After a surprisingly good sleep we headed over to the Galaxy Diner. This was a 50s style diner that the Chinese guy recommended, but we’d also seen a couple of tourists wearing t-shirts from there yesterday. I had waffles with bacon and eggs, Sarah had french toast with sausages and eggs. Was funny when the waitress asked how I’d like my eggs, and I responded with a blank look (me and Sarah both thinking cooked), turns out scrambled was an acceptable answer. They both came with 2 pots of maple syrup each, so we were stuffed by the time we finished and started us off well for the day.

We then headed over to Fry’s Groceries (woohoo!) to do our shopping for camping, we picked up our first beer in America - 30 cans of Budweiser for $17 not bad at all! We bought minced beef, pasta and pasta sauce to cook on the fire (Bad idea..). Then queued to get gas again at Fry’s, got hustled out of every space we were waiting for. Not going to argue with a Texan with a HUGE truck.

Started the drive to Grand Canyon and what a drive it was. Stopped at Cameron Trading Post about half way through, was a nice place but super touristy and thus quite expensive. On walk back to car to carry on to Grand Canyon noticed a tumbleweed stuck in the grill, thought it would be a good idea to take it out, picked it up and BAM prickle (got swollen boohoo). We drove along the desert view trail stopping off on all the view points into the Canyon. We stopped for a picnic halfway in the cool of some trees, it was super hot. A lovely American lady offered to take a picture of me and Sarah in front of the canyon and proceeded to say that we were the first English speaking people they had come across for hours. Everyone else seemed to be European. Stayed at Mather campground, really nice, in one of the main loops with good access to water and the toilets. (Aspen Loop, No. 21). Now was the time to set up the tent. Luckily we had a trial run of putting the tent up from the comfort of my back garden. All went pretty smoothly and within 15mins we were in our sauna of a tent. We then chilled out and set up camp properly (got water, had a a beer etc) whilst making plans for the next day. Then we went to Hopi point to watch the sunset, was absolutely stunning and we took a tonne of photos. The most American part of the trip was when the sun set and everyone started clapping, classic. We caught the shuttle bus back to camp and was pretty much pitch black by the time we got back, went to sleep about 9pm excited for a proper walk around the canyon tomorrow.

As always check Flickr for all most of the pictures.

J.