On the Road

The early start we had hoped to get was overtaken by a minor disaster at the car hire firm. Some poor customer service and several hours later we had a car and a map, some pre-mixed CDs and the enthusiasm of those who have only had three or four hours sleep; we were raring to go. Grand Canyon here we come!

After the initial excitement of the Hoover Dam which was surprisingly amazing, and a vast lake just outside Vegas, the journey gave way to the dull and unrelenting Arizona desert. With the sun baking down and the air con on full, our faces and lips began to shrivel and the tedium meant we actually became eager to visit the jerky shop which had teasingly began to advertise itself from 30 miles away, despite the fact that this would in turn desiccate our insides as well. The jerky stop was actually two small shed like stores in the middle of nowhere, with empty shelves and overpriced goods, and suspiciously stained but extremely friendly staff. We bought yet more water, some jerky and headed off again in search for lunch. No more than a mile later, the empty desert gave way to a large town which had we known, we could have actually just stopped here for all our needs. Still, we had the jerky.


It seemed like we spent most of our trip either on the road or not sleeping with a few pit stops for wonderment. The journey to the Grand Canyon took so long that we had to stop in a town outside called Flagstaff, an old route 66 town, to try to get some sleep before heading to the Canyon the next day. We were only at the Canyon a couple of hours before heading off again. Still, there is only a finite amount of wow's that one person can say. I'm sure Flagstaff was lovely too but we only saw the inside of our motel room, and at some limited points in the night, our eyelids. The next day's breakfast was in another old route 66 town called Williams, and was a proper 50s style diner with slow old fashioned service, which at any other time we would have appreciated more, but for now we needed to fill our tired faces and get back on the road.

Along the journey we passed through two security points, one agricultural stop where we panicked unnecessarily about a banana we had, and whole towns just full of every variant of fast food you can imagine and some petrol. We never saw any of the radar or planes which allegedly monitored the speed of cars on the freeway. We 'met' some interesting types on the road - fellow drivers who may or may not have passed their driving test, people who liked to stare a lot at outsiders in some of the smaller towns, and last but by no means least, the wardrobe man. He had ingeniously taken out the back seat of his car and inserted a pole where he had then hung numerous garishly patterned and brightly coloured shirts. He was in a convoy with a woman we assumed was his wife who wore what looked like short pyjamas; and between them they took about twenty minutes to get fuel, wash their windscreens and generally not notice that we were waiting almost patiently behind them to get our petrol.

Our mood was in the main, somewhere between delirious and irritable. We were over tired and hysterical and the slightest thing could set us off into fits of stomach wobbling, mirth tear producing laughter. In fact, we were so susceptible to the ridiculous that we decided that when Mike asked us to make the Star Trek hand sign at the Hoover Dam, that not only was it an excellent idea, that it was also hilarious. Luckily, Mike had set the camera to a weird setting so the end result looked like we were in mid alien abduction, which was probably fitting.