June 16th, 2006
Woke up and headed through to the living room. We were supposed to be leaving for the Grand Canyon today. Kara said that Kristin wanted to make a day trip of it though, I told her that I didn’t want to get up at 6am.
We went and bought a tent and some torches, then went to the library.
After that, we quickly went home, grabbed a few blankets and pillows and left. The journey to there was fairly straight forward, except we nearly ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere – Good thing there’s a lot of towns in the middle of nowhere.
There was also a lorry, which was transporting a heap of other lorries. It started to swerve and looked like it was going to tip. The driver sorted it out though, and we passed it.
We got to the Canyon just in time for sunset. We waited until the sun had gone and went to Pizza Hut, then onto our camp ground.
It was dark when we got there, so Kristin pointed her car headlights at the area we were gonna set up. I’m not sure it was set up properly, but it was shelter.
At the beginning of the night, a baby was crying. Possibly one of the creepiest things I’ve heard. Then there were people walking about outside and stuff. I rolled onto my side, to sleep, and got a rock in the ribcage.
It was freezing, all night.
June 17th, 2006
We woke up about 6:30am and sat in the tent for ages, working up the courage to leave what warmth we had inside, to face the world outside.
When we eventually left, we made as mad a dash as possible for the car, and put the heating on full blast and then went to McDonalds, got some stuff to eat, and then headed over to the IMAX across the street, to watch the Grand Canyon Movie (The most watched IMAX movie, ever, apparently).
Then after thinking about it for a while, and seeing the views, in the movie, I decided that I did want to see the canyon by air. We went over to the desk, the woman said that we could take a plane with a guaranteed window seat, I didn’t know how she could guarantee it, but it sounded good, and we went for it.
Turns out, its easy to guarantee a window seat, when there are only 4 seats in the plane, including both pilot seats. The flight was cool, as was the pilot. There was an Italian woman in with us, her boyfriend was scared of flying, it was at this point the pilot announced that he wasn’t scared of flying, but did have a fear of heights.
After we landed, we took a few pictures by the plane, and headed back into the airport – The pilot gave us a couple souvenirs, and then Kristin and I drove up to the canyon. We walked around there for a bit, taking pictures and stuff, then left.
We went to the village, where I bought some postcards. Then headed to see Meteor Crater – The worlds best preserved meteor crater – It was cool.
The guy at the door asked where I was from on the way in, when I said Scotland, he made some joke about how he didn’t have to ask, it was obvious. On the way out, he thanked us for coming, all the way from Scotland(!) and shook my hand.
After that, we headed to Winslow. Which is on Route 66, so we drove some of that. Winslow, is the town, made famous by the song ‘Take It Easy’ by The Eagles.
I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, Such a fine sight to see, Its a girl, my lord, in a flat-bed ford, Slowing down to take a look at me.
…and they’ve really cashed in on that.
Winslow, itself, is really run down and definitely not the City In Motion that the leaflet described it as, unless of course that motion is a downwards motion.
From Winslow, we headed to Kristin’s Mum’s house. We were passing through the town of Snowflake, at first glance, it looks pretty nice, then, after Kristin told me some stories of what’s happened there, you realize it looks too perfect. Too nice.
We got to Kristin’s house, her mum hugged me, then set about trying to give me food. I wasn’t hungry though. Her Mum’s friend, Rudi, was there, he was an Apache.
We had some really interesting conversations. Then, her mum kicked us out, because she didn’t want us to be home too late. We got back to Tucson at around 1am, I headed to bed pretty much straight away.