Day 5 - The First Big Drive

The day started with us getting up at 6am to watch the Italian GP. Unfortunately American TV sucks and they only show stupid American sports and adverts.


So onto breakfast, this comprised of leaving us to our own devices in a kitchen full of American gadgets. After a few false starts the Belgian waffles started to flow shortly followed by the maple syrup. Yet again we feel that lunch has been rendered unnecessary!

We’d noticed that coming out of the hotel room next door was a large orange cable draped over the balcony into a truck below which turned out to be owned by the hot air balloon rescue team. At the time with our Mulder and Scully hats on we decided that they were a covert UFO retrieval team. However with the cold light of day, the effects of the sulphurous pools dissipated and a couple of miles under our belt the sudden appearance of 15+ hot air balloons above the treeline blew a big hole in our previous theory.

Whilst driving to Flagstaff with Martin at the wheel we suddenly had a Blackpool flashback; namely two stags in the road being suicidal with the traffic! Admittedly these stags looked far more impressive and quickly fled to the safety of the forest.

Achievement: 1000 miles covered.

On our travels we were also lucky to see one of the rarer wildlife sights in the area. Apparently the Americans call this beast the “MobileSteak”.

So far we have seen many interesting road signs, designed to aid the driver with decisive information about the road conditions. How this one knew we had consumed too much the day before, we have no idea.

After many hours of driving watching the beautiful scenery fly past we finally came upon an opportunity to stretch our legs in the Petrified Forest national park. Unfortunately we were disappointed on two counts. Firstly the trees did not appear to be particularly afraid of us but also I’m not sure that the seven trees that we could see this side of the horizon constituted a forest. Perhaps the others had been so petrified that they were already hiding so we made do with a stroll around the lip of the Painted Desert. Whilst it was very coloUrful and exotic, it seemed like a waste of a significant amount of paint.

Achievement: Trucker sounded horn at us.

The Big Kahoona Burger

We safely arrived in Flagstaff/Falstaff/JS HQ and promptly decided to indulge in some om nom nom. The target was an authentic 60s style diner on the historic Route 66. However unlike any of the Americans who had been here before us, we walked the 150 meters from the motel room to the diner. Upon entering the diner we were immediately dismayed to find the tradition of live music was still haunting us, although for once this actually sounded pretty good. We then treated ourselves to a milkshake from the Gods, all previous milkshakes that we’ve tried have been relegated to mere flavoured milk. Warning to all milkshake sellers, a new benchmark has been set. We then proceeded to order a Pulp Fiction special, a Great Kahoona Burger (8/10) and a Steak Sandwich (6/10) which Martin failed to finish. However this did not prevent him from ordering the biggest pile of ice cream on the earth. Mark had a hot choc fudge lava which was so large, he moved into it. So unlike any Americans who had been here before us, we left some food uneaten.

Back to the room for an early night, well it would have been if we didn’t have to write this!