at the edge and on the road

Monday morning, we woke up at 5 to rather chilly weather. We threw on several layers and hopped into the car. We drove to the rim trail and hiked out to watch the sunrise. It ended up being much warmer right at the edge, so we We were probably there for over an hour. We wanted to see the light hit a few of the deeper parts of the canyon. Well worth the wait, because the view was amazing.

We hit the road, stopping for coffee to properly caffeinate ourselves. The drive was fairly uneventful. We stopped in some little town near the Petrified Forest NP and saw some petrified stuff and some dinosaurs and “buckets of blood” road. We stopped for lunch in Albuquerque at the Rio Grande Nature something State Park. It was hot, but we saw a roadrunner, which was really funny. Never have I seen a bird with such a personality. We gave it goldfish crackers. Probably not allowed to do that. We didn’t much care. We then headed out toward Amarillo. On the far side of New Mexico, we encountered a large cloud that ended up causing a storm, but also causing TWO complete rainbows that arced perfectly across the road. So cool.

We got to Amarillo, checked into our hotel, and took the first showers that we’d had in two days. We went to the Big Texan steak emporium hotel opry banquet space thing for dinner. It was hilarious. We had steak, which was quite delicious. They have a 72 oz steak meal that is free if you eat the whole thing in an hour. It includes salad, rolls, shrimp, and 2 sides or something like that. There was a guy attempting the challenge when we were there. Poor guy had to eat this dinner up on a raised platform that faced the entire restaurant and had a timer going behind me. His friends had set up a video camera to record the whole thing. Sadly, he didn’t finish. But he got a tee shirt.

We went back to the hotel and that is where I decided that I wasn’t going to blog until we got on the road today. If you had the bed I had, you wouldn’t have blogged either.