Arizona

Two hours later and we were still stuck on the freeway, mostly at a complete standstill. There was some important person being escorted up the freeway ahead of us and the police were taking up all the lanes around whoever this person was, so the rest of the traffic was totally backed up behind. We were thankful that it wasn't summer here as I would not like to be stranded on the freeway in the summer heat here. So anyway, eventually we came to the Hoover Dam which took forever, and I mean forever, to get across and it didn't even look that impressive anyway!!

From there, the drive to Flagstaff, Arizona was pretty straight forward although as we drove through the desert it began to snow. It was strange seeing snow falling in the desert but it didn't cause us a problem as we were nearly at our hostel. Having left Las Vegas in the sunshine, wearing shorts and T-Shirt, we then got out of the car in Flagstaff to below freezing temperatures – it was a bit of a shock to the system. We checked straight into the hostel to get warm!

The hostel was an odd little place, it reminded us of a huge student house. All the furniture was old and it was super hippy, but it seemed OK (as OK as anything was going to seem compared to the Bellagio). We decided to head straight out for lunch and were pleased when the guy behind reception recommended a place called Beaver Street Brewery – he knew us well already! Te brewery was just round the corner and we instantly knew we would like Falgstaff. It's an historic small town in Arizona and you can actually walk places rather than drive, which is so nice! So we walked in the light snow to the Brewery and sampled some of their home made beers – my favourite being Bramble Berry, which tasted like squash! We had the most awesome meal and we were having good feelings about Flagstaff. We came out of the restaurant and saw that the snow was coming down really heavy now. The ground was covered with more snow that I think I've ever walked in and it was all Christmassy and beautiful. For the first time I felt Christmassy – you can't feel like it's Christmas when you're in hot countries!

We walked back to the hostel and settled down for what would be the first of many sleepless nights, as this hostel turned out to be the noisiest place we've ever stayed. I don't know what it was about this hippy house but it just seemed to attract noisy hippies, old and young. I think somewhere on the website it must have said, please only stay here if you are really inconsiderate and loud, and we must have missed that when we booked it! Not only were the walls paper thin and the hippies really loud, but to add to it, the pub outside attracted a rowdy bunch and there was certainly no double glazing. I tried the earplugs that we had but they didn't help! Nevertheless, we stayed at that hostel 4 nights because it was nice to stay in one place for a long time and the confine of our little room did begin to feel like home.

As for the rest of our stay in Arizona I'm afraid that, while it was awesome, I don't think there's going to be too much to say really on the blog. I feel Kev's role will be more important here and the pictures will speak for themselves, but never one to give Kev the staring role that he perhaps deserves, I will continue to bore you with some written blog first anyway!

So the first morning in Flagstaff we had a lie in and then just spent the afternoon wandering around the town and getting to know the place. This is the sort of America I had wanted to come to...really old cattle ranchy style buildings and just a really welcoming lovely atmosphere. We went back to the Brewery for lunch again and even popped to Walmart to get some supplies. We declined to pick up one of their many guns in Walmart and I was disappointed that we they didn't sell fruit and vegetables. Then we headed back to the hostel for yet another sleepless night.

The next day we went over to the Grand Canyon. I'd wanted to visit the Grand Canyon since I was little, so I was really looking forward to it. We could only visit the south rim as the north rim is closed in winter, but that was OK. It was about a 2 hour drive to the south rim and it was awesome. As I say, there's no point me being cheesy and trying to describe it, the pictures will show you. We used the shuttle bus to take us to a few different view points. It's really high in the Canyon (and in Flagstaff), 7000ft above sea level so it feels like you're out of breathe all the time, even when you just do a little walking. Anyway, the best one being the Pima Point (or something like that) – that viewpoint really gave you the chance to see the scale of this place and the Colorado river and the Grand Rapids below, it was absolutely beautiful.

Once we had breathed in the sights we began our trip out of the national park. We were driving down this huge road, which seemed like a main road, and were searching for a sign to tell us the speed limit. We saw the sign for 45 mph too late and by that time we had the police behind us and yep, before we knew it they were flashing their lights and we were being pulled over. Neither of us have ever been pulled over by the police before so it was kind of exciting and I totally felt like we were on a TV show. So the guy in his sherrify uniform and little cowboy hat came and tapped on the window and Kev rolled the window down. He informed us that we had been going 61mph in a 45mph and asked if we had any reason for going so fast. Kev explained that we didn't realise we were speeding and then we heard that line, ha, I would have loved it if I hadn't been worried about a fine...'License and registration documents please'.

The Sherrif guy took away our passports, vehicle registration and driving licenses and made us sit and wait for like 15 minutes. Then he came back and told us he was going to let us off with 'no fine, no nothing!'. He handed Kev the documents back and noticed that Kev was shaking like a leaf. 'Why you so nervous, why you shaking?'. It was hysterical because we'd seen that on 'Police, Camera, Action' where they pull people over and they're shaking so the police search the car and find like stash loads of drugs in the vehicle. So immediately, I'm thinking, ah great, they don't know that Kev shakes like a leaf all the time and now they're going to search the trunk!! But it was all fine and Kev explained that he'd never been pulled over before so he was a bit nervous. The police man could not believe that by our age we'd never been pulled over before, but he bought it (good, as it was the truth) and he let us go after having a bit of a joke with us about how he should make our first time a bad time so we don't do it again. We assured him that we'd learnt our lesson and I restrained myself from advising him that American roads really should have more signs to tell people what the speed limit is – I don't think that would have gone down too well! The fact that he found it hard to believe we'd never been pulled over might go some way to demonstrate to you how many traffic cops there are here. You're constantly seeing people getting pulled over – I'm sure they're just there, waiting at the side of the road, so that they can make more American Road Cop TV programmes!!

Back at the hostel we chilled out and then headed to a place called Maloneys, another pub in the town centre. We couldn't stay in for the entire evening, even though we were trying to save money. We had no TV in our room and that hostel was so god dam loud. And in addition to it all, just through the centre of Flagstaff is this railway line and every 15 minutes or so (maybe it's more like every ½ hour) a huge huge huge train goes by and toots it's horn for ages, while the crossing bell tolls for even longer. It's deafening whenever it goes by and it does that 24 hours a day!

The next morning, we got up and headed to Sedona. Sedona had been totally recommend to me by Dominic and so I was keen to go there. The drive was only about an hour and it wasn't even that many miles, but it was a road full of switchbacks, which are like windy roads, so it took ages. When we arrived in Sedona, it was beautiful, although very geared up for tourists. But it was nice because at this time of year there's hardly any tourists in these areas – too dam cold for most sane people – my Fiji suntan is now well and truly gone, in fact, Kev was almost black when he left Fiji, that's no longer the case!

We stayed in Sedona for a couple of hours, browsing and buying my final ring and then we headed back up the switchbacks to the hostel for our last night in Flagstaff. We didn't actually do anything that night, just watched a couple of films on the lap top and put up with the screaming children that had come to stay in the room next to us for the night. We made a good plan of what we intend on doing and where we plan to go over the next couple of weeks, but that's changing all the time. For example, the plan was to wake up today and drive to Page. We did that, and then we kept going, so the plan's changed already.

So today we did drive to Page. The drive was desolate and kind of freaky – it's wierd to drive for hours and see literally nothing but desert. It made me a bit funny to think how far away we were from a coastline, probably further than I've ever been from a coastline. Kev couldn't understand why that mattered, and I don't know why really, just feels strange. We passed through many little native townships, which were strange too. They have these little huts, almost like shanty town huts along the road and then there's other townships which you know are just full of rednecks with their millions of wrecked trucks out in their ranches. We stopped at the Colorado Horseshoe Bend point near Page and wee parked the car to walk the ¾ miles over the dunes to the lookout point. It was an awesome sight, but neither me or Kev could bring ourselves to get close enough to the edge to take a really good photo! That point is super high and there's no railings or barriers, just a huge drop of about 5000ft to the Colorado River.

We drove on to the entrance to Antelope Canyon, which people had said we should see. It's a beautiful sand dune that has been petrified and sculpted by the wind to form this beautiful scenery. But when we got there they weren't letting people through on their own and we would have had to get in a truck with this woman who would have charged us about £40 to drive us the 3 miles to the canyon and then she would have waited an hour for us to look around and then drive us back. For one, we didn't want to pay £40 and two, we didn't want to spend an hour there. So we decided not to bother, we'll probably regret that, but there we go, plenty more to see.

We then drove in to the centre of Page to find out how we get to see Lake Powell. We were directed over a big dam and there we found the view point. Lake Powell is huge, but it's not the same of like Lake Taupo in New Zealand. In Lake Taupo it looks like a sea, you can't even see the other shores, but in Lake Powell, it's a different shape, it's long and so it doesn't look that impressive, I'm sure many people will disagree with me, and we have started to wonder whether we've seen so much on this trip that now things aren't standing out to us like they should do!

We drove back into Page to check out where we were planning on staying, but when we got back to the centre we decided we didn't really want to stay there. There was nothing wrong with Page, but nothing that really kept us there either. It was only 1pm and we didn't know what we would fill our time doing if we stayed. Page was only founded in the 1950s, so it's not the most beautiful of towns (although obviously the surrounding scenery is nice). And it really seemed like the only thing there was millions of churches – seriously, I've never seen so many. So we decided to drive on up to Kanab, which was where we had planned on staying tomorrow night.

An hour and a half later we had crossed the Arizona border and were now in Kanab, Utah. Again, this was a small town, but nicer than Page, but still, not a huge reason to stay. It was now only 3pm and the drive to Bryce Canyon (which was the point we wanted to get to eventually anyway, Page and Kanab were just stop off's in case the drive was too long) was only another hour and a half. I wasn't keen on spending a night in Bryce Canyon as it's 9000ft above sea level, which creeps me out, so we agreed to stay in the nearest town – a place called Panguitch.

Panguitch is a strange place, but nice enough. There's nothing here and the people have super strong accents and the guy who checked us into our motel seemed like a total redneck, but it's a sweet little place. We popped to the shop, got some dinner and settled in for a night infront of the TV – we've been 4 days without one, so it's nice to have normality back in our room, even if outside is totally alien.

Tomorrow we'll head to Bryce Canyon and then up towards Moab to see the arches, but for now, I'll let Kev show you what I've been talking about in a visual form. xx