State Seventeen

It's 8:56PM and we're somewhere on I-40 in the middle of Arizona. The goal for tonight is Albuquerque NM; we should be arriving in about three hours. We're driving a little later than usual today because we're developing an evil early-arrival-in-Virginia plan that requires just a few more miles today.

Ray, who is currently driving, just went into a crazy rant involving US state names, and now reports that New Mexico will be the 17th state of our trip -- hence the title. He wants me to say something like 'today, we will annex the 17th state into the Bronited States/Brofederation/Bro Union/Brotopia.' I told him that might give people the wrong impression. In related news, when we cross into New Mexico, we will have officially left Pacific time. Technically, we are already on Mountain Time, but Arizona has that funky 'we don't believe in daylight savings' thing going.

We've seen some epic scenery in the past 36 hours. Rolling into Vegas last night, we were treated to an amazing red desert sunset, followed by a beautiful full moon and, eventually, the bright city lights of Las Vegas. This morning, we crossed a bit more desert before reaching the Hoover Dam, which is surrounded by awesome red rocky scenery. The dam itself was impressive, but we didn't stop to admire it in full, being the people-with-places-to-go that we are.

After the Hoover Dam followed about an hour of Hungriness until we reached Kingston. There, we acquired breakfast and lunch at Subway. We ate on the road and we respectively napped and drove to Grand Canyon National Park (about 2.5 hours).

The Grand Canyon was just stunning. We stopped at three overlooks of the south rim on our way east. We ventured onto some of the rocks at our last stop, so now we know what it feels like to look down a sheer cliff of about half a mile. Also strange: looking down and seeing a large, circling bird of prey from far above. It's hard to do justice to the place -- I would rate it among the most impressive vistas on the trip (together maybe with our incursion into the Rockies three months ago). Ray says he agrees.

The trip out Grand Canyon NP treated us to some beautiful distant views of the landscape immediately surrounding the canyon proper. We slowed down a bit to admire them from the car; after that we turned back to Interstate 40 through Cameron and Flagstaff. At dinner, at the venue (other than Taco Bell) that will not be named, we decided to push today's itinerary out to Albuquerque. And that's where we are now: on I-40, in the dark, crossing into the seventeenth state on our trip. Pictures to follow once we reach greener wifi pastures.