Kanab to Bryce

Breakfast in the Comfort Inn was an exciting affair. For a start, the tables were all occupied by people in sombre dress so we had to share a table with strangers. And for a finish, there was a waffle maker. No place thus far had had a waffle maker so this was exciting. And having had no experience of waffle making, I needed instruction in how to use it. A friendly man (in sombre dress) helped me out but I still managed to britta it by flipping the maker over before er... closing the lid. So some of the batter came out. Yes, clever. Also, I don't actually like waffles but the novelty value here won out.

We shared our table with a friendly couple and their grandchild. I asked them "what's with the sombre dress?" and learnt that they were there for a funeral (skit could have given me fair warning that perhaps my tone could have been softer but no...). The man was incidentally a commercial airline pilot which impressed me somewhat.

After breakfast, we skipped to the building next door which was the visitor information centre for Kanab (it was a good thing that we were at t he Comfort Inn and not the Best Western). We asked for advice on what to do and received directions to a slot canyon called "Lick Wash". Taking the name as a good and amusing omen, we took our new maps and directions and left Kanab.

The route to Lick Wash took us passed an old movie set which appeared like a post-apocalyptic Wild West town (next year's big blockbuster) and onto an unsealed road for about 15 miles. The soft patter of stones on the car reminded us to be glad that the car hire company didn't seem bothered by small scuffs and scratches.

We parked the car at the head of the Lick Wash trail into the slot canyon. We were the only ones there. I signed the day-hike permit book there to record the fact that we were going in and noted that there had been fewer than one group of people per day that month. It wasn't really a popular trail in November.

Lick Wash is in the Staircase. This region of the Staircase was in the white cliffs so the rocks weren't a vibrant colour but they made delightfully interesting formations. Apparently the changing direction of prevailing winds caused the layers of sandstone to change direction but I am not sure what it was that caused the honeycomb effects or the hollows that looked like Darth Vader's helmet.

Skit and I spent most of our time photographing the rock walls and little time progressing through the slot canyon. Again, it was cold, but not too cold and of course we were sheltered from the wind. There were patches of snow on the canyon floor and most of the leaves from the trees had turned and fallen. We sat and ate snacks before turning around and returning to the car.

The road back to Kanab was at a standstill. And then the queue started moving... until we were at a standstill again. It was frustrating and we had no idea why. At some point, heavy vehicles passed us but that in itself was no rational explanation. After our half hour or so delay, we stopped in Kanab for a burger and (sweet potato) fries in a small independent diner and planned our next leg, to Bryce. The route was pleasant and simple, north on a road that wound around hillocks and through villages with the slowing changing rock colour on either side as it passed through the different exposed regions of the staircase. On the drive, a big black SUV was hassling me by sticking on my bumper in a no-passing zone. It finally did pass me of course and about ten minutes later, we passed it on the side of the road with a police car. That kept me grinning for the rest of the drive.

Until Red Canyon. Because at that point, the only thoughts in my head were variations on wow. Suddenly we were in a place with rocks a bright orange-red, much more vivid and awe-inspiring than the vermilion cliffs. The rocks stood up, towers by the roadside. We naturally pulled over and took a short hike amongst the red towers. The sun was low and when the sunlight struck the red rock, it was all the brighter.

A tree in the Red Canyon had been decorated with small stones on its branches and twigs and notches and niches. We added a stone each, close together but not invading each other's personal space.

We drove on through red rock arches, heading towards Bryce with an eye towards hitting the park at sunset. Since we are naturally talented, we were dead on time. No one was at the park entrance so we went on by without paying the fee and headed straight for "sunset point" on the basis that there may be a clue in the name. We parked and got out of the car and then I may have sworn.

The sight of Bryce Canyon was awe-inspiring. Delicate pillars of rock, from needles to towers, some top-heavy, others tapering to a point, had erupted from the canyon floor. For miles the impossible features stretched, in this giant amphitheatre from another world. It was simply unbelievable that such a thing could exist. So different from the disbelief that surrounded the Grand Canyon, this wasn't about size but about bearing witness to art, rock sculptured by nature in exquisite forms.

I kind of liked it.

Skit and I viewed Bryce Canyon in awe (but weren't so stupefied that we couldn't take photos) as the sun set behind us. As the sun disappeared, we left.

We took a drive east to what looked like a promising town on the map but when we got there, the one motel looked dubious (and empty) so we went back to Bryce. At the park entrance, there were a couple of Best Westerns. Just because we saw it first, we went for the Best Western Plus. The foyer was grand with a large fireplace at its centre and furniture made from antlers. We got a room, the cheapest room in the entire trip, and settled down in the fancy digs (we knew it was fancy because there was a superfluous sink).

Skit availed herself of the laundry as I messed with the tv and managed to break it. No matter, I was kept rather busy looking over my photos of Bryce and the "hoodoos" (stone pillars). Late in the evening, we went to the only place open for dinner: Ruby's Restaurant. After eating, we tried to get some star-gazing in but the world was against us as it was cloudy that night. We noted that the temperature had plummeted to below zero but thought no more as we went to bed.

Tusayan to Kanab

We checked out of the hotel in Tusayan after availing ourselves yet again of the buffet breakfast. The route took us east along the south rim of the Grand Canyon passing scenic view after scenic view. Obviously, we needed to get out at every single one of them, worried that perhaps if we missed one, it would turn out to be The Best View. I think we were still struggling to come to terms with the Grand Canyon and wanting to give it every chance to truly impress us.

The view we subconsciously wanted was Grandview. It truly was. I am not sure how this view distinguished itself against all the others but somehow it was the perfect balance of colours and arrangement of peaks. Perhaps a big part of the allure was the fact that a little scurrying brought us to a ledge with huge falls into the canyon as opposed to raggedy slopes. Sometimes the frisson of death lends to the majesty.

There was a board with some human history of the Grand Canyon on it. Spanish explorers "discovered" (from the European perspective) the Grand Canyon in the 16th century and described the hills in the canyon as "bigger than the great tower of Seville" (104.5 m/343 ft). Which is true... And we were amused at the understatement without being critical of it because what else was to be their yardstick? But it does go to show how tough the perspective of the canyon makes it and how much of a struggle it is to put it into terms a human can understand. Another point that amused us was that they thought they could just nip down to the Colorado river to bring back desperately needed water- a quest doomed for failure.

We drove on and detoured to the Tusayan Ruin and museum on the basis of "might as well, we're only here once" (though that is a bit pessimistic). The small museum set the scene for the ruins which date back to the twelfth century. We viewed the ruins and discussed the pros and cons of having your kiva entrance directly above the fire pit and moved on.

Our final viewpoint, the end of this scenic drive, was Desert View. The Desert View Watchtower, shorter than the great tower of Seville, was built in the early thirties and designed by someone called Mary Colter. According to information boards, she was a stickler for details and put a lot of effort into making the watchtower rugged and fairly ruinous looking to make it match the landscape. Personally, I don't think it particularly nice. She achieved what she wanted it seems but I thought it ugly and not worthy of its amazing location. Plus I was nervous about climbing what looked like a tower on the verge of collapse.

The views from the Watchtower included the Colorado Plateau to the east, the Colorado river in the depths of the canyon and of course the usual mind boggling canyon cliffs and hills. It's essentially the end of the Grand Canyon. We toured the gift shop and climbed the watch tower inside which were reproductions of native art. It was nice but there is only so much time you can give to reproductions.

By this point, it was lunchtime, and we went to the little cafe at this location where the server was the moodiest and most unhappy to serve I have ever met in America. As if it was a huge inconvenience to him, he gave us our requested meals. Skit had "desert tea", a spiced herbal drink and I stuck to the normal caffeinated variety. We took our drinks outside and sat on a bench by the edge of the Grand Canyon with a view of the Watchtower to the east. Possibly the best bench in the world (if Carlsberg made benches...). As soon as the drinks were gone, so were we, out of the cold and into the car.

Our journey was full of ups and downs. Grandview was the highest we went at the Grand Canyon (7,400 ft/2,255 m) and was suitably cold so I was wrapped in jumpers, a coat, gloves and a scarf. After that, our elevation dropped until Little Colorado Canyon where we stopped and discovered that it was back to t-shirt weather. Little Colorado Canyon is just east of the Grand Canyon and feeds into the Colorado, as the name strongly implies. The canyon this river carves looks normal. We looked down at its depth and shrugged it off saying, "we could do that in half an hour". We appreciated its normality though and weren't at all heartbroken to leave the monstrous assault to the senses that is the Grand Canyon behind.

Our next stop was a Navajo trading post. There was a scenic point that interested us but to get to it we needed to go through a road-side market place. Being November, it was rather quiet but there were still about twenty stalls open each with a minder that seemed eager for our custom. After walking through the market to the view, taking the required number of photos and then some, we spent some time browsing the stalls and engaging in polite conversation with the people there. The goods on sale were Native American crafts (apparently- I don't know how many were developed just to sell to tourists like us). It was mainly jewelery with a few other trinkets such as bows and arrows, axes, Christmas baubles...

I bought a bauble and a necklace for myself and a Christmas gift for someone else. Skit bought about half a dozen necklaces (give or take) both as gifts for others and herself. I am not sure what drove this sudden need to shop but it satisfied some capitalist urge.

And so on the road again we were, blasting through the Arizona desert to the dulcet sounds of the Now Show. The landscape was abruptly flat, extending off into the distance where peaks brought an edge to the world. Everything was red and orange rock with landscapes of dry matted grasses stretching for miles.

We had a choice of destination as nowhere had been booked for that night. Kanab and Page were equal distances away but the route to Kanab was classed as "scenic" so we took that through the Vermilion Cliffs area. Since our success timing the sunset at the Grand Canyon with our arrival at the perfect point to witness a sunset, we were keen to have a repeat event and time today's sunset with a view of the famous red cliffs of the area. The issue with this was that we were driving west late in a wintry afternoon directly into the low sun.

We paused to switch driving/being-blinded-by-the-sun responsibilities at a place called "Cliff Dwellers" where large and oddly shaped rocks were randomly scattered in a small area. One looked like a mushroom the size of a shed and others had hollows that provided shelter. According to an information board, a woman got caught out in the area overnight and sheltered there. She decided to stay and build a home there. The ramshackle home still stands or rather slumps. I think she must have been mad.

The sunsets in November are pretty long and for this one, we were mainly on the road so we got to view it from a couple of locations. The first was a view point onto the Vermilion Cliffs which were red to begin with and reddened by the setting sun. We were back up at a high elevation so I only darted out of the car briefly to view this one, letting skit grab all the snaps. The route took us higher and higher up to the Kaibab plateau and the National Forest. This took us to the highest point we reached- 9,000 ft/2,700 m. The forest was dark and snow-laden and understandably deserted.

Our second viewpoint of the extended sunset came just as the last light lay on the horizon which would not have been notable except that the horizon was the Grand Staircase-Escalante. This is a series of different coloured rock layers that through a combination of erosion and uplift form a vast staircase. From our vantage point just out of the forest, the profile of the Grand Staircase was illuminated by the last light of the sun.

Again, cold and complaining, I hurried back to the car with skit in tow and we went on, with Mykey helpfully telling us exactly how many miles we had left in the tank. the next town was Fredonia and the name appealed to us so much we decided to find accommodation there. We failed. It was a small town with one nasty looking motel so instead we kept on the road and went through the border into Utah.

On the outskirts of Kanab, we saw a sign for the "Comfort Inn" with directions "right at the traffic light". We joked that perhaps Kanab only had the one traffic light... It did. As we entered the town, it grew apparently that it wasn't much bigger than Fredonia and comprised mainly of petrol stations. Having seen the sign first, we shunned the Best Western in town for the Comfort Inn.

By looking in the directory in the room, we discovered that there were far more churches than restaurants in town. Not really having much choice, we ended up in a kind-of Mexican food place and yet again I had fajitas (but they were actually better here). Notably, there was actually a vegetarian menu here. In the Bay Area, vegetarianism is not uncommon and yet still finding vegetarian options in a normal restaurant isn't easy and yet here on the border between Arizona and Utah, there was a selection of dishes.

The only other notable thing about this restaurant was that there was deep fried ice-cream for dessert. Yes, we indulged.

Dates

17th December - 2nd January UK (mainly Tunbridge Wells)

Otherwise, still in California.

A Day at the Grand Canyon

The combination of Mountain Time (an hour ahead of the west coast) and the breakfast buffet closing at 9am meant that skit and I had to get up far too early for a holiday day. Somehow, we made it down to breakfast at a good time and ploughed into the buffet. Having learnt from the day before, I came clutching my own tea bag this time, something guaranteed to be effective. We had fruit, fry-up and French toast (and maybe pancakes too) and were sufficiently stuffed for a hike.

We parked at the Bright Angel trailhead and got our first proper view of the canyon. I had seen it before (in fact, I had been at Bright Angel Lodge before but had forgotten) and my reaction was the same: strangely underwhelmed.

The thing is, the Grand Canyon is too big and too far outside my usual sphere of experience for me to comprehend. I put on an enthusiastic face though and asked skit what she thought. Her response was muted which I took to mean that she was similarly unable to process what it actually was. Perspective is utterly lost at the Grand Canyon as the other side of the canyon and the large peaks in the middle, carved into existence by the Colorado river, just appear as a 2D backdrop. The rock colours are fantastic but muted into pastels at that distance making for a peculiar painting by someone who clearly just likes rocks too much to be healthy. The canyon is just too insane. One river made all of this? This medley of peaks and troughs extending for 277 miles (and 18 miles wide) was created by a river continuously changing its mind over whether it wanted to go? I don't mean to suggest I find it unbelievable, I just find it hard to grasp that something like this was created using the same physical processes as you find throughout the world. It's so unique, so far from the gorges I am familiar with that I have no frame of reference to determine whether I like it or not. In fact, the way that I cannot form an opinion of the Grand Canyon is enough to frustrate me into disliking it but that brings me to the paradox of now having an opinion and so liking it again.

It's tough.

The goal of the day was to gain an appreciation for the Grand Canyon by attempting to walk down into it.

Signs at the top of the trail stressed how lives had been lost in the attempt to go down to the bottom of the canyon and back up again in one day. I actually know someone who has done it (in the winter no less where daylight hours are limited) but skit and I never considered it at all. We were starting pretty late in the morning and did not want to be caught out after dark.

Our hike down was slow. We each had the mind of a goldfish and would walk five steps and go "ooh, I really do have to take a photo of this view" and then walk another five steps and take yet another photograph. As a result, we took about a thousand photographs of the exact same view at slightly varying elevations. The sunlight was not our friend as the south wall was in shadow and the north was brightly lit so there was no exposure that could get both foreground and background but we kept on trying anyway as the sun moved wondering if the new position might in some way change things.

Skit's camera has a "dramatic tone" setting which was a constant source of amusement in the trip especially when, as was the case with the Grand Canyon, the subject was pretty dramatic to begin with. It also had a "pop art" setting which did madness to the already bright colours of the rocks.

We managed to go down only 3 miles (3 miles on the path- obviously vertically we didn't fall that much as the Grand Canyon is only a mile deep) passing blue jays and ground squirrels en route. We noted the changing rock as we crossed from one strata to another and played with the echoes in a segment of the trail that was in a slight crevice. The path was covered with signs of pack-mules (prints and droppings) but we didn't see any up close.

We had lunch at our 3 mile point in the early afternoon and then turned around to get back up to the top of the rim in time to get somewhere for sunset. Getting to a point for a view of the sunset became our goal several times on this trip. Having already too many photos, we didn't pause so much so going back up was quicker. I felt the high altitude as I gasped for breath to do the climb but somehow survived and enjoyed the exertion.

Once at the top, we decided to follow the rim trail west in a desire to find a different view of the Grand Canyon from the one that had been our friend for the past five hours. It was getting colder and the rim trail was deceptively long so we only walked a couple of miles before hopping on a bus that ran parallel to the footpath. We didn't exactly know where we were going- we just wanted somewhere good for a sunset- but on a whim elected to jump off at Mojave Point. Immediately we were greeted by sundogs in the sky. A good start.

The view of the canyon from here was stunning. We could see the Colorado River and identify the rapids. Maybe the hike down the side of the canyon had done the trick in making us more appreciative of the canyon. Certainly it must have helped us identify the variation in the landscape rather than be overwhelmed with rock. The views east and west from this location were each unique and interesting.

The landscape both darkened and reddened as the sunset progressed and skit and I went from parapet to parapet snapping alternately the canyon and the sunset itself. Against the subtle tones of the early sunset were dark contrails. The "inverse contrails" delighted us. The sunset deepened and grew more vibrant until skit and I just looked at it agape proclaiming "I don't even have a word for that colour!", "Maybe fluorescent cerise?"

It was horribly cold as soon as the sun was below the horizon. All the people there piled on the last bus bus when it came just before the last light from the sky vanished. As we boarded, the sky just decided to become ridiculous with reds, oranges and yellows beyond what we thought sunsets capable of. We shook our heads as we gave up in attempting to capture it with our cameras.

Back in the village, we checked on the laundry but it was closed for the day so skit resigned herself to hand-washing that evening. We were then on a quest for dinner not being excited about returning to the hotel. We didn't really know where we could go but just parked up in the village and started wandering aimlessly in a car park. Someone cried out, "are you looking for El Tovar?" I said yes even though we weren't and got directions. We followed them through the back entrance to the impressive looking El Tovar hotel. We peered into the restaurant and bar but kept our distance, intimidated by the luxury of the place. There was a menu on display for the restaurant at the Bright Angel Lodge and we were somewhat tempted by the not unreasonable prices. I got a map from the gift shop in the lobby and we found our way to Bright Angel Lodge.

It probably wouldn't have been difficult during the day or during warmer weather. But we were definitely below freezing this evening.

The gift shop at Bright Angel distracted us for quite a while but eventually we found somewhere to eat. Not the advertised restaurant but a more down-to-earth and family style eatery. Skit had a huge portion of ribs whilst I had beef fajitas. There was some mocking with regards to my eating skills but I think I coped rather well.

It really was cold outside. So very cold. We were going to head out far from the lights of the village to do some star gazing. But I just wanted to head to warmth and when no obvious spot for star gazing presented itself, we just headed to the hotel. On leaving Bright Angel Lodge, we did see that the sky appeared particularly busy but of course pollution from the lodge and other buildings was still present. I regret not pressing to find a place from which to see the Milky Way. We tried star gazing in Bryce (where it was probably colder but by that point, cold weather was less of a shock to little Californian infected me) but there was cloud cover. And then in Zion we were just a bit too sozzled. In the end, we did get to do some star gazing in Port Angeles. But I bet it would have been better at the Grand Canyon.

Needles to Tusayan

Breakfast was back at the restaurant (Juicy's?) that was somehow linked to the hotel and it needs to be noted that they did not have Good Tea. It needs to be noted because I need an excuse for why I almost killed a child aimlessly wandering in a supermarket car park.

We hit the road, aiming to leave the interstate and get onto Route 66. It wasn't much longer than the interstate thanks to much of it being straight and with a 65mph speed limit (which we took under advisement) and a lot more interesting. "Historic" route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles (and vice versa) but now is no longer contiguous and some sections have been transformed into interstates. Route 66 in Arizona is essentially a tourist destination with the small towns along it clearly catering for bikers and motor enthusiasts with a ridiculous number of mechanics along the way.

An orphaned portion of Route 66 took us deeper into Needles where we saw what a small and quiet place it was. We left as soon as we could, back onto the interstate and then off onto the long portion of Route 66 running from Needles to Seligman.

Immediately on exiting the interstate, we were faced with a stunning spectacle of the desert landscape. And also the sign "Mile 1".

We drove on with the mile signs incrementing and desert landscape on either side. Some portions were protected nature reserves. The desert landscape wasn't particularly varied- it seemed that plant life was abundant but it was all the same plant, or pretty much. Low lying and greyish bushes dotted the sandy expanses in regular intervals on the main. The desert in my mind was sand dunes but the desert in reality, in this area, was rocky and with poor soil but not incapable of supporting life.

We drove on through the desert (in a car with no name*) through to Oatman, with me making myself slightly travel sick by playing with skit's camera far too much from the passenger seat. Oatman was a heaving mining town in the first half of the twentieth century with a transient population around 10 000 people. They apparently mined 1.8 million ounces of gold. But now, it's a ghost town with a population around 100 just clinging on for the small amount of tourism that comes in. And plenty of burros. These are donkey descendants of the original pack-animals here during the gold mining days. Though wild, it's clear that they are well looked after both by tourists and by the small population living there. Most of the shops (all tourist traps) sold burro food and the burros approached everyone in the usually correct expectation that food was in the offing.

Oatman was a town with a sense of humour with names like "The Glory Hole", "Prospector Bob's Mine" and "Fast Fanny's Place". We mosied up the street (it's a one street town and that street is Route 66), harangued by burros wanting to be fed, on a raised wooden "sidewalk". It wasn't exactly a movie set for a western but it was close with ramshackle wooden buildings and beat-up painted signs.

Though signs proclaimed that there were (staged) gunfights at 1pm, we didn't see any so we guessed that they were inside the buildings (there was a theatre and a bar) rather than out on the street though everything I read online prior to coming here suggested it was on the street. In retrospect I wonder if we were confused by the time difference between California and Arizona. Nevermind, we were entertained enough by the burros and atmosphere of the place.

We drove on to Kingman via Sitgreaves Pass through the Black Mountains which was a fun bit of abrupt elevation and tight corners in an otherwise straight and easy road. Historically, this pass was the death of many Model Ts that attempted the journey across the US. At Kingman, we stopped for lunch in a fairly kitsch 50s style diner decked out in a kind of minty green and bright pink. Their speciality appeared to be a tower of onion rings a couple of feet tall; the three people at the table next to us devoured a tower in a few minutes.

Route 66 between Kingman and Seligman, after which we had to go back onto the interstate, was dreadfully dull but made slightly more entertaining by "Burma Shave" signs. I knew of this advertising campaign from Quantum Leap (the pilot episode). They are a series of five signs with the first four being a four-line poem and the final sign presenting the product name. The signs in this area seemed to be somewhat more sparse than what was intended and we were often presented with only two or so of the four lines of the poem leaving us to guess what else was there.

For example, we saw one sign that read "Roses are pink" and then after a couple of moments another sign read "Who drive and drink". Googling tells me that the full rhyme is:
Violets are blue
Roses are pink
On graves of those
Who drive and drink
Burma-Shave

Most of the rhymes seemed to contain a road safety message from the snippets we caught.

We were also entertained by watching the mile signs increment and then suddenly change in value as soon as we got back onto the interstate. We thought they were just counting our miles along the historic route 66 but actually there were on every road in this trip in Arizona, Utah, Nevada and, later, Washington too (in Washington the mile sign had a silhouette of the eponymous figure on them). Quite an oddity and somewhat fun.

Our destination for the day was Tusayan (still in Arizona) which is the nearest town to Grand Canyon Village on the south rim. We stopped off at a Safeway in Williams to get supplies and headed north on a more minor road as the day turned to night. The sunset was pretty remarkable out of the car window and pretty long this mid-November day.

We found the hotel, hiding behind the IMAX in Tusayan. By this point, the temperature was sub-zero. The day on route 66 had been spent in "t-shirt weather" (even t-shirt weather by my reckoning) but the South Rim is at some significant elevation. The hotel had an inner atrium which meant that we could get from our room to the restaurant without much of an excursion outdoors. Skit and I enjoyed a nice dinner with nice wine and braced ourselves to go to our first proper destination the next day: the Grand Canyon.



* Mykey was clearly a demon possessing it but the car itself was nameless except for the descriptor "ace" which was derived from the number plate.

LAX to Needles

I navigated my way to LAX International Arrivals by means of identifying skit's aeroplane during taxiing to the gate and keeping that as my bearing. Once there I was left wondering, had she been through already? Her plane had arrived before mine but how much before? skit had immigration, baggage retrieval and customs to deal with and I did not.

And so I checked the area, the seats and nearby shops and eateries. No sign of her. And so I joined the people waiting at the gate and started to play "guess the flight". The people that were coming out were definitely Chinese and so, I reasoned, from the flight before skit's, judging by the scheduled arrival time.

Eventually the flavour of disembarker became Pacifican, if that is the correct term which I doubt, and I continued to wait impatiently for skit.

People watching was kind of fun. There was someone at the gate waiting for a "Mr J Hardy" according to the card he held in front of him. The last time I was at International Arrivals, I saw a sign for "Stephen Fry". Come, collect all the comedians that engage in Radio 4 style silliness.

As I waited, I wondered how I would greet skit. Should I be joyful or reserved? Of course, going hand in hand with this train of thought was the question of how I felt about meeting her and spending two weeks on a holiday with her. And so I ultimately decided on reserved as the most appropriate way to display my nervousness about whether things would go smoothly and about whether we'll be annoyed by each other too much.

When I saw her emerge from customs, dwarfed by the backpack she carried, we exchanged a nod of recognition and she manoeuvred around the obstacles to reach me. Once face to face I said something like "I'll try not to smell you- I understand you are stinky" (in reference to her last message to me before she boarded the plane) and we hugged. Possibly she deserved a little more "Oh my God, it's been too long, how I have missed you!" but one has a reputation to maintain.

One trip to the toilet (each), one purchase of Evian (each) and one nearly empty bus later, we got our hire car from Enterprise. I agonised over who to rent from for so long, reading customer reviews and researching cars. In the end, I chose a non-budget (but not too expensive) company to avoid the horror stories of unreliable cars and unexpected charges. Most of what we paid was in airport fees and taxes anyway (plus a premium since we were going to return it to a different airport which I don't regret) and indeed, there were no extra charges even for adding skit as an additional driver which was superb.

Our car was just great. A Ford Fusion with a penchant for mind games and purveyor of unhelpful advice. The dashboard display informed us when "Mykey" thought we were going too fast and "Mykey" would beep just to drive the point home that 75mph was pushing it. And then at 80mph, Mykey would just refuse to go any faster. For roads where the speed limit was 75mph, this was somewhat frustrating. This didn't often happen on the roads leaving LAX though; these roads were chockablock with traffic and it felt like it was taking us an age to get out of LA. The city stretched forever.

We stopped at around 3pm for a late lunch in a shopping mall. It seemed rather dull but oddly appropriate that skit's first port of call in America should be a shopping mall. We ate burgers, again, appropriately. Due to a mix up with the order, skit ended up with four portions of chips. It was vaguely amusing (to me anyway).

In the end, we drove until about 8pm. We discovered an odd feature about our car in that there were interior lights that grew obvious as darkness fell. These lights were purple. They lit up our bottles of water in the cup holders and gave an ethereal glow to our foot wells. The aforementioned mind games had begun. Some time later in our trip, the lights were orange. And we have no idea why they changed.

8pm took us to Needles on the border between California and Arizona. We drove through the Mojave Desert to get there but it had been dark since leaving LA so all we saw was an expanse of "dark". Needles was a glow on the horizon that spread out to the north and south, a band of lights, and it appeared to be a large town. The next day we were to discover that it really wasn't- it was just very linear running along a river.

We took a random turning off the interstate and onto a minor road with the transition between the two being ridiculously rough and pot-holed as if no one admitted responsibility for a few metres. A Best Western stood before us and not having the patience to explore the area and shop around, we just pulled into the hotel parking and booked ourselves a room. We were informed that we would get double the points if we also stayed in a Best Western Plus on our trip but not knowing what points meant and not expecting to stay in a Best Western again, we ignored the information. We ended up staying in Best Westerns whenever we could, of course, except for in Kanab when we randomly became disloyal to the chain.

On registering, we were asked to describe our car. We managed the make but when it came to car colour, we hesitated. We decided that it was probably grey and put that on the form. On returning to our car, we confirmed that it was grey and moved the car and our bags to our hotel room. The next morning, the car was blue. Mind games. It changed colour quite frequently depending on light conditions.

That evening we went to a restaurant somehow affiliated with the hotel. Obviously it was cheaper for the hotel to outsource to a restaurant to provide meals than to run a restaurant itself. Having had huge burgers in the middle of the afternoon, we weren't terribly hungry and stuck with salads (which we failed to get through) and shakes (which I think I failed to get through too, not being helped by how it was topped up considerably).

It wasn't a hugely eventful day. skit had begun telling me stories of her trip so far but it needed a few days for her to complete her tale. It was great to be back in her company. Just... very easy. And pleasant. There is still a lot of dancing around each other in attempting to gauge the other's feelings and not tread on their toes too much but it never feels like a chore. For me at least. But then, when we walk in pace together, it is always skit matching her stride to mine. It doesn't work the other way or indeed with compromise. I didn't even realise until this trip. But whatever, the nerves were dispelled.