Arizona

Feenicks

On our way to Phoenix we made a pit stop in Tuscon, to check out some Mexican food that Greg Nix recommended to us. We didn't spend much time in Tuscon, because there was a monsoon in the area, and the weather was cold and gross.
So we continued on to Phoenix. Our gig that night was just north of the city in a town called Glendale. It was a really fun show, we got to play with some interesting other bands, and the show was pretty early so we got to head to our couch surfers house pretty early, to get a good night's sleep.


Beautiful Arizona

Our couch Surfer in Phoenix, Tim was super helpful, he told us a bunch of cool stuff to do on our way to the Grand Canyon. First stop was a guitar center to buy a new keyboard stand, because mine was somewhere between Phoenix and El Paso.
From there we took a scenic rout through Sedonna, one of the most beautiful landscapes ive ever seen, then we drove up some mountain in some forest, and got to an elevation of 8,000 feet. Arizona is a really really beautiful state. The landscape changes from dessert to forest and back really suddenly, its crazy.
Tim told us about this lava cave to stop at on the way. He gave us very specific directions to get there because its kind of hard to get to. We had to drive down this unmarked dirt road for a few miles, then get out and hike through this weird, creepy, mossy, barren looking forrest for a bit. As we arrived to this clearing in the forrest we noticed this strange haze about 2 feet off the ground, and this pile of rocks in the middle of the clearing, as we approached the rocks we realized we had found the cave.Inside the cave was about 20 degrees colder than outside so this haze was sort of accumulating outside of it. So we climbed our way down into this small drippy crevice in the middle of this creepy forrest armed with nothing but two flashlights.





It was pitch black within 100 feet of the cave opening. It slowly opened up into these huge dingy corridors, that seemed to lead on forever. We spent about an hour walking through them before finally reaching the end. Great afternoon of cave exploration. Next stop the Grand Canyon!!

Grand Canyon

We got to the canyon right at sunset. We frantically drove to the edge, and jumped out to see it before the sun went down. IT WAS HUGE!! It was awesome to see it right at dusk, it was really foggy, but really colorful. From there we went to get some dinner. Then we found a little campsite, ans had a nice time hot-boxing the tent before falling asleep. The next morning we got up early to hike the canyon. We made it about half the way down, but decided for the sake of time to head back up so we could make it to San Diego at a reasonable time. We spent twice as much time getting back up as we spent going down. It was a steep, sweaty, mule poo dodging hike, but it was totally worth it.