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Published: October 30th 2016
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Thursday October 20 - Today we drove away from Page early to get to the Grand Canyon. Our GPS took us offroading for about 15 miles, which was probably not the current right choice, but the only one we had, so we stuck with it, all grueling 15 miles of it. That ended up taking some extra time, so it took us longer to get there than we expected. And the national park is enormous, so we drove in, made an initial stop to look at it, but then had to drive another half hour or so in the park before we got to the visitor's center. Then we had to drive around for ages to find parking. Man oh man. From there we took a shuttle bus to the place where we would start our hike. We were at the south rim, which is where 90% of people go most of the time. Plus, the north rim was closed for the season as of a week before, and was a five hour drive from the south rim. We chose to hike into the canyon a bit, to get a feel for it. We made it two stops down and spent
about two hours total on that hike. Another good one. We also walked along the rim back to the visitor center, which was nice.
Afterwards we were tired and grabbed some Wendy's and frosties for dinner. We only had to drive half an hour to get to the inn and motel, but it was clear from our tiny annex room that we were in the less desirable "motel" component. I decided to wash my hair for the first time all trip and I even dried it. All very exciting stuff.
Friday October 21 - Today we drove back to Las Vegas, and it was a shopping and relaxing day. We stopped at the Hoover Dam along the way, and looked at it from a bridge walk. We programmed the GPS for In and Out and we got there exactly in time for lunch. I was not going to miss out on this, despite not having the time to go there the first day we were in Vegas. We had burgers and shakes and it was yummy. From there, we went to REI and Target and then headed back to the old Super 8. This time I felt our
room was a bit nicer. We relaxed and for dinner decided to walk to Chipotle, in the direction opposite of the strip. We ended up at Panera Bread instead, and it was the first time there for Jeroen. I had a sandwich and salad and he had soup and salad. It was almost an reentry into healthy eating.
Back at the hotel we caught up with an episode of Big Bang and I downloaded some more shows for the plane ride home tomorrow.
Saturday October 22 - Up at 5:30am, checked out at 6am, brought the rental car back, fought with some stupid automatic check-in machines, upgraded Jeroen's seat on the first flight to Minneapolis so we could move his legs and sat back for the first bit. In Minneapolis, we asked to see if we could get a better seat for Jeroen again, and she said they were full, but she took our names just in case. We already weren't seated together, so he could have an aisle seat for a possibility to stretch out. But the woman did call us up, and she gave us seats together in the economy comfort zone, for free. So so
nice of her! He had space for his legs on the long flight to Amsterdam, and that made such a difference. I wasn't very excited about flying Delta, but they were did us a nice service with this. We left the states in the early afternoon and arrived in Europe the next morning, exactly skipping over the entire night hours due to the time change. That was the worst and hardest part. We were finally starting to get sleepy and it was 6am.
In Amsterdam, we met Jeroen's dad, sister and nephew, who came to the airport so early just to see us for one hour. That was quite nice of them. They brought us some Dutch cookies and we showed them some pictures. Then we had to go back through security for our flight to Zurich. The flight was short, and then we had to get the train back to Basel, do some grocery shopping at the station, take the tram and get home to the cats.
It was about 2pm by the time we got home, about 24 hours after we had woken up in Las Vegas, and we stayed awake unpacking and getting ready for
work, etc until about 7:30pm. I woke up on Monday at 2:30am and hence began the hideous jetlag...
Back at home, my rash is turning into what seem to be extremely itchy insect bites. Possibly sandflies? Horrible.
Somehow I have to make it through the week, and then another seven before I am free for a three week vacation back home in Florida...until then...
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I've enjoyed Following your travels...
around the Southwest. Did Jaroen like the U.S.?