Freezing in Arizona

Well we've now seen snow in each month of our trip. Freak snowfall in London in February, knee-deep snowdrifts in Spain in March and now, bizarrely, snow in Arizona in April. I'm starting to think that we should offer our services to ski resorts. We are currently in Flagstaff, Arizona and the outside temperature is -1 degree C. All of the clothes that we have with us are designed to keep us cool in hot and humid climes and are doing very little at to keep us particularly warm. The issue is exacerbated to some degree by the fact that the, less than luxurious, Highland Motel in Flagstaff is not equipped with a particularly effective heating system. It also happens to be on the side of a 24 hour railroad and so we are not anticipating getting a great deal of sleep this evening. Reena is currently huddled under a duvet muttering that she will be choosing tomorrow night's hotel..

The US itinerary to date: Dallas -> LA -> Las Vegas -> Grand Canyon -> Flagstaff.

Dallas was a welcome break from sightseeing. We hung out with friends who spoilt us with home cooked food, laundry facilities and comfy sofas. They also had a couple of large, friendly dogs who liked to snuggle up with Reena and, for some reason, lick my arms a lot first thing in the morning. (I think I use more soap than she does).

George

Texas is quite a religious place with huge churches and overly large 'Christian Inspiration' sections in bookstores. Other than that, it's very big, everybody drives everywhere and they have cool things like drive-through ATMs and drive-through liquor stores (apart from in the semi-dry religious areas of the town). As to what we actually got up to: A couple of hours were spent trying to solve the JFK assassination mystery with Reena on the grassy knoll, me in the school book depository and our friends driving their open-topped limo around the block repeatedly. I also rode a mechanical bull with limited success and a man with a cowboy hat played the song below when he heard that we were from London.



After Texas we flew to LA - very cool and slightly soulless at the same time. It's no surprise that the vampire series Angel is based there. I can't imagine that anyone would notice if their neighbour was eaten/ turned to the dark side.

View from our hotel room

We then drove to Las Vegas where we visited various glitzy casinos and lost $27 gambling. In our first attempt, I put $7 in a slot machine and, experiencing absolutely no fun at all, the machine ate the money. Mmm. The next night we spoke to a very nice lady who showed us how to play blackjack at one of the tables. Five minutes later we had lost a further $20 but somehow we didn't feel so bad about it as the lady was so nice and, for a second, I thought we were going to win something. The moral of all of this appears to be that gambling is tricky and if you're going to lose money it's best to find a nice lady to help you.



We left Vegas this morning and drove to the Hoover Dam (very big with art deco toilets) and on to the Grand Canyon. Other than the fact that the canyon was enormous, the surprising thing was the temperature. The southern rim of the canyon is 8000ft above sea level and, in April at least, is extremely cold. We parked the car, had a quick look at the canyon and then as the snowfall became heavier we decided to drive to equally freezing Flagstaff.

That's it for now. You are completely up to date. There will be a quiz on the contents of this blog when we return in May.

S&R.