Day Five - Friday

Soooo....

We are in Salt Lake City!!!! Finally!!!! Today was the day of nothing going quite how we thought. Because it is technically Saturday now and I am tired I'm just gonna hit the highlights, here we go!

- Started out at 9:02 (Arizona time, they don't observe daylight savings so they are one hour behind, we eventually had to switch forward so we lost an hour which didn't really help matters as you will see later!)

- 10:22 we got to the Grand Canyon. We went to the south rim and hopped onto some handy shuttle buses to see the sights! It was so awesome, it is HUGE!!! I didn't realize how long and wide it was. God must have had fun making this! Everything was just beautiful, although driving to the canyon I got sick of pine trees and dead grass...but it was way cool and I'm really glad we made time for it!

- 3:15 we stopped for a mini-adventure at the Little Colorado Gorge Scenic overlook and looked at some Navajo crafts for sale, it was cool. I bought some earrings :)

- between 3:15 and 6:12 or 7:12 we drove and drove and drove some more. Over mountains, across valleys, up and down hills, through mountains, across Native American reservations. It was awesomely beautiful but also a whole lot of nothingness. We were sometimes the only car we saw for like an hour!

- On that note: I need to go look up information about the Native Americans in this country, obviously my "native american culture study" from EDU 451 did not inform me very much because I have so many questions! The people on these reservations look so poor, some of them don't even have running water, I can't tell you how many outhouses we saw! Outhouses!!! There are no stores, no gas stations, nothing. We saw some kids get off their school bus and walk into a house we thought was abandoned, it was crazy. So what do these people do for a living? How did they end up on the reservation? How independent are they? Are they U.S. citizens? Why is there nothing there?

- 6:12 or 7:12 Utah welcomed us, finally, it took forever to get there.

- 7:15ish, we, under the impression that driving on route 9 would get us to the interstate faster made the mistake of traversing through Zion National Park. This was a mistake as you shall see.

- 7:42, we almost hit a flock of turkeys with our car. That's right, turkeys...apparently Katie has hit one before...

- 7:50, we have to pay $25 to drive through the park. Ok, fine, whatever...we start driving, on this freakishly narrow road cut between these mountains and cliffs....and it's curving all around with sharp turns and Utah drivers who like to drive way too fast! Then we come to the tunnel. This tunnel was literally cut through a mountain, it was dark, long, and scary. AND THEN once we were out of the dark, long, scary tunnel we had to drive down the mountain to the bottom of the canyon. This road wound along the side of the mountain with really, really sharp u-turns and a sheer drop on one side. I'm really glad I wasn't driving! If you messed up you would drive right over the cliff and head straight to the bottom...it was beautiful though, red cliffs with streaks of white and and the sun starting to go down...it was pretty.

- 8:51, the interstate! Yay! Only 300 miles to salt lake city!

- 12:30, we're in Salt Lake City, finally. It took forever, I am tired, Katie is tired, so we will say goodnight!

I know, I know, we said there would be pictures but they won't be up until tomorrow, sorry. Have a good night everyone!