Bumpy Gravel and Flying Car Parts!

Hello everyone! How are you doing? I hope November is off to a fun and exciting start for all of you! It is for us here on the open road.

We spent the last three nights in Las Vegas, staying at the Circus Cirus. This was my third time going to Vegas and I have proudly stayed at the CC all three times. I think that Matt and I are probably the most boring and conservative couple to ever hit Vegas though, so don't get too excited. We had a lovely time, a relaxing one at that. We didn't gamble a single penny. And we only had one drink while we were there. I know, gasp! :) But really, we had a good time.

We saw some great acrobats, a juggler, and a magician show for FREE at Circus Circus. We saw the Bellagio fountains show 2.5 times [two standing in front, watching, and 1/2 a time, driving by, sticking my head out the window and singing along to Proud To Be An American.], saw the Treasure Island pirate show. I'm kind of sad to say that I was a little disappointed with the TI show. I've seen it before and it was previously just what you'd expect... two pirate ships with pirates fighting. This time, they had something about The Sirens of TI, and it included a ship of scantily clad women on one side doing sexy dances and taunting the other ship of men pirates. I know... it's Vegas. But there were little kids all around me, and I felt like covering up their eyes. But it was free, and we were in Sin City, so I guess I can't be too surprised.

We ate several times at the CC buffet, for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. Good thing we were only there for three days!! We spend a couple hours by the pool, laying in the SUN, soaking up the heat. We also went to the old strip and walked Fremont Street. Lovely souvenier shopping there! If you know me, you know I loved that! We saw the Fremont light show too, before heading back to CC.

We left this morning, and headed southwest in the general direction of the Grand Canyon. We saw a big billboard that advertised the Grand Canyon Skywalk and so we decided to go see what it was all about. Things were going well, we got stopping at road construction for 20 minutes and chatted with the man holding the STOP sign, and then we continued on to a terribly dusty and bumpy gravel road. We were rolling along there, I was reading a book, when WHAM, a loud noise jolted my attention away from my book. Matt looked in the rearview mirror to see a black piece of something rolling down the dusty road. We turned around and pulled off to the side of the road while Matt retrieved the wayward piece. We had no clue what part of our car it came from, or what it was for, so I called my dad and after some googling of the serial number [seriously, GOOGLING is the answer for EVERYTHING! My dad first called an auto shop and asked the guy to run the serial number and he said it came up with nothing. The serial number didn't register. After googling it, my dad knew exactly what it was.] So after googling the serial number, we discovered it was the hub for the pulley that keeps the serpentine [spelling might be a bit off] belt on. We were in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, about 60 miles from the nearest town. So we continued on, slowly, steadily, and praying hard. We made it to the town of Kingman where we are currently at the Motel 6. We ate dinner at a lovely restaurant ironically called the Calico Restaurant, [ironic because as we were going inside, a cat was sitting right outside the front door! It was a little mangey so I refrained from petting it since we were about to eat, but I talked to it nonetheless.] We had great service and awesome food from the soup and salad bar, so we were happy campers. We didn't even have to drive, the restaurant and Motel 6 share a parking lot! There is an auto shop down the road that we'll visit in the morning and pray for a quick and cheap fix. Cross fingers and pray! Then the plan is to head in the direction of the [paved] road to the Grand Canyon. There are several spots to stay on the way, so depending how long the repairs fix, we'll see how far we get. I am excited to see the Grand Canyon and I refuse to let a little car trouble deter us from our destination!

Oh, and a funny story about my lovely hubby... we got into the Motel 6 room and he got out the wifi card we bought. CC had wifi for $12/24 hours. Here, it was $3/24 hours. He said "I feel so much more connected to the world now that we have access to the internet! I feel like my brain is so much bigger because if I don't know something, I can just ... GOOGLE IT." I'm so proud, he really is my husband. :) Haha!

That's all for now. Hopefully we'll have moved a little farther down the American countryside tomorrow; if not, then that means our repairs were more serious than we expected. Still... fingers crossed and prayers being said! Happy November to you all!

P.S. Who's got their christmas music playing yet?? :)

Love, Laura and Matt