Road trip: "We've been on the run, driving in the sun Looking out for number 1" Phantom Planet

Spent the morning in downtown LA. Tis a funny place, they go from 3 piece suits to sketchy in under a block. The architecture around there is quite fantastic though, especially the Walt Disney concert hall (which apparently had to be dulled down after neighbouring apartment blocks complained that their air conditioning bills were going through the roof!).

Disney Concert Hall

In the afternoon I caught up with host number 2 and, after catching a bus in the wrong direction (I ended up in East LA which is dodgy, and spent the time waiting for the bus I needed listening to two hispanic guys discussing their rap sheet. One has been in prison in and out from age 12. Cute), headed down to San Diego for a looksee. It's a nice little place with a great vegetarian mexican restaurant and a lovely beach. Spent the day wandering around and waved to mexico when we got close to the border. Felt no desire whatsoever to venture into Tijuana. 
San Diego to Flagstaff
Early the next day, by early I mean 4am, we left for the GRAND CANYON. The reason we left so early was because it was a massive drive and because we wanted to see the sun rise over the desert. The round about route we took the 78 route to Blythe and saw some fantastic sand dunes (some folks there had confederate flags, yay racism), were stopped by border control who gave me the a-ok and passed on up through Phoenix. Granted we only drove through Phoenix but, from what I can see, there's really nothing to recommend it. It just seems to be masses of suburban sprawl which emerges out of seeming nowhere in a fairly nothing-y landscape. All the houses seemed to be identical as well. I mentioned that I thought this was a little socialist looking for a place like the USA. I got the desired reaction :D
I feel the need to point out that many of the cacti we passed outside of Phoenix are very phallic in appearance. Just putting it out there.

Headed north to a place called Meteor Crater which is apparently is the most accessible crater in the world. It was incredibly impressive - it's around 550 feet deep and has a massive circumference. The thing I really liked about it was its isolation. You couldn't hear cars, planes, nothing like that. Just the gentle sound of the breeze.

Meteor Crater

 Then it was on to Flagstaff for dinner and a wander around. Flagstaff is a really cute little town and I would have liked to have spent more time there but it was getting pretty dark and we needed to find a place to camp, so off we went.
In the states there's a rule that you have to camp at least 400m off from any main road, so the plan was to find a little bush trail and set things up there. This was a fine plan, but when every access road for about 30mins driving was closed off due to snow we started to lose hope. The drive itself there was fantastic - it was still quite light because of a full moon and the scenery was just small, isolated farm houses and snow capped mountains. It was the kind of eerie situation that you could imagine the crime from "In cold blood" occurring. Eventually, when we'd almost started to worry, we finally found an opening and set up camp. It was bloody cold and setting up a camp when you can't feel your fingers is a little character building. Turns out it was around -7 (we were at an altitude of about 7000 feet). Ice formed on the inside of the tent.
Grand Canyon
Words can not explain how incredible the grand canyon was. I got a little choked up when I first saw it (luckily we got there at about 9:30 or otherwise I swear any eye moisture would have frozen on my face!). The only way to get an idea of how completely grandiose the whole thing is without seeing it would be to grab a copy of Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev" go to around the last 90 or so seconds of the piece and crank it up to 11. Stunning. Anyway we did a 6 mile round trip on a walk called the Bright Angel trail and that was just lovely and walking down into the canyon just felt like you were being completely enveloped by it. Incredibly place. Slightly worrying was the fact that part of the trail was quiet icey and slippery and there are no guard rails (approx 10 people a year die here from either falling off or dehydration), but I didn't die so all was peachy. After getting back up we took a shuttle bus that went around the rim so see some other areas and all were equally as breath taking. Especially wonderful was watching the sunset. I was pretty impressed by a ranger presentation given afterwards explaining what Teddy Roosevelt and FDR did for the establishment of national parks in the USA. Fantastic day. It was forecast to get just as cold as it had been the night before. We slept in the car.

Grand Canyon