Into Arizona, on to Nevada

We couldn't leave New Mexico without venturing down to Roswell to see some aliens. So we did. On arrival it's exactly what one would expect; pictures of aliens everywhere, cafes named 'out of this world cafe', even their wal-mart was adorned with massive green men with big eyes-the same went for all of their street lamps. So the answer is yes, they are completely milking the fact that something may or may not have happened there in 1948 and now it's their biggest source of income through tourism. So we went to the museum and had a look around, but it has to be said-although things are a bit vague as to what actually happened, we mainly had to laugh at the whole thing. The area 51 phenomenon interested us a considerable amount more.

We came into Arizona and drove to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, named so because of the fallen trees from millions of years ago that were petrified by minerals and have been solidified. Thousands of these fallen barks cover the floor of the petrified forest and almost seem fake. I myself, no driving license and never having taken a professional driving lesson drove across the painted desert-a good chunk of the 30 miles it took to cross it, I had the others in a probable state of fear at my attempt to drive like a normal person.

After the driving incident we continued on to Holbrook-another side-of-the-road kind of old school town where we stayed in a wigwam in the wigwam motel-an excellent choice of boarding, complete with old cars from the 50s parked outside-just for the complete picture.

We drove along the open road to Flagstaff-the nearest city to the Grand Canyon. The elevation here brought us back into snowy territory, not something that any of us were jumping up and down about. Seen as not too much was going on in Flagstaff, minus a bar we went into at 3 in the afternoon full of salt of the earth old Americans, most of whom were already obliterated.

Of course we stopped off at the Grand Canyon, what a sight to behold. The scale of it is quite hard to comprehend and the widest of wide angle lenses could not fit it's entirety. Keep in mind the bit that most people see is less than 20% of the canyon, to see the whole thing properly I reckon a helicopter is the only option. Seen as our finances didn't cover such a luxury, it was back to the van for us.

Over the state line and into Nevada so we could 'do' Vegas. We drove in at night-passing by the hoover dam on the way-which was pretty amazing looking at night. Coming into Vegas was like an overload of neon and a massive hub for electrical waste. We stayed in the Hard Rock Hotel and from our moment of arrival, we never wanted to leave. Our first night was full of drinks, dancing and gambling-I being the only one of us who actually made money, but I'm sensible like that. The following days were another blur of overpriced casinos, roof top clubs and more roulette. I can see how Vegas sucks people in, I most definitely will be back.