“This is why you’re fat...”

There’s a website out there in the interwebs called “this is why you’re fat”. People send in pictures of food from all over the US like deep fried cheeseburgers and such. I would suggest that if you have a weak stomach that you don’t look this site up. The reason I’m talking about the website is that for supper this evening we had a bag of Doritos and some of Reese’s peanut butter cups. Don’t tell Reese, he’s a bully. We finished off by going to Denny’s for some grease at 10pm, and of course, an oreo milk shake to start. Tomorrow is going to be fruit and vegetables.

More interestingly however, our day started off great in Beaver, with a somewhat relaxed start. With no traffic and an ensuing turnoff, I was apparently coasting along at 88mph while looking at the GPS. I know the exact speed because a nice gentleman in a white car pulled me over to tell me. I batted my eyelashes and proclaimed “I’m from Canada eh, ...” and he left me with a warning, a $115 early Christmas present in his words. Too bad the police weren't more like the ones we drove by in Kanab...

So no ticket, and a more careful eye on the speedometer, we started heading up a secondary highway towards the Grand Canyon. At one point the road elevation was 8042 ft, which is 2451 meters. I believe that’s higher than the peak of Moose Mountain, and over a kilometre higher than Roger’s pass. Crazy.

We drove by some signs for Bryce’s canyon, and being on a canyon finding type of trip, we decided to swing by. Less than 5 minutes later we found red rock canyon. I don’t think I can ever go back to Drumheller now after being here. And we were just getting started. After walking around in the snow for a while, we got back into the car and headed for the Grand Canyon.

We came across the end of Glen Canyon at the Glen Canyon Dam and decided to stop in, but weren’t interested in any dam tours. The dam was pretty impressive, much more so than Dixon Dam on Glennifer Lake, but more importantly, one of the staff informed me of a short hike to Horseshoe Bend just past the Walmart. Any hike just past a Walmart has got to be good, and it turned out to be my favourite part of the day.

We hurried back to the car, racing against the sunset to get some photo time in at the big canyon. The sun set about 15km before we got to the park, but we paid our $25 to get in, ouch, as it was still light out. We raced to the first lookout point and jaws dropped. It was also very cold, so I fired off as many photos as I could before I couldn’t feel my hands.

Right now we’re sitting in Flagstaff Arizona, and probably the worst part of Arizona. The town’s elevation is 2106m or 6900ft, which is kind of neat, but the hotel smells like cheap aftershave, and I’m a little worried about waking up in a bathtub full of ice sans kidney. Tomorrow we’re probably going to skirt through Phoenix and go on to Tucson, which is just an hour north of our border crossing into Mexico. We might camp there if it’s warm enough, as here the temperature tonight is -12 on the Celsius. But Tucson is supposed to be 20 during the day and 5 at night, so we’ll see. Still need to tint the car, and poppa needs a new pair of shoes.

Tyler.