Two days of updates: Moab to Panguitch Utah and then to Tusayan/Grand Canyon, Arizona...

The fact that there was no update from us yesterday may already speak volumes to you as to what we thought of Panguitch!!

I shall start from the very beginning, it's a very good place to start.... hah. We started our morning in Moab by missing the complimentary breakfast and having to eat Twinkies instead- we'd never tried them before and were sure a sugar rush would be good for us first thing in the morning... logical.. They were sugary and weird.. which I think you can tell from my expression!





We re fulled the white stallion and set about our journey- it was a shame to be leaving Moab behind, it had a lovely relaxing vibe. We had quite a small journey to make, 270 ish miles, so took a slow trip stopping in Capitol Reef National Park (obviously I know it's Capital, but we're in America here, so "cut me some slack" ;-) ) The first thing we stopped at was this little house which was built in the 1870s and still remains today. A family of 12 lived there- the kids slept in the rock face which you can see Pete trying out:





We are reaching our saturation point with regards to National Parks, however, they are still enjoyable to drive through and make good stopping points for lunch. We ate Subway again- I think Pete has some sort of addiction to Subway- actually, the whole of America must do, it's literally everywhere- but for $10 it does provide us with lunch and our evening meal...







After leaving the park we drove a very scenic rout taking us through many little tiny towns and settlements:





We arrived in Panguitch at about 3:30pm which was pretty early in the day really- the town appeared small and everything was shut. At first we couldn't find our hotel, so we parked in a car park and went for a stroll to look for it. We soon located it, and then went back to our car to drive it to the front of the hotel... this only took a couple of mins, and once we'd got there and unloaded our suitcases, we rolled them into the reception. The whole place appeared eerily quiet and there was no one around, so we rang the bell on the desk- it sounded very loud and shrill echoing around the empty place... no one appeared so we started to look around the front desk. We quickly noticed a note on the desk which read:

"we waited from 1pm-3:55pm and saw no one- we tried the telephone number for this hotel and the Marina hotel and received no answer. Please cancel our reservation. Do not attempt to charge our credit card, we have already notified them. Lettie & Charles *****" (can't remember what their surname was!!)

This didn't look good we thought.. it turned out the Marina was another hotel in the same town owned by the same people, and we found a note which stated guests should check in there, so we headed over that way. Again, we found an empty reception- it was dirty, messy and to be honest looked like it'd been broken into, so we were starting to worry for the safety of the owners! We waited around about 10 mins and then finally a member of staff arrived- she handed over a key, didn't want any other info, said we could show ourselves into the other hotel, there was no one there. OK we thought, odd, but at least we could get into our room!

We drove back there, parked up in the back then let ourselves in. To say the Casper horror wasn't replaying in our head would be a lie... we were somewhat concerned! We found our room door right down the end of a corridor, let ourselves in and found ourselves in a very dark, slightly dirty and very old room. The bathroom had old features, and towels that had been ripped in half- lush! But at least the loo didn't refill every 20 mins. The bedding was old, pillows had make up stains and there were hairs inside the bed sheets- thinking they don't change the bedding much!! The blind on the window kept falling to pieces so we shut it and left it alone!! Thankfully we did have a working TV!! The best thing was that the room didn't stink so we knew we'd be able to get by!

There was nothing except a garage open in the town, so we headed there and picked up some beers and pringels. There was really no other food stuff available!! Whilst I mention beer, it reminds we of the odd drinking laws in Utah- beer can be sold under one type of licence but it must be 3.2% or less. If places wish to sell wine they need a separate licence and again if they want to sell spirits- as a result, it seems like it's all too much fuss and therefore all you can get is weak beer! Very odd.....

We passed the night as quickly as we good watching tv and reading, slept, then got straight out in the morning.

And so our journey from Utah to Arizona began. It didn't start too well- we were low on food and ended up stopping at a small supermarket in a small town. It was quite run down looking, but we were just looking for something half decent. We grabbed a couple of burritos from the chiller cabinet which we were able to heat in the microwave they had. We got back to the car and I was just about to bite into mine when I noticed some mold on it. OK, it wasn't a lot of mold, but it put me right off eating it. I checked the use by- it was one day past. Ick. I took it back in and got my money back, but trouble was I didn't want to eat anything else from there- it was nearly midday and I was starving. Pete and I had a little fall out over it... we were both suffering low blood sugar I think!!

We carried on driving and stopped in Kanab, named "Little Hollywood" due to the amount of westerns filmed there. We saw a Mexican restaurant and stopped there... guess what we had to eat! Burritos!! So- we fell out and made back up over Mexican food. It was very tasty and extremely good value.



Back on the road, we made our way to Grand Canyon National Park which we had to drive through to get to our hotel- what a chore! As you would expect, beautiful awe inspiring views- something you might not expect- a lot of greenery and trees around the area!







After stopping in the park, we finally found our way to our hotel just outside the park (bit of a maze to get to after some very dodgy signposting!). We're now in our room and very glad to find it's a high standard and we have Internet again- yay! We're connected again!



We're going for some food in a sec. Tomorrow we're off to Vegas- pretty excited about that! And we're back on California time again, so 8 hours behind again.