Driving north through Arizona (1 April)

First hotel down, car loaded, satnav on and heading for the open road. Well, sort of.  Phoenix is a massive sprawl of a city that seemed to go on for an eternity.  Even after leaving the AZ-101 Loop the sprawl continued along the Interstate.

Finally, suburbia gave way to countryside, although the roadside flora was unlike anything I'd seen before.

We turned off the Interstate to loop through the small town of Sedona, as recommended by Marianne, our waitress at breakfast. We had assumed she was recommending the town, but it was obviously the scenery she was referring to. Here was our first taste of canyon country!

We followed the scenic route up through Oak Creek Canyon, braving a series of warnings along the way: falling rocks, ice, forest fires, elk and flash floods. Heading out past Flagstaff the mountains were still snow-capped.

Having reached the plateau, the last section of the drive was mile upon mile of bleak, flat scrubland. Initially I would have said uninhabited, but, if you looked carefully, there was the occasional cabin or caravan surrounded by fences. While it was flat we were already high - well over 5,000 feet up. The temperature was the real giveaway; we left Phoenix with the temperature in the mid-20s centigrade, but by this point it was just 14 degrees.

We arrived in Tusayan mid-afternoon. I would have said "town of" Tusayan, but it doesn't really amount to a proper town.  In reality it's a single road lined with hotels, restaurants and campgrounds - an important part of the infrastructure to support the 5 million or more people who visit Grand Canyon National Park each year.

When we reached our hotel room we found the heating was running full belt and we couldn't turn it down or off.  Luckily, a maintenance chap was working in the corridor outside and he kindly took a look. He was unable to do anything, so we asked reception if we could change room.

Result - upgrade!  Even better was that the free wifi wasn't limited to one device at a time, so Tom was happy.

So could we wait until Tuesday to visit the Grand Canyon itself?  Of course not. We didn't walk very far, but here are the first few views. I particularly liked the guy standing on the rock reading from the Bible.

Needless to say, photos don't convey the scale of the view. Tom's first comment was "I don't know how to describe this", while Steve kept saying "WHOA!!!"  We'll visit properly tomorrow.