Moving to the Grand Canyon

Well we thought today was going to be an easy drive from Mesa to Williams in northern Arizona as the gateway to the Grand Canyon, a distance of about 180 miles where we were scheduled to meet up with our friends from Australia, Basil and Nola Trollip. Unfortunatly it did not work out that way.

Robie and Sharon were taking the lead with Betty & I following behind maintaining contact via CB radio. About 35 miiles from Williams I spotted smoke coming from the tow dolly behind Robie's RV and immediatly started calling him on the CB, within seconds the tire disingreated and it was running on the rim. Eventually Robie got the message - we had communication difficulties due to language.

Anyway Robie finally pulled over and we inspected the damage, tire gone and rim on the road not a pretty sight.
Robie decided that we should proceed onto the RV camp site and that he would call Good Sams Club www.goodsamclub.com/ for emergency help. For those that do not know Good Sams Club provides roadside assistance as well as discounts at thousands of camping sites throughout the USA amongst other things and are excellent to deal with.

 

Here are a few other photos taken along the road today, the scenery was actually better than portaryed in the photos and it was in fact an interesting drive.

Photo taken at a truck stop where we had pizza and Mexican food

The valley 1200 feet below.

We turned up at the RV camp to find that Basil and Nola had arrived and settled into camp so once we checked in we met up with them and once our hello's had been made we were offered a nice cup of tea by Nola - great after several hours on the road.

Having arrived in the early evening and with Robie and Sharon only arriving at about 7:30-8:00PM I did not feel like having Betty cook so we went downtown for dinner. Williams is only a small country town kep alive by being on a junction of Interstate 40 and route 73 plus it is considered the gateway to the Grand Canyon.

The photos below are of Williams, AZ.

After dinner we met up with Robie & Sharon who were fairly tired due to a hard day on the road however they still found time to have welcoming Magaritas with Basil, Nola and us however we called it an early night as tomorrow is a day to look forward to - a drive up to the Grand Canyon. Betty & I have been there several times and it is one of my favourite places in the world so it will be very interesting to see how Basil & Nola, Robie and Sharon react to it.