Grand canyon

the new year started out well; we went to ihop for breakfast!! (homemade bread would have been good too, but thats quite difficult when you are in a motel). its too bad we only discovered ihop about 1.5 year ago (except for my weight, ofcourse....); if only someone had told me ihop stands for international house of pancakes.. then we would have tried it out sooner...

it was indeed really cold outside, and the waterbottles we had left in the car got frozen overnight. after breakfast we drove to the grand canyon! it was yet another nice drive, high up in the mountains at some point (8000 feet). and then, finally, i got to see the grand canyon with my own eyes. magnificent! and impossible to photograph, its just too big and colorful. even though conditions were excellent today; very good visibility and sunny... in reality it was just so much better than the pic you can see above (which is just a tiny part). we walked around there for quite a bit, and then discovered the road we planned to take was closed due to icy conditions. we thus had to drive the exact same way back again (some 2.5 hours), and from there we had to drive up north again to our next destination. it was so disappointing, because of that we had to drive the last 1.5 hours in the dark, and i could only imagine what great scenery we were missing.... :(

now we are in page, just at the border between arizona and utah. we found an excellent hotel (amazing how much the prices can differ from town to town, just depending on the amount of tourists) for not too much money. after dinner we enjoyed the outdoor hot tub (while its freezing, around -2C), so nice! time to sleep in yet another bed, and lets see where we will get tomorrow... the trip is almost coing to an end... :(