Road Trip: Day One

We started out slightly earlier than we had planned from Brea, CA, where I picked Julie up. Went to Coffee Bean, got gas, got in the car and started driving. We basically drove 'til we ran out of gas (we didn't run out of gas, but we drove for as long as it took me to panic about where are we going to find gas in this godforsaken place? I MEAN DO YOU SEE ANYTHING AROUND HERE??.) It was Kingman AZ and we found a truck stop with no problem at all. Where we took these:

The truck stop was surprisingly clean and there were private showers and stuff where the truckers, I presume, bathe while they are away from home. I had no idea this was done! We didn't get gas again until we got to Flagstaff AZ, at which point I had to get out and walk around and (god help me) eat something.

Slight hitch in directions in Arizona: the streets stop making sense once you leave California. From the California border all the way to Florida, the rest of the streets are useless. Instead of names, they all have numbers. Get off at Exit 99 onto SR-70 / I-40 / US-395. WTF? We decided to take a picture of us driving every day, to wit:

It took us a little while longer to hit the Grand Canyon (I had never seen it and neither had Julie) but hit it we did and before nightfall. A first look:

At this point, after marveling at the Canyon's sheer magnitude (it's absolutely breathtaking), we decided to head down to another observation point and hit this place just as the sun was setting:

Sunset:

We stayed somewhere called Tusayan AZ, which is just South of the South Rim of the Canyon. I checked in, we headed to the hot tub and then we went to sleep... or were going to except that Paul Provenza's The Aristocrats was on and neither of us had scene it. The film is exactly what it promised it would be: non-violent, completely lacking in nudity and totally, hilariously, obscene. I thought it was really, really funny. It's edited horribly and I would call it a bad film. It is about 35 minutes too long, maybe even 45 minutes too long. It would have been a superb little obscene short film. Instead, it feels bloated most of the time and stuck on itself (which it is.) There are parts, though—mostly any part with Gilbert Gottfried—that are tears-in-the-eyes funny. George Carlin is also very, very funny in the film. Sarah Silverman also does some nice bits.

I will post more of our adventures tomorrow...