The world's largest pothole

The thing about Albuquerque is that, for some reason, the entire city has a mild stench of feces.  Why?  I don't know.  But there's something that's just not quite right.  From the outside, the city seems quite clean and pleasant, but something tells me it has a dark underbelly.  For example:

I mean, what is the deal with this church?  I don't know.  And this gazebo? 

Just a little strange if you ask me.  These turtles were sitting outside the rattlesnake museum in a circular enclosure.  Perhaps they feed them to the rattlesnakes?

Anyway, we couldn't go into the rattlesnake museum.  Kirby is afraid of snakes.  I think a snake ate his father or something.  So we decided it was time to leave Albuquerque, but not before deciding to open up a barbecue restaurant, which would be called either ABQ BBQ, or Barbequerque.

So.  It was time once again to go Blimpie hunting.  I searched the map function on my phone and it claimed there were, in fact, four Blimpies in Albuquerque.  I was momentarily excited, but I decided to cross reference it with the store locator on the Blimpie website.  Alas, there were none.  But, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  There was a Blimpie, according to the site, located in a small town about 90 miles to the west.  However, the site didn't even list an address.  It just said it was on "Hwy 371 in Thoreau".  Needless to say, I was not optimistic.  You can experience firsthand what happened as we searched through the magic of Youtube: 

Methinks that was the best Blimpie I have ever had in my life.  It was like magic in my mouth.  Anyway, New Mexico was an interesting state - probably the brownest state I've ever been through (and no I'm not talking about the skin color of the inhabitants, I'm talking about the vegetation, and lack thereof).

So, we headed to Flagstaff, a city whose daytime high and nighttime low are often 40 degrees apart or more.  On the way there, we ran into an extremely large pothole, and had to get another new rental car:

Really, we were tired of getting terrible gas mileage, and had already put 2500 miles on the last car, so it was time for a change.  Enter the Volkswagen Jetta.  Not a bad car.  Not as good as the Ford Fusion we had initially, but it had one MAJOR advantage over our first two cars: Arizona plates.  Finally, we had plates we could be proud of.  In case you don't recall or didn't know, the Fusion had Michigan plates, and the CX-7 had Alabama plates.  We were very paranoid that people might actually think we were FROM one of those states.  We were also afforded a chance to visit the Flagstaff airport to pick up the car.  What a facility!

So after we got our rental car, we headed to our hotel... err, motel.  Apparently the hotels in Flagstaff are expensive for whatever reason, because we are in the most expensive, yet crappiest place we have stayed in yet.

So we figured since we had Blimpie for lunch, we might as well make it a perfect food day, so we went to Outback for dinner, which was right down the street from our palatial hotel.  I decided that for the first time, I would attempt to get two delicious baked potatoes with my meal...

And the food day of the year was complete.  We called it an early night, even though Flagstaff is clearly a hopping town.  The next morning, I was lying in bed and heard an extremely loud thud come from the bathroom.  "What happened?!" I asked.  "Heheheheheheh, I fell," said Kirby.  He fell in the shower.  Impressive.  So, he was a little unsure of his footing as we headed to the Grand Canyon.  In fact, as we walked on the path next to the rim, he made me walk on the canyon side, just to be safe.  And he did not partake in the reckless rock jumping, as I did.  Of course, that wasn't without its problems:

On the way there, we got stuck behind an extremely slow car.  It's pretty pathetic when you get PASSED BY A BUS on a two-lane road.

Before you die, let me show you the things I have done, so you understand the breadth of my transformation.

This is me at the Grand Canyon.  Do you see?

This is a picture I made in Paint by using the fill button.  Actually, it is a picture of the sky.  It was quite blue.

This is one of the gum trees native to the Grand Canyon area.

Can you find Kirby in this picture?

Can you find Brad in this picture?

Kirby standing in front of the Grand Canyon, texting.

After the Canyon, we went back to Flagstaff to do some laundry.  As I said, Flagstaff is a happening town.  And that's when I saw HER:

BRAD'S HOOK-UP OF THE NIGHT.  Yeah, she had a baby.  So what?  Don't judge me!

Vegas tomorrow.  Goodnight.