Woke up this morning at The Lodge on Route 66 to find our car covered in ice and tiny little icicles on the windows. We had a lovely included breakfast, and I learnt how to make waffles. Upon departure we soon found out that the ice, although very pretty was difficult to remove and delayed us a bit while we sat in the car with the engine running while the ice melted.

We left Route 66 and started our drive down a long deserted road, we drove for about an hour and a half before reaching Grand Canyon National Park at the South Rim of the Canyon. We paid our $25.00 to go in and parked the car. There was a bit of snow on the ground and again it looked very pretty.

We walked up to the rim of the Canyon and wow there are no words to describe how epic it is. It's so deep at this end that you can't see the bottom. I think Fish River Canyon, which is the second biggest canyon in the world (which I visited in Namibia) would fit into it about five times. We walked along and had a look at about six different view points. We saw squirrels playing around the edge of the canyon, which amused Darren as he had never seen them before. We took lots of pictures and Teddy even got a picture of himself at the Canyon.

When we had finished at the South Rim, we drove about 25 miles to the east Rim. On the edge of the east rim there was an Indian watchtower. We went inside for a look, as well as great views over the canyon, it also had Indian paintings and petroglyphs inside with explanations of what they all meant. At this end of the canyon we could see the Colorado river flowing through the middle.

After leaving the Grand Canyon we drove north for about two hours, along the way we saw lots of Indian reservations with shanties and caravans. Before reaching the town of Kayenta where we stopped for lunch, a low red tinged haze suddenly engulfed us. It had been a beautiful day and now visibility was suddenly very low.

We had lunch at McDonalds, as there was nothing else in Kayenta (and indeed nothing else around for about 200 miles) except a mini mall, Indians (Native Americans) and loads of stray dogs wandering around. The whole place seemed a bit wild. We went on our way to Monument Valley, the haze cleared for a while, which meant we could see the beginning but not much else, so we had to miss Monument Valley. I was very disappointed as it had been one of the things I was looking forward to. We could see the first formation called, "Mexican Hat" a giant formation jutting out of the flat ground and we could see the cliffs which had clouds flowing over them kind of like a water fall, I had never seen anything like it.

The road to Monument Valley was long, lonely and deserted and Darren and I had fun taking pictures on it as there were absolutely no cars. The roads had been like that all day, we were starting the get excited when we saw a corner coming up on the Sat Nav.

The silver lining on missing Monument Valley was that we were able to get a bit further down the road than planned. We ended up staying in a beautiful little town called Monticello, which was in mountains and had snow everywhere. We drove around looking for a motel and settled on the Blue Mountain Horse Head Inn, we checked into our cosy little room, a bargain at $49.99 and then went out to get dinner.

We ended up getting some supplies from the local supermarket and having TV dinners, mine was a roast turkey dinner which was surprisingly awesome and we also picked up some supplies for breakfast. Darren got Lucky Charms and I got normal bran cereal, while I was lining up to pay, I noticed the guy in front of me was wearing boots, black overalls and a large cowboy hat, a true walking stereotype. The sun had long set by the time we went out for groceries, but some pink clouds lingered in the night sky making the place positively eerie. We went back to the motel and chilled out for the rest of the night.