In America there is a lot of choice and breakfast is a scary time for me. It goes something like this:

Me: I’ll have fried eggs and bacon please
Them: How would you like your eggs?
Me: well done please
Them: Sorry we don’t do well done
Me: um, I don’t want them runny.
Them: blank stare
Me: cooked, not runny in the middle
Them: still staring blankly
Me: I dont want that yellow bit in the middle to be runny. Mike help me out here.
Mike: What is the choice?
Them: sunny side up, over easy, easy under, over well, over medium, over hard
Me: Its all too hard
Them: do you mean over hard?
Me: yep, sounds good
Them: What sort of toast?
Me: (oh dear, here we go again) what’s the choice?
Them: rye, sourdough, sweetdough, wholegrain, halfgrain, quartergrain, white, Brown, Red, Green, or Blue
Me: um, white please
Them: Drink?
Me: flat white please
Them: The choice is coffee or tea.
Me: hmmmm

Its all good fun.

We followed some of Route 66 to Las Vegas. We stopped at a small town and got chatting to an old guy playing the blues. He was really good so we bought one of his CD’s.

Old guy playing the blues outside a shop

We spent 2 days on the Grand Canyon.

Terry and Sue did a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon and Mike and I did a hike into it.

The morning was cold and overcast, but it cleared around 10am.

The walk into the canyon was amazing. We did the Ooh Aah trail which was a windy trail into the canyon. We had to step aside to let some people on mules through.

I had a good night sleep despite having to climb down the ladder in the middle of the night for a wee.

It was such a beautiful place to camp. We had breakfast  overlooking the reflections  on the lake.

We stopped in the little town of Williams to top up with fuel, coffee and some Elvis photos.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon around lunchtime and did a walk along the rim. There were afternoon thunder storms and rain so the view wasn’t as spectacular as other times we’ve been here, but it was cool watching the lightning over the canyon.

We had a nice quiet campsite in the Mather campground near the main part of the canyon. There are Elk wandering around the campsite.

We spent a heavy downpour in the van playing monopoly which was fun. Then we went and watched the sun set behind the clouds over the canyon.

It was dark when we got back to camp so we lit a fire and cooked a tuna pasta in the dark. It was yummy, but a bit freaky eating it in the dark, worrying about spiders falling out of the trees into our food.

I’ll put some more photos up later.

P.S. for Liz or Heather – There is no phone reception here which is why Susan hasn’t phoned home yet.

Jetlag had us up at 6am. We were on the road by 9.30am and it was already stinking hot. We stopped at some outlet stores and sue bought some fancy jandals.

We got back on the highway that was very long and very straight.  It was a bit ofr a bumpy ride.  We went over a large bump and the air conditioning cut out. Bugger. 45 degrees outside and no air conditioning. As well as that, there was some very hot air coming in on terrys feet. Service stations out here in the desert are about 100 miles apart, so we pulled into the next one we came to. All looked well with the oil and water, so we topped up and continued on. Then the air cond started again. Yay. For about 5 minutes then it stopped again. Poo.

Sue rang the rental car company and they arranged a garage that was on our route to look at it. We were pretty Lucky as it was Saturday afternoon and they were about to close. It was stinking hot while we waited for them to look at it. It wad about 48 degrees. We soaked our feet in the dogs bowl for a bit.

There is a problem with the compressor and he couldn’t fix it, but he did some fiddling and it seems to be working now.

We stopped at a nice campsite right beside a lake and watched the sun set over the lake. Perfect!

Sue and Terry cooling their feet in the dogs bowl while we wait for our air conditioning to be fixed. HOT – 48 degrees!

Sleeping in our upstairs house

We had a good flight from London to LA. We had chosen a semi-exit seat where the aisle seat had nobody in front, but the seat next to it was a bit squished. I noticed there were a lot of empty rows of 3 seats by the windows, so I asked if we could move there. They said we could move after take-off. I had a look and it was going to be tricky nabbing the seats on the other side of the plane before someone else. I asked if we could switch before take-off. The airnz staff were awesome and arranged this for us. So we packed up our stuff and moved to the other side of the plane. The best part was that these seats convert to a skycouch. This is where the footrests come all the way up to form a bed. If we bought these seats in advance it would have cost us an extra £269.00 so we were very pleased to get them for nothing. So I watched a bit of TV, ate my meal, drank some wine, then crawled into my bed and slept for the remainder of the flight 🙂

Coming in to land was a bit freaky. It was like we were landing in high winds, but there was no wind. As we were coming in to land the wings started rocking from side to side (possibly because the plane was unbalanced with everyone moving seats) and when we landed, it felt like we were doing wheelies down the runway. I wasn’t too concerned as I know they can land sideways if need be, but Mikes hand is looking a bit bruised today.

We had a long queue at immigration that didn’t seem to be moving. The immigration man who checked me in was pretty scary looking. He was very solid, with tattoo’s down his arms and he was wearing black leather gloves. I dunno why the gloves freaked me out but they did. He sent Mike away because we weren’t married, so it was just me and black glove man. He must have noticed my fear as he spoke with a gentle voice and didn’t make me feel like I was a criminal (like they used to do at Heathrow before I got my British passport).

Finally an hour later we cleared immigration, picked up our bags and waited for the hotel courtesy shuttle to pick us up. We waited and waited and waited. By the time all the other hotel shuttles had been passed us twice we decided to ring the Radisson and see where their bus was. Apparently we had to call them to come and get us, and the pick up point was elsewhere.So we moved to the correct pick-up point and waited for a further 20 minutes and it finally arrived.

The bus driver was a black guy who had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea – kind of Eddie Murphy style. He picked us up and drove 2 metres up the road where we got stuck in traffic. “This is the chicken hour” he says. “Everybody they try to push in and change lanes without blinkers, dat why I call it the chicken hour. You gotta be switched on during the chicken hour. I’m always looking left and right. See dat guy there trying to push in without blinking. I knew he was gonna do dat. I’m good at knowing when they gonna push in blah blah blah” and on and on he went. “We’ll sit in this traffic, but when we get around the corner there will be a big hole. See that there – that big hole (he meant a gap in the traffic).”

He just went on and on for the entire trip which took ages as most of it was spent stuck in traffic. It ended up taking us 50 minutes to get to the hotel that was just around the corner. Had we known – we could have walked there in 5 minutes! OH well – these are things we learn for next time.

As it turned out it was good timing. We were to be meeting Sue (Doodle) and Terry here (our friends from NZ). They had arrived earlier in the day and had been to Santa Monica. I got a text from Doodle as we were checking in saying they had just arrived back at the hotel. So good timing. We managed to meet up briefly before heading off to our beds.

The road trip begins today.