy who gave us directions was an actor (he looked familiar) but we're not sure who he was. He looked a bit like this guy, but we don't think it was him.

Day 4

Since we drove about an hour and a half longer than we planned to on Wednesday, we slept in a bit on Thursday morning... and missed the continental breakfast (it ended at 9am). Since we were in the middle of nowhere there were no restaurants in site, so we drove for a while and had the pleasure of stopping at the Tucumcari, New Mexico Dairy Queen. Tucumcari was printed in red ink on the map, which usually means its a larger city, but there wasn't much more to it than this Dairy Queen, the attached gas station and the abandoned building across the highway. I'm guessing they have more of it hidden somewhere. (On a side note, if you click on the picture of the Neon, you can see our bug collection)










The picture on the left is a ghost town or something. The sign said we should take a picture of it. The picture on the right is at the New Mexico/Arizona border. Look at all that nothingness that we drove through.









Things got better as we drove further into Arizona. It was beautiful. We stayed in Flagstaff. It was a lovely little town surrounded by mountains. We arrived early in the evening and couldn't go any further because this was the last town before the Grand Canyon, so we even had some time to walk around.

Day 3

We drove to the middle of nowhere, Vega, Texas on the 3rd day. We wanted to stop in Amarillo, but, as it was the only city for miles around, all the places we wanted to stay were full.

Day 2

On day 2 we drove from Cleveland, Ohio to Cuba, Missouri. This picture was taken somewhere in between.

Day 1

Heading out. We have a LONG way to go!















Yes, we have a lot of stuff in the back seat. And we get to take it all out every night and (try to) put it back the same way the next day.















Our last Ice Caps before leaving the country. So sad. Let's all pause for a moment of silence in remembrance.

Well, we made it across the boarder. It took about an hour and a half, but we were pretty lucky considering it was a holiday weekend.















Taken at the Pennsylvania/Ohio welcome center. We're driving through wine country, very pretty landscape.

We stopped south east of Cleveland, Ohio for the night.