Saturday 27 June 2009 – Palm Springs, CA, to Williams, AZ. 375 miles.

After a complimentary brekky at the Travelodge we jumped on the I-40 and we were off! The first part of our journey was quite interesting, seeing the desert landscape, and then coming across a Casino and resort, seemingly in the middle of nowhere! And there were many more to come after this as well. The California Desert really is beautiful. The long stretches of roads, the hills and the valleys…

After driving for a while, we realise we should stop for petrol. But we haven’t really seen anywhere to stop for a while. On my google maps that I’d printed out (which were totally rubbish BTW) it showed that “Rice” was coming up, which I presumed was a town. It turns out “Rice” was just the area which was the middle of the desert. I was getting a little anxious, but we finally pulled up at a truck stop that was selling fuel for $3.89USD/gallon. I didn’t care. We put in about $40 worth and that was the most expensive fuel we paid for. (On average we paid between $2.25-$2.50 per gallon!!)

We stopped in at Kingman for lunch at a Diner on Route 66. We had our first sweet potato fries (Mum used to make them for us when we were kids) and we were hooked! We shared a burger, fries and a yummy chocolate shake….

….and we were on the road again.

We were in Arizona by this stage and not long after, we arrived at Williams – the gateway to the Grand Canyon – and set up our tent. It took us a little while, but we figured it out and enjoyed a Bundy Rum and Coke as the sun was setting.


We headed into town for a beer and some ribs that we shared (delish) and enjoyed the twilight which lasted until about 10:30pm. Hubs kept teasing me but I was really scared of bears, even though the locals assured me there was nothing to fear. Of course, there was no incident and we had a good, albeit cold, night’s sleep, with our alarm set for 8:00am the next morning!