Christian November 25th, 2009
The drive to Page, Az took an hour less than we had thought it would, so we decided to grab some lunch first at Subway. There are a couple of things that you notice about Page when you arrive there. One is that there is a large number of churches for such a small population. Apparently, they could not get the churches to set up shop during the construction of the dam so they offered the churches free land surronding the high school. When word of this got out, churches of all types came running to build on free land. One of the other main things that you will notice is that you are in the middle of nowhere. Continue Reading »
Christian November 25th, 2009
The drive to Monument Valley was long and boring. However, when we got closer to it, we started to see the buttes looming in the distance. We paid the entry fee for the park and checked into “The View” hotel. It definitly lived up to its name. Looking out of our balcony, we had the most amazing view of the landscape that defined classic Western Films. It was very cool. We relaxed for a bit, and then headed out to explore the hotel. The hotel was really nice and had sweeping views of the park. We found out that there was a few ways to see the park. One was to complete a hike in the heat around West Mittens Butte, another was on a guided tour in the back of a pickup truck, or you could take your own car on the unpaved self drive loop. Since we spent the extra $22 a day on the extra rental insurance, we figured what the hell and decided on venturing out on the 17 mile loop around the park. Continue Reading »
Christian November 25th, 2009
The drive out to the Grand Canyon was about 4.5 hours. We stopped at a view point that looked over Lake Mead. As we crossed over the Hoover Dam, we got some pretty cool glimpses of it. The drive through the desert proved to be very interesting. The road was very straight for the most part and shimmered in the heat. We passed some horror film quality hitch hikers and a guy running through the desert carrying a huge American Flag. The scenery did change along the way as we climbed elevation, with more trees present. At one point we saw a rainstorm on the horizon. When we reached it, it was much worse than it looked. Our rental car was pelted by hail, and rain flooded the roadways with inches of water. Many people pulled over to wait it out, but we pushed on and within 10 minutes it was back to sunny skies. Passing through the town of Williams, we stopped at the Safeway grocery store to pick up some essentials for the Grand Canyon. We bought tons of snacks, drinks, and a bottle of rum to last us through the next couple of remote stops on our itinerary. It was about an hour from there to the Grand Canyon. We were very happy that we had decided to stay closer to the Gran Canyon and spend a bit more money then having to drive an hour to get to the park. Our hotel was decent, but for the money there should have been a couple of things that were advertised that should have been fixed. The internet was down and the ice machine on our floor was broken (We are sounding picky, I know). First thing first after check in, was to get some lunch. We tried to go to the local “cafeteria”, but we could not justify spending almost $10 on a sandwich when there was a Wendy’s next door. The line was long, but we waited it out and grabbed some lunch. We headed back to the room to get our things together for a trip into the park. Continue Reading »
