Arizona and Nevada

Following our second night in Monticello, we had a five-hour drive through desert to Williams, AZ. It was an uneventful drive until, near the end, we were hit by a monsoon and could barely see 10 m in front of us for quite a while. Fortunately, Amy was driving and we got out of the rain collision-free. Williams is a nice small town on historic Route 66. We had dinner at a very American diner. I bought some hot sauce.

After a good night's sleep (the boys were so worn out by this stage that they had begun to fall asleep easily in the hotels), we headed North for about an hour to the Grand Canyon. This was my second trip to the Canyon, and it was just as breathtaking as the first. There are no fences around the majority of the South Rim; you could just walk right up to the edge! We saw a jumper lying on a rock near the edge and no one around, which was a little concerning.

We drove back to the Interstate and continued on for about five hours to Laughlin, NV, where we were smacked in the face by what felt like 45 °C winds. This was by far the hottest and dryest place we visited. Consequently we spent most of our short stay indoors. Laughlin and Bullhead City sit on opposite sides of the Colorado River, which also serves as the boarder between NV and AZ. We stayed in a paddle steamer hotel. It was the cheapest night, but also one of the most comfortable nights, of the entire trip.

The next day, after breakfast at IHOP we drove about three hours to San Diego. What a joy it was to see the ocean again!

Utah

From Blackfoot, ID, we continued South into Utah. We stopped at the Golden Spike National Monument, which was easily the high point of the trip so far for Micah. This is where the East and West tracks met, thus joing the East and West.

We then continued on to Layton, UT, a large and fairly unremarkable city, where we stayed for two nights. We didn't see any Mormons. But we did see a few billboards aimed at them (e.g. Want to know who Jesus is? Read the Bible!).

The following day we visited Ogden Eccles Dinosaur Park, which is a museum combined with a park containing many life-sized dinosaur models. They also had a sandpit with 'dinosaur bones' buried at the bottom. Following this visit and for the rest of our trip, Reuben never missed an opportunity to dig in the dirt to see if he could find any more.

After a swim in the hotel, and a nice barbecue dinner at Famous Dave's everyone went to bed happy.

The next day, we visited the Hill Aerospace Museum, which is built on the northwest corner of the Hill Air Force Base. It had a lot of aeroplanes from various time periods. I'm not sure what else to say. I'm not really an aircraft guy.

 After that, we had a long drive to Monticello, where we stayed at the Canyonlands Motel, which was the second worst accomodation we had for the entire trip.

We had a whole day at Canyonlands National Park. I love this kind of terrain. So bleak and bare, but so interesting at the same time. We even saw an abandoned cowboy camp in a cave.