The Grand Canyon: A.K.A. The World's Most Famous Crack...in the Ground.

Here's the updated playlist for those of you still looking for songs to sing-along to!

Portland: "Jeepers Creepers" ~Louis Armstrong
Seattle: "Hello Seattle" ~Owl City
Space Needle: "Space Jam" ~Quad City DJ's
Las Vegas: "Tumblin' Dice" ~The Rolling Stones

And we're off! Just when you thought we were on our last legs from all this exciting and tiresome travel, we just keep going, and going, and going. We hit the ground runnin' toward the Grand Canyon at about 9 or 10AM and were successfully driving over the Hoover Dam by lunchtime. We didn't stop at the dam on the way through, since we decided we would make the return trip to Vegas tomorrow for our flight to Texas, but it was 107 degrees outside and the sun didn't seem to keep from beating down on us the whole drive into Arizona. We pulled over in the relatively small town of Kingsman to get some lunch at about one o'clock and chose to eat at our family's first "In-n-Out Burger" experience. The menu is simple, the people are friendly, it's just burgers, fresh-cut fries, and drinks. Great Success!

We got some time to just relax during lunch so that Dad could take a break from driving (he's done practically all of it during the trip) and it was nice to be out of our tin can car for a bit. After getting back on the road, we continued east on interstate 40 toward the Grand Canyon. It was weird being on interstate 40 all the way on the other side of the country, as I'm accustomed to taking I-40 in North Carolina to the beach - but that was still pretty cool regardless. Then, it started to rain in the desert which cooled the temperature down to the low 80's or even 70's. After about another hour driving we pulled over to a rest stop to refuel and turns out we were on the historic Route 66! Yes, get your kicks on Route 66 because we stopped in the little highway 66 town of Seligman that housed two "original Route 66 motels," many authentic Route 66 restaurants (one was entitled "The Roadkill Cafe," and other small-town sights. The Tate Family always seems to land ourselves in the middle of nowhere and find something interesting though.

Anyhow, we got to the Grand Canyon by about 6:30PM. We picked up our visitor information and hopped on a free shuttle to the Yaki Point, which I researched to be a less-populated lookout point across the canyon on the Southern Rim. As we pulled up to the top of the canyon, the sky opened up and cleared out across the ridge and we waited for the sun to set for all of our photo-ops. Although there were other tourists around during sunset, it was still a rather tranquil spot and very nice view of the canyon itself and the ravine below. Although we didn't hike the mile down into the canyon, or ride mules along the trails, it was neat to see a beautiful sunset over the Arizona desert with the Grand Canyon in the foreground. A few miles away we could still see the passing storm on the opposite ridge as an occasional lightning bolt would spring from a dark cloud onto the desert sand below. Simply stunning (PS: I wasn't fast enough on the high-speed camera for a nice shot of the lightning, but you'll still see the idea in some of the pictures to come).

After sunset at Yaki Point, we caught the shuttle back to our car and drove another few hours back to Kingsman to crash at our hotel for the night. Tomorrow we are scheduled to stop by Hoover Dam and catch a flight from Vegas out to San Antonio, Texas where we will begin our southern loop of the Tate Family Adventure. Hope you all are still hangin' in there with us and getty-up cowboys as we'll meet ya in the Lone Star State!

~Josh