disintegrate upon impact
Wow, what a day. I woke up at 4AM for no good reason, and just couldn't fall back to sleep. So, I took a shower, and woke Denise at 6AM. We decided to drive to Las Vegas via the north side of the Grand Canyon, rather than retracing our route on I-40 back to Kingman. We were actually driving east out of the park on AZ-64 as the sun was rising, and I caught a few amazing glimpses of the canyon with the first light hitting them. It was also really cold & windy this morning (28F). We then drove north on US-89, through the Navajo reservation. Its sad how destitute the Indians are, almost entirely living in trailers in a very remote, isolated part of the country. The scenery was still quite pretty as we drove through the Painted Desert. Next we turned east on US-89A, and encounterd some of the most amazing scenery yet. We paralleled the Vermillion Cliffs. for a while, and crossed over the Colorado River gorge. Then we climbed to 7920ft at Jacob Lake (the gateway to the closed-for-the-winter north rim of the grand canyon. It was incredibly windy at that point. The views into the valley on the other side of the mountain range were amazing. The remainder of the drive to St. George, Utah was uneventful, but still quite scenic. We hopped onto I-15 south, and the route through the Virgin River Gorge was really cool, with incredibly steep, sheer cliffs on both sides of the highway for a few miles. Once we exited from the canyon, very strong winds were everywhere, forcing alot of tumblewed to randomly fly across the highway. Many cars were unable to avoid it, and the tumbleweed would effectively disintegrate upon impact with a vehicle. I ended up becoming victim to one of the tumbleweek monsters, and it became jammed in the grill of the car. So I pulled off to the side of the highway, at which point most of it fell free on its own. I then picked out the remaining pieces (warning, tumbleweed actually has tiny sharp thorns). THe wind remained strong for the rest of the drive to Las Vegas, however i didn't have any more run-ins with the weed.
We went to The Alladin buffer for dinner, and it was pretty good, however David's behavior was horrible throughout much of the meal, and ruined the experience for me. He was incredibly picky about the food he would eat, and was generally uncooperative. We're at the Sahara for the next 3 nights, before driving home on Thursday.