London to Phoenix

Woken early by impatient and excited children can’t really wait myself but there is too much to do……

Drive to Heathrow with plenty of time, even the crappy M25 can’t dent my mood. Thanks to grandma for taking us there and taking our first holiday family photo.

The flight is about as good as a ten hour flight can be and the times are all a bit strange, permanent daylight. To fight the tedium and memories of two truly awful meals, why do they bother trying something fancy when all they need to do give me gin and tonic, I look for the longest film available. Ahh The Hobbit 3 great. watched the first and last two minutes, must remember that for the flight home when I need to sleep.

Get to the hotel with a car and have a couple of beers before passing out. all in all pretty good. oh yes, its HOT.

Phoenix to the Grand Canyon

HOT HOT HOT goodness me its it melting hot. 5 am and we are all awake and its damn hot. siobhan has sowed the seeds of a swim before breakfast in one of the many pools at our hotel. Unbelievably the pool next to our room opens at 5am so we go down at around 6 and yes the water is warm and lovely and this seems to be pretty much the best way to start the wind down week. Breakfast is bready and coffee by the pool.

The water resort is not the best but you can’t have everything so we take a cruise around Phoenix. Jeez its hot. Lunch in an air conditioned bar that boasts “The worlds largest selection of draft beers” 200 hundred in total, I try 2……

Monday morning comes and its the day to leave Phoenix and get to the grand Canyon. Heavy rains have washed out the I10, the link between Phoenix and California, so not may RVs have returned. This means we cannot get our truck until 3pm. we make the best of it by doing some shopping first. We end up at a Food City which is a strange mix of American sugar and Mexican tortillas. Every aisle has some kind of two litre radioactive soft drink and corn tortillas. One deal shows that a 2 litre bottle of coke costs $1.45 but buy 6 and it comes down to $0.75 per bottle. Who buys 12 litres of coke? even for a big party?

Shopping done, I got root beer! And in the RV by 4pm now off to the airport to drop of the hire car, that went really smoothly, I will leave Siobhan to explain that.

and we are off!! Big RV bigger than the last one and the information video you have to watch shows how easy it is to knock the back of the van off if you turn too close to objects so for me every petrol station is fear and slow manoeuvres.

5 hours later, 9.50pm in the dark and I am very very slowly reversing into a small camping spot. sleep…..

The grand canyon

Well, the pictures and the travel blurb don’t really prepare you for it. a quick bus ride from the camp site and its just there, no warning in the geography, no changes of scenery, just a massive hole in the ground that is simply breath taking, as far as a landscape is concerned I have never seen anything like it….

The Campsite is pretty good too!