Greetings from Grand Canyon! It was a long drive but worth it. The nights are soooo cold and windy but the day was sunny and warm, perfect for mule riding (Miss H & me) and hiking (Orvokki). I don’t even need to mention about the views… 🙂

The trip meter of our rice bowl (we got a Mitsubishi instead of Chevrolet) shows over 1100 miles, which is close to two thousand kilometers. Yesterday only we drove about 400 miles and tomorrow will be our last leg, 300 miles to Las Vegas.

That’s quite a lot of sitting in the car. Isn’t it boring?

Well, yes and no.

The scenery changes all the time, as we have travelled from Pacific coastline through the citrus fruit fields and desert views. Everything is so big! Surprisingly, the closer we drove to the canyon, the more Finnish the landscape started to look like. Pines and spruces… We didn’t expect that! “It’s like driving to Kajaani”, I said when we passed a smaller town. We also drove almost 100 miles of the historic Route 66. It was sad to see the empty, abandoned old towns and gas stations and restaurants that had closed down.

”Road runner restaurant” hasn’t been serving meals for a while.

But of course there’s a lot of time on the freeway where you have to fix your own entertainment. You can always read travel guides or discuss the contents of gossip magazines. Or argue about something relevant, such as the definition of “air conditioner”. 🙂 Miss H has given us many happy moments with her obsession to the disgusting Abercrombie perfume (“If you spray it on, you can travel in the trunk!” we say) and the Abercrombie index stressed currency calculator: no matter what you buy, you always win. (This happened after she and I got crazy in Banana Republic sale and bought five cardigans, among other things.) And even if we sound like bitter spinsters, I must tell that one nice episode on 66 was to follow a young hillybilly couple that was driving a van behind us. Mysteriously, the girl leaned her head down and disappeared for miles… Just when the freeway started, she lifted her head up. And the guy kissed him passionately and obviously said thank you. Bleurgh!

So we can manage it on the road, and it’s mostly fun.

The only complaint is the dear rice bowl. It just doesn’t have enough horse powers compared to the SUVs. “Kohta on kuppi nurin”, ollaan todettu jo useampaan kertaan.

“For our next road trip we’ll rent a truck, so that this bloody wind won’t blow us off the road”, Miss H swore somewhere after Arizona’s border.
We had talked earlier about a trip to Champagne.
“We’ll see how that looks like in the French country alleys”, I laughed.

Still, as Miss H, said, it’s a bit sad that our road trip ends tomorrow when we leave the car in Vegas. Travelling the road has been an experience. But it’s nice to end it while we still have fun. And as a matter of fact, we still have 300 miles left to get tired of it.