I don't like my old title so all I have is this.

Day 2. As promised, one month later.

<.<

- ANYWAYS! The drive continues!

8am

I drive, with absolute haste out of Louisiana and into Texas. We attack the closest IHOP destroying their supply of coffee and pancakes. I get hot Chocolate with whipped cream. Conversation is had, and all is well.

Nom nom nom… pancakes.

We press through the heartland of America, a zone so flat and unendingly boring I could be willing to blare country music to pass the boredom. I did… just so you know. Another reason for it being that we were in Texas, and apparently Texas= Cowboys! Who knew?

Gar…

We press through New Mexico (horrible), continental divide? We all query: What the heck is it?

Into Arizona (this takes 5 hrs) we meet a wall of VERY morbid billboards, most spattered with dead children, auto crashes, and drug/alcohol motifs. Apparently the Indians of the area have a problem… we decide all the other billboards, offering a variety of Native American cultural products, Fry bread, kachina dolls and of course…ice cream. We decide it’s like spamming the trade channel in WoW, unfortunately for us we can’t put them on the ignore list.

I accelerate.

We stop at a massive middle of the desert truck stop, deciding that it was a Trucker mall, which really it was- just with 150 miles of road on both sides. Jared buys a copper bracelet for his lady, we giggle. Charity wanders off, and I wait for the janitor to finish cleaning the bathroom. He takes 40 minutes; apparently he was cleaning the floor with fire and ceremony, a process of dances and communes with ancient spirits. By the time he is done and I go in to use the bathroom, I expect a lavish palatial bathroom. It is instead a palatial hellhole, sort of like Saddams palace after we dropped a bomb on it.

I characterize:

Wreckage. First sight, as in all public restrooms it seems like- one of three stall doors is kicked in and lying on the floor.

Water. There’s a small lake on top of the counter with some sort of film growing on it. I giggle a little.

DO NOT WANT. There’s a toilet…WITH CRIME SCENE TAPE across it. I mean…hell. How bad does the clog have to be that local law enforcement needs to get involved? It WAS the same stall that the door was kicked in on…

I somehow use the rest room; wash my hands (with my own soap…) and press.

We make it to Flagstaff sometime that night, and fly into the hotel, with much happiness to not be driving.

8pm

There’s a Jacuzzi at least.

I sleep like a baby.

I’ll combine the last bits, because there’s not much to it.

J

Next morning we plot our trip the Grand Canyon. We stop for a fantastic breakfast at a small hippy café. I get a tomato pesto breakfast burrito with jalapenos. It was epic.

We make the hour drive out to the big hole. It’s epic, it’s big.

We leave an hour later and somehow Charity ends up drunk from Mike’s hard lemonade. We’re not sure how that worked out.

ON the way home, we stop for Mexican food, which some how ended up being a pizza. I somehow manage to make Charity mad enough that she leaves and waits in the car.

I still don’t know why or how…

Jared and I decide to take revenge for her assholery and bait her on some fake fossils; she almost spends $200 on them. We almost laughed. Oh well. We laughed anyways. The greasy biker who was making a career wandering the world carving fake fossils with his tools, and selling them to idiots, we figured it would be a worthwhile career for Jared and an apt use of his artistic skills.

A good bit of rock-climbing follows.

Then, I dump myself in Albuquerque. Where I am currently, and where I am attempting to vacate.

Rar…