........After another disturbed nights sleep, which was 100% better than my previous nights, (dam, Kate and her earplugs she slept right through both), we rose at a leisurely hour to begin our days trip. Our first priority was to seek out a post office to send our well overdue postcards, (I was still carrying some from Death Valley). Then to buy some fruit for our journey, step one in our 'we will be thin by the time we come home' regime. The Grand Canyon was about an hours drive from Flagstaff and not what I was expecting at all. I don't actually know why I expected anything as I haven't seen many canyons in my time, but I had a vision and it turned out it sucked. What I expected was one great big hole you could look into ( and ride a mule down) and from any point you stood, you could see the 'hole' of the canyon (pardon the pun). I guess it was simply, a great big hole but 15 to 20 miles long was way beyond my imagination. As we found out there was the north and the south rim (not just the one place to gawk at its splendour), seeing more than one rim was beyond my imagination too, (well my physical capabilities anyway.

So with our new found knowledge and appreciation of 'The Grand Canyon', we pretty much covered the whole of the south rim, mostly with the help of the shuttle bus, which you could hop on and off, but some by foot (honest!). We spent a lovely 3 hours and saw some spectacular views, but the highlight of the day was when Kate walked past a small dog, yapping at us, pulled a funny face and made the poor dog cower and wet itself. I didn't actually see the face she pulled, but it was so affective, we've decided it could work as a detterent to any unwanted attraction we may get on our travels but I don't want to see it, just in case she makes me wet myself, (you didn't see the poor dogs face - terrified).

We did a further 3.5hrs driving to Kayenta, our designated stop for the evening to allow us an easy travel into monument valley the next day. Being the seasoned travellers we are by now, we didn't consider we needed to book accomodation, particularly in a town that barely makes it on any map, ( how wrong we are, most of the time). Obviously, there is no way we could have known that this was a big hunting town and certain animals were in season, (unless we read our guide properly), so we weren't to know, there would be no room in the inn, anywhere. The first place we tried, laughed and said they knew of only 2 available rooms in a dodgy looking place down the road. Not that we fancied dodgy, but that was a no go, as a group of lads overheard this and raced to get there before us. We let them go being the polite, welsh people we are, but not without shouting abuse at them as we passed, ( well, we are British). Hotel 2 and 3 were not much use either, so fingers crossed our last option, which was 12 miles back down the road, had a room for the evening, or it was a nights sleep in the car .............to be continued