Friday, 4 November

We woke at 4.30am… we had arranged to pick Lucas up from the dorms at 5am sharp. I quickly had a shower and enjoyed a nice large bowl of home made muesli. We packed the car quickly and were a couple of minutes late for Lucas.

We jumped on the I-40 towards Flagstaff again. Abby drove first while the rest of us passed in and out of sleep. We made it to Flagstaff and filled up a tank of gas before Lucas stopped at a mortuary (not knowing what one was) to ask for directions. Thankfully there was no service happening.

We drove on and finally made it to the Grand Canyon National Park.

We scoped out the visitors centre before catching the blue line bus to Bright Angle Lodge and walk trail.

There was a hotel here and also a souvenir shop and restaurant. We headed on down the trail and enjoyed the amazing view of the canyon. It was truly incredible.

I haven’t seen anything like it. The erosion from the water had created this vast open spaced and was spectacular.

I made a video of us in the canyon and of monument valley. see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vP-N_OpNO5c

We spend a good 3 hours on the trail before we made it back and enjoyed the warm fire in the lodge. We had plenty of time so we took lots of pictures.

I figured this is where Georgie and Harry will come on their bus tour as there were lots of bus operators at this location.

I left them a note in a hidden crack which hopefully they’ll find and read in just over a months time.

We caught the bus back the car. I might have fallen asleep on the trip back.

It was my turn to drive and along the way to the exit we found some more lookouts and had some fun taking some pictures. It started to rain but definitely didn’t dampen our mood. I was still in awe of the canyon.

We continued on towards Page, I drove for 2 hours before changing over. The roads out this way reminded me of the country roads back home. It was a 2 lane road so we had to battle with high beam lights and all. American drivers aren’t all that fair when it comes to driving etiquette.

We drove across a bridge, only once we’d crossed we read the
name of it. It was the bridge we would jump off tomorrow!

A couple of seconds later we finally made it to the Hotel, called: We were the last ones allowed in the restaurant and I feasted on a Maxx Burger – roast meat and cheese with baked beans on the side. It was needed, but not necessarily filling.

We checked in, the rooms were a 20 second walk. It was so cold outside we drove the car! Snow was expected to fall overnight!

We all showered, I put together the pictures from the day and we watched them before having a few soda’s and headed off to bed. The double beds were rock solid but we were so exhausted we fell asleep very quickly. We all had very deep sleeps thanks to Abby’s friend.