On a dark desert highway

The drive east toward the Grand Canyon began a little late as we needed a sleep in following our hectic week in Southern California plus the repacking of the full contents of a house into a car is somewhat of a Tetris challenge.

Approaching Arizona, we passed over some mountainous areas and down into the desert where we watched the temperature jump up over 40 Celsius! There was some spectacular scenery with a bunch of boulders piled everywhere which looked completely out of place and we had trouble figuring out how they might have got there. Mountains turned into open plains and the boulders were transformed into sandy areas where we saw the first cactus of the trip. Not quite the same as one might expect from the movies, but a cactus none the less! 

The windy road made its way rather close to the Mexican border and the US Border patrol cars were everywhere. Thinking it was best not to hang around, we continued on toward Flagstaff; however our pal Jimmy had other plans. Unfortunately for Emma it always seems to be her driving when Jimmy gets into distress. The combination of intense heat and the slightly out of date radiator resulted in a rather hot cooling system and a short rest stop was required. Later inspection discovered a gasket had cracked which was replaced so we could get back onto the road. 

Instead of making it all the way to Flagstaff, we ended up limping into Phoenix and spent the night in the carpark of the local church following the advice of a fellow Walmart shopper! We looked up a car doctor for jimmy and headed across at first light in an attempt to keep our booking at the campsite in the Grand Canyon that night. While jimmy was under the microscope we spent the day at the quietest shopping mall in Phoenix! The place was like a ghost town, so we killed some time by seeing the great gatsby and then spent the rest of the day at starbucks piggy backing off their wifi ! Luckily, the car issue was a simple fix and our new friends Tom and Randy had some great suggestions on where to head next. As usual we walked away from the car service with a couple of extra items on the bill than previously expected but the main thing was Jimmy was back in action! 

Our ever reliant steed cruised off into the sunset with great excitement for what the Grand Canyon would have to offer.