Day 10- Independence Day (July 4th)

After checking out of the hostel in the morning we headed into central flagstaff to check out some independence day celebrations. We caught the very end of a parade and saw lots of flags flying and also a lot of dressed up dogs and a 3 day art show which took up the whole of the main park which was cool. As there was not a lot to do in sleepy flagstaff we decided to head to a 'movie theatre' which was nearly 2 miles walk to see 'The Hangover', a film based in Vegas. The film itself was pretty funny and reminded us of all the places we had seen just days before but as we exited the cinema we discovered all the roads were half flooded following a massive rainstorm. Maika managed to get her shoe wet crossing a road and we nearly got splashed by a large number of huuuge american trucks but was allll good. Having reached town we had a quick hot chocolate and brownie stop before continuing our long walk to the local supermarket to stock up for the greyhound journey, another 3 mile round trip. We returned to our hostel for a celebratory BBQ (cheap dinner! :D) which was shared with a sister hostel just up the road. There was horse shoe throwing games going on and some locals were pretty good and hit it almost every time! We also played some pool with a danish couple and a few semi drunk swedes and americans before heading off in a 1960's classic car called 'Pinky' to the greyhound station! Another lengthy wait before the greyhound followed before boarding and again missing out on a double seat :( Maika was seated next to a kinda crazy lady with illuminous green trousers! haha.

Day 11- 12:01am

Still in Arizona we were sleepy but still found it difficult to get any Z's due to the bloke next to me playing his music ridiculously loud and the guy at the back snoring at about 120 decibels. At about 2am we arrived in Phoenix where we had to get off the bus and sit in the terminal for about 45 mins very bleary eyed and wishing we could just stay on the bus and sleep. After reboarding we finally managed to get a bit of sleep before sunrise at 4am over the still desert landscape and arrived in LA at about 10am. We were staying to the far west of the city for the first night on Venice Beach an so another 90 min public bus ride awaited, firstly travelling through the very run down downtown area where we encountered a crazy lady going on about snakes and hawaii and monsters and stuff before noticing a huge number of wedding boutiques along the same street which seemed a bit odd. The scenery slowly started getting more beach like and finally we reached Venice Beach, famous for its body building on the beach. A short walk and we found the hostel and checked into our decent sized room and... hap a nap :)

We awoke to the sound of our rumbling stomachs and headed to the local store to buy pasta to match with the pesto we had left over from Flagstaff. The hostel kitchen turned out to be very basic and we ended up cooking on little more than a camping stove but it did the job nicely. With our stomachs full we again felt incredibly tired and had a good long sleep right through till the next morning.

AC & MS xxx