Welcome to another series of holiday posts, likely filled with photos of food :) This year we’re doing rather more travelling than last, and staying for almost 3 weeks! Step 1, as always, involved getting here. Monday morning, bright and early, we get up after only a few hours sleep to head up to Manchester airport. A short flight (so short that we had to guzzle our drinks at hyper speed as the captain declared it time to land before they’d even given everyone their snack!) and we were in Heathrow :) Here there was a larger lounge with tasty salad to keep our tummies from grumbling :)
Then onto our plane after a slightly mad dash across the airport (we started moving when it said boarding, we were the penultimate couple on the plane!) First up was the new muppets movie (awesome!) whilst we were fed some tasty foods. We’d managed to get our favourite seats by the partition so we could setup the projector to watch some Eddie Izzard for the rest of the flight.
We flew into Phoenix, where there were helpful people in purple jackets :) We picked up our rental car and went on a hunt for our bed for the night. We’d chosen the Travelodge in the hopes of something a little nicer than the scary motels… Alas the name didn’t mean much!
(This photo was taken the next morning, it wasn’t this light when we got there!)
Obviously despite being fed twice on the plane, we were hungry, so off we went to Carl’s for a burger :)
Then it was time for some sleep after a long day of travelling.
Our first proper day was also spent travelling :) Our mission for the day was to get to our hotel by the Grand Canyon, with multiple distractions along the way. Although first, we needed some breakfast!
The first distraction was Sunset Point rest area, where we found not only a pretty view but also our first geocache of the trip :)
Being a rest stop, there were a number of vending machines… and it was hot… so we had ice cream! :o)
Next up was Montezuma Castle, which is neither a castle nor anything to do with Montezuma!
It’s like an ancient block of flats! They built walls to block in a natural cave and then split it into rooms. Alas, we’re not allowed to explore anymore, just view from a distance.
Then a bit more driving, heading to Sedona, but stopping for pretty views along the way:
Where we found some awesome socks! :)
Sedona itself was like a seaside tourist town, except with big red rocks instead of the sea. Also, it had roundabouts! Roundabouts! That was a shock. We drove straight through as it was oddly busy, deciding we’d find lunch in Flagstaff instead.
Our scenic detour included a crazy squiggly road, which went up, up, up a mountain!
Once at the top there was a viewpoint, where we stopped so I could take the following photo to show just how far we’d climbed :)
This wasn’t our highest point of the day! Maximum I’ve seen on a sign so far is 7335! It’s high up here!
Once in Flagstaff we found some lunch at Coco’s Bakery :) It was a random choice because we turned down a dead end and were using their car park to turn around. The food was very good though, hoping we find another!
The next stop was Flintstone Bedrock City :) A rather sadly dilapidated ‘theme park’. Still great, but I bet it was awesome once upon a time. There wasn’t another person there, other than the staff, who never ventured out where we were. It was a little eerie.
Still, lots of good photo opportunities!
Finally, we arrived at The Grand Hotel. Much nicer than last night’s motel ;) After a little rest and a little work we went down to the restaurant in the hotel and ate tasty foods whilst a man played his banjo :) Mmmm, first ribs of the holiday!
