grand canyon: day 2

today was our second longest driving day. even so, we didnt rush ourselves to get out of bed too early in the morning. i think we ended up checking out at about 9:30. naturally, a lot of this trip involved food. we packed a lot of snacks as well as sandwich supplies, but decided to start our first morning at the kix diner in tucumcari. handsome always loves foods that involve forming a burrito and today was no exception. in fact, he made what was probably the most perfect burrito ever. just look, his face is exuding perfection! we loved our breakfast break before the long drive and i loved my coffee to go. it was perfect for warming me up during the initial drive that was filled with sweet flurries. a woman working at kix drew a who-like creature on my cup. i thought it was super cute!

we made the entire trip to the grand canyon a vacation. if we wanted to stop somewhere or see something we did not hesitate and stopped. it was so much fun just seeing things on the side of the road. there were cute dead plants on the side of the road that existed in clusters. i loved the little spiky balls that were on the end of each branch. handsome pulled over and took some photos of me with them. i loved it! 

for those of you who dont know, handsome designs bridges. he saw a cool old railroad bridge and we made it an adventure to go visit it up close. he climbed up it all professional like and even found some loose railroad spikes at the top. it began to snow a bit harder at this point and made it difficult to get a good photo. there are a lot of white lines across them as a result.

we saw a billboard advertising fudge at some truck stop so we had to go and try some. while we were there i found this beef jerky that said "made with original death". handsome loves spicy things so i showed it to him knowing he would want to try it. well, the package was not lying! this has to be the spiciest jerky ever! i had a tiny piece and my mouth was on fire for about 30 minutes. nothing would help the pain subside. i promised myself i wouldnt eat another piece, but it had a really delicious flavor to it and i had to keep eating it. it was delicious and very painful all at the same time. i still have mixed feelings about this jerky.

we finally made it to flagstaff, arizona after hours of driving through horrible blizzard like weather with semi trucks driving recklessly. handsome found the cutest hotel for us to stay for the night located in the historical downtown square area. (we were super excited to have a claw foot bathtub in our bathroom, but instead we got a lame normal one. it was disappointing. if we had one i would have taken a bath!) on the bottom level there was a restaurant and a large bar, the second floor had hotel rooms, and the third floor had more hotel rooms as well as another bar that was filled with lots of people our age. our room was on the third floor so we stopped by the bar before heading out on the town to have some food and drinks. what we did not know about our plan was that it was a failure due to the fact that every place in flagstaff stops serving food of any kind at either 9 or 10. lucky for us, some guy was posted outside one of the bars making tacos on a grill. it seems like a pretty good plan to me since he doesnt have any other competition for late night food. we threw the tacos into my purse and headed back to our room to enjoy them in the comfort of our bed. they were very delicious but really needed some hot sauce for more of a kick. handsome will try to tell you that i was trying to get us to go take shots at the bar a few yards from our room while being barefoot and wearing sweats. the truth is, he came up with the idea and i was just being supportive :) ha!

love.