Made a quick trip out to pick up my daughter from LA last month. We left LA around 4:30-5:00 am to avoid the notoriously heavy LA traffic, but still managed to hit some congestion on the eastern side of LA before we got into the mountains. I also wanted to get across the Mojave Desert before late morning given that it was expected to be 118F there in the afternoon.
As soon as we started approaching Arizona the sky began to get fairly hazy with smoke from the fires that have been burning in California. It got pretty thick until we were near Flagstaff. We had decided before we left that we were going to take a little detour up north to see the Grand Canyon. Glad we did. Here are a few photos from that drive through the Grand Canyon State Park.
If you look closely at the photo below, you'll notice standing atop that stone outcropping a white and a blue spec. Those are a couple of guys who decided to hike down into the canyon. They were quite a way down. I had my camera zoomed in as far as it would go and they still appear quite small. I guess their Grand Canyon bucket list was a little different than mine.
Once we got back into Texas we decided to make a quick stop at the infamous Cadillac Ranch which is located just west of Amarillo. We had seen it as we drove by back in June, and made a mental note to stop on the way back. When we arrived there were just a few cars parked along the side of the road. When we left about 20 minutes later, there were easily 15 cars with more arriving as we pulled away. This place seems to draw all kinds of folks (mostly Hipsters, though).
Entrance to the ranch.
There were a few people there spray painting the cars, which apparently is the thing to do if you're a hipster. Obviously, we didn't, but it was rather annoying to be around these people who thought it would be "cool" to spray paint somebody else's artwork. The really sad thing is that these idiots leave their empty spray cans scattered all over the site.
1,700 miles covered in about 20 hours of driving. Next time I think we will plan the trip with the Grand Canyon as our destination, and spend a few days hiking and camping in the park. I'd like to hike down into the canyon at the very least. Many people said rafting through the Grand Canyon is a must do, but given the prices I've seen for trips down the river, I'll have to wait until I either hit the lottery, or they scatter my ashes over the edge of the Canyon.
And there you have it.
