Drama in Flagstaff

Hey everyone. Sorry for no posts in the last 2 days. Long story short: we are already in San Francisco! Our trip was cut short by 1 day because of serious drama in Flagstaff.

We left Albuquerque on Day 5 very happy after having slept in a lovely Holiday Inn Express. After a great big b-fast which involved certain free groceries, (aka stealing a couple peanut butters and oranges from the buffet on our way out) we got on the road for Flagstaff. The day of driving was only 4.5 hours long, but along the way there were some of the most exciting stops we have had so far that ended up stretching our driving day into a full one:

1. Sonic for ice cream. I'm not sure what the cousins thought of this stop but personally I was not impressed by it.

2. Navajo trading post along the highway. We got our trinket fill for the vacation when we stopped at a "Navajo village." Moccasins, handmade dolls, fireworks...lots of good stuff. All I bought was a Grand Canyon map...which I never got to use. More on that to come later

3. Petrified Forest. After sadness from leaving NM, yes, we arrived in Arizona! One of the stops along the I-40 ride there was this national park which was beautiful to say nonetheless! For 10 dollars total between the 3 of us, we drove 28 miles around a protected stretch of park. Beautiful! My favorite part were petroglyphs; etchings of early shapes that were in rock formations laying in valleys of the park that we saw through FREE telescopes. To anyone going through northern AZ I highly recommend this place.

Anyway, nightfall soon came and we ended up on Flagstaff. The plan was to shop around for a hotel room as we did in PA the first night. What we didn't expect?- Labor Day Saturday in Flagstaff which involved many people from all around the southwest flocking there for various sporting events, a Midevil fair, and of course, the Canyon. So, among 8 hotels that we checked...NONE of them had vacancy. The ones that did were charging 120-150 bucks a night...clearly a jack-up from standard prices.

We ended up sitting down in a Wi-Fi lobby of the Best Western hotel in Flagstaff and calling other hotels in neighboring towns to see if they had any room. We eventually had some luck at another America's Best Value Inn in Williams, AZ. The man on the phone took our name and told us to get there ASAP because he only had 2 rooms. We took this as verbal confirmation of our reservation of the room.

30 minutes later en route to Williams, we called the Inn to confirm a specific time in which we would arrive. The clerk on the phone proceeded to say that there were no reservations at the hotel (even though we had given him our name) and that he had given our room up to someone else. Furious, we decided in a split second to skip the Grand Canyon altogether and drive to Barstow, CA that night. That is exactly what we did.

A lesson for all of you readers...if you find yourself thinking about visiting the Canyon on a Holiday weekend, make sure you have a reservation! Shame on the owner of America's Best Value Inn in Williams and MUCH THANKS to the nice teenagers in the Best Western in Flagstaff for trying to help us find another hotel.

300 miles of driving later, we arrived in California! We had to undergo a ruthless fruit inspection at the border of the state in which our stolen oranges from that morning's buffet were re-confiscated, (another sad lesson in karma) because we didn't know the origin of our oranges. I have to say though that the inspector was the nicest of his type that I have ever seen.

At 3 am we rolled into Motel 6 in Barstow. The rate: $42.77 for the night. Steal of the century. I have changed my middle name to Jonas DEAL Maurukas. Exhausted and satisfied, we crashed in our surprisingly nice room.

That is all for tonight though. We'll be sure to recount the final day of the trip soon. For now though, I am going to sleep tight in one of my favorite cities in the world! Good night everyone and safe travels.