day 2: 'grand' adventure

hello from utah!... if i had written this 2 hours ago, i would have said 'hello from arizona!'... and if i had written this 12 hours ago, i would have said 'hello from nevada!'

that's right... 3 states, 1 day. boo-yah.

but there was a small price to pay for this marvelous journey... and that would be a great deal of time spent in the good old subaru. we left las vegas around 8am and headed east. i must admit, i was a bit of a pill this morning... i offer my continued apologies to my husband. maybe it was the lack of coffee or maybe it was the sudden realization that we had planned more to do in one day than there were hours. whatever the reason, once the luna bars appeared, things started looking up.

after leaving vegas, we headed over to the hoover dam, which was pretty darn cool. since pups weren't allowed on the trail, paul ran ahead and took a few photos of the sights. then we drove across the dam twice (the road at the other end of the dam was closed, so we had to re-trace our treads) before driving over the new bridge over the dam!

up next was a sizable amount of driving... approximately 5.5 hours with one stop at the golden arches. speaking of that ever-so-important lunch break, we found ourselves in a super cute town named williams, az. the 2 main streets had a lot of mannequins leaning out of windows or sitting on porch benches. see what i mean?...

and williams even had the original grand canyon train... or at least it said it was. it was fun to stumble upon something like this!

we finally made it to the grand canyon (which i had never been to)! you would never believe... this typically hot, hot, hot spot was less than 80 degrees (honest to goodness, i saw it get down to 65 degrees) and RAINING! even better was the thunderstorm (along with the rain) that occurred on our brief bike ride and walk around the rim at the visitors center (in case you were wondering, we went to the south rim). we have both missed listening to thunder since it is a rarity in san francisco, so it was a treat in a way!

as mentioned, we took little livi on a bike ride that was supposed to lead us to a great look-out of the grand canyon. unfortunately, the lack of signs led us to be lost, so we ended up going back to the visitors center and seeing the canyon from the 'touristy spots.' BUT, we did see a great deal of wildlife on the bike ride... not too shabby!

with the 20% chance of storms being 100% reality, it was difficult to see all of the canyon's wonderfulness, but i thought it was still fabulously surreal!

we had planned to make it through zion national park by the end of today, but due to the unexpected/unanticipated travel times, we decided to get a hotel outside of zion and start with that first thing tomorrow morning. traveling from the grand canyon to our current location (kanab, utah), we saw a lot of vast beauty...

we scored a hotel room and went scavenging for dinner around 9:30pm. the hotel clerk recommended the restaurant next door... the rocking v... and it was AMAZING! paul had the clam chowder, i had the tomato-basil soup, and we both shared the salmon... definitely a delightfully unexpected treasure in this small town, and we would highly recommend it to anyone headed towards zion!

and for your livi dog photo of the day, we leave you with this...

just loving life in the honeycomb hide-out of the subaru!

tomorrow, the plan is to drive through zion and head to salt lake city for some 4th of july celebrations! (also on paul's agenda: finish the first hunger games book... audiobook style!)

safe traveling and much love!
the mobleys