“A man who dares to waste one hour of time, has not discovered the value of life” – Charles Darwin

Today we entered the third state of our American adventure – Arizona. We spent a lot of time on the coach today. Our first stop on the drive was at a town called Kingman, Arizona. It was here that we got the opportunity to go to our first Walmart. It was enormous and they sell absolutely everything. It is a combination of Woolworths + a Big W + a gun store all put together. They sold fireworks and there was a salon and a McDonald’s within the store. Everything in there was really cheap too. We loaded up on snacks for the bus ride. One of these was Twizzlers, which turned out to be terrible. Then we legged it over to Panda Express which is a Chinese food chain. It is akin to Chinese food court food. Pretty average.

We then jumped on the coach, which our driver has named Angela.

We set off for another few hours which was spent driving on Route 66. As we were driving, Braden was telling us interesting facts and history about the area which kept us occupied with his exceptional knowledge base. Our next stop was at a town called Hackberry, Arizona which had a general store that was all old timey themed and was a Route 66 roadside tourist attraction. It had a lot of charm. At this stop we bought some Slim Jims which are kind of like an American equivalent of twiggy sticks.  We enjoyed them.

The next stop, still on Route 66 was Seligman, Arizona. This is the town that is the birthplace of Route 66. It was conceptualised and started there.

It doesn’t begin there though, nowhere near actually. Seligman is the town that Radiator Springs from the Disney movie Cars is based on. It has so much charm. We bought a Dr Pepper there. Ronnie absolutely loves Dr Pepper.

On Angela on the last leg of our drive everyone had to stand at the front and got on the microphone and give and introduction to who they are and where they’re from etc. this took up a lot of time as there are 54 of us plus our tour manager and driver. It was a good way to pass the time. The drive took 7 hours all up including the 3 stops. It went pretty quickly though.

We finally arrived at the Grand Canyon. We are staying tonight inside the actual national park which is pretty amazing. We went to a viewing spot called Mathers point and there is only one word that can describe the Grand Canyon – breathtaking. It makes you feel so small. It truly is enormous and incredibly beautiful. The Grand Canyon is such a stark contrast from Vegas. So much light pollution and so many people there. Here at the Grand Canyon, there are very few people not at the lookouts and it is very quiet and beautiful.

After our brief viewing we drove over to the lodge that we are staying at tonight. It is in the middle of the woods and is very nice. There is absolutely no phone service here which feels really secluded and nice. We had an included buffet dinner in the restaurant here. It was massive. We had pork and you had to build your own salad and could get unlimited soup and refills. We ate dinner with one of the other couples on our tour who are from the Sunshine Coast. It was lovely talking to them during dinner and eating the monstrosity in front of us. We smashed that and had an early night as we are so far behind on sleep and we need to be up and at Angela by 7:15 tomorrow to go for our helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon.

Thanks again for reading everyone.

Much love

Ronnie & Aimee.