Day 5: On the Road

 Today was the day that I was a bit apprehensive about, we were leaving the Grand Canyon and driving to Flagstaff to catch a plane to Santa Barbara. The issue was timing, we had to drop the car off at Flagstaff airport at 1:30 pm and the drive was about 220 miles - when to set off? What if we break down? Will we find the airport easily? How will I continue this blog if the question mark symbol fails?

We set off at about 8:30, the drive was spectacular, Jan is convinced she saw a Californian condor - it may have been because they are in this area, and it was "bloody big", (technical ornithological term).

Once out of the woods of the National park we drove into some classic Arizona desert scenery, huge rocky cliffs on one side of the arrow straight road, dry scrub land on the other. (Desert joke: "Doesn't that massive rock pillar look great?", "yes, it's a butte".)

We stopped at a roadside stop, at "Cliff Dwellers" and Jan tried to photograph some Hummingbirds, "they're bloody small", and then we moved on.

We crossed the Colorado River, and stopped once more, to watch the rafters on the water below, and to buy some jewellery from a Navaho Indian stall holder. 

After this the stress levels began to rise.... 

There were road works on the Route 89S, and like every thing else in America their roadworks are big, we were stopped for over 20 minutes, and then the speed was reduced for many miles.... Flagstaff for 1:30?

Numerous speed violations later we arrived at the Flagstaff City limits, (wasn't that a song by Tina Turner?). 15 minutes to go... we needed to fill up with petrol, (as required by the car hire deal), but the pump was unfamiliar and the attendant had to come and sort it, 10 minutes to go... We found a sign for the airport - 2 miles, 5 minutes to go... We got lost! 1:30... Finally we found the correct route, we got there! 1:35... 

But not to worry, Flagstaff airport is not the international transport hub we suspected it might be, think of Hucknall airfield on a busy day. It has just 6 commercial flights a day, and they all go to Phoenix. The distance between the car rental parking spaces and the flight check-in desk was about 50 yards! Panic over. 

Although we were flying to Santa Barbara we needed to change at Phoenix, the first flight was 25 minutes, (yes, 25 minutes! It takes longer than that to get into Nottingham on the tram!), and the connecting flight to California was just over an hour. Our 1 hour 40 minute flying had saved us 8 hours driving. 

Our seats were next to the rear gunner...

In Santa Barbara our hotel is a bit basic, the room is the smallest so far - smaller than yesterday's cabin! We dumped our bags and went down town, dinner was in a buzzing Mexican restaurant, the Blue moon beer came with a slice of orange!