Once we got out of Yosemite, the drive to The Grand Canyon from Vegas was long and hot, but the scenery quite nice and the Country & Western radio stations kept us good company :-) Even with a bit of confusion due to roadworks, we managed to arrived at our campsite in the late afternoon on Thursday 17 May. We had just enough time to pitch our tent before heading off to catch a free shuttle to one of the lookout points for sunset. The view when you first see the canyon is spectacular - there are no mountains nearby so it seems to just appear out of nowhere, like the earth is splitting in half. We enjoyed a tin cup of wine while watching the sun go down. We got the shuttle back to camp and quickly got a fire going to cook our dinner of chicken, potatoes and veggies. We carefully made the bed, trying to insulate it as best we could, but even with our new blanket we still had a pretty cold night :-/

Friday we woke up and headed straight down to the campsite office to see if we could stay another night. There were no cancelations so we had a quick breakfast, packed up our camp and drove for about 45mins to the first-come-first-served campsite on the Eastern edge of the canyon. We found a nice spot and went to checkin at the self-service kiosk which was quite impressive. We packed some lunch and drove to a nearby lookout point where we had a look around and took some photos. It was too windy outside so we ate in the car :-) Afterwards, we headed back to camp where we just chilled out for the rest of the afternoon. We made a fire and had an early dinner before driving down to the lookout tower near the camp store/info centre. The view was a bit better than the previous night as here we were looking right along the whole canyon whereas before we were about in the middle. After enjoying the sunset, we went back and managed to scrape enough wood together to make another fire, which we used to toast some marshmallows. We soaked in the last remaining heat from the fire before settling in for another pretty uncomfortable night :-/

Saturday we woke up and groggily ate our breakfast - hadn't gotten too much sleep last night. We packed everything into the car and, since we were't due in LA for another night, we just hit the highway, figuring we sort something out along the way.