28TH AUGUST - 22 SEPTEMBER

We were up nice and early the last day in our hotel room, as we had to get a taxi to take us to a hotel where we had arranged to meet Kamen, Sean’s Wife. We were meeting outside of the National Park so she wouldn’t have to pay the fee to get in. We’d not met Kamen before, so we were on the lookout for a woman with a couple of toddlers in tow, and her for a couple with a lot of big bags!! Inevitably we found each other, and were off South in no time at all. The drive was a couple of hours or so, and Kamen drove us down Oak Creek Canyon, and through Sedona, another place with mad rock formations!! We got to Sean’s and Kamen made us feel very welcome, and we met their dog, Sally, who is the softest dog in the world, and JJ the cat. We’d were browsing all the tourist leaflets Kamen had bought when Sean appeared in his dressing gown!! It was great to see him after all this time, the USA seems to have been one long holiday with people we know!

The idea we’d originally had was to stay at Sean’s for a couple of weeks, and then go up to Yellowstone for a week from there, and then on to Canada to meet with Russ & Ruth, but lots of things conspired against with the result that it was going to cost us more money than it was worth, and so we ended up there a little longer. It was good to have some extra time though, as it had been a pretty hectic few weeks and we also had loads of planning to do to get to Canada and then South America, and of course we wanted to spend some time with Sean and Kamen. We were also interested in checking out Flagstaff and Tucson for a few days. Plus, as always, we were behind with the website!!

So we had a relaxed few days around Sean’s. We took Sean’s truck and went to Slide Rock state park, in Oak Creek Canyon. This was a river with a