Following a summer that consisted of periods of high stress, extreme distractions and less time spent together than usual, the prospect of a holiday was very appealling. The dates were set before any of the adventures of the summer, which meant that as the dust settled there was a question mark over their availability. A few quick emails and a phone call resulted in the dates being confirmed but very little time to plan and book a holiday! So, in the 7 days we had, we planned and booked a roadtrip from and to Phoenix, AZ.
The Route
We had a total of 10 days, including travel to/from the UK, so our rough itinerary was planned thus
- Travel to Phoenix
- Phoenix to Chinle
- Chinle to Monument Valley
- Monument Valley to Page
- Page
- Page to the Grand Canyon
- Grand Canyon
- Grand Canyon to Phoenix
- Travel home
- Arrive home
Most days the drive was around 2.5 hours, so easily manageable. The first and last days had slightly more, but were still manageable. Given the areas we were heading to and the amount of time we would be spending in the car, we booked a standard SUV from Alamo, giving us plenty of room.
Preparation
We both enjoy taking pictures and both have DSLR cameras, so storage of the resulting images was going to be an issue while we travelled. I spent some time going through the laptops we were taking and removing as much as possible to give us some much needed space – which still wasn’t enough for Rosie!
Additionally we cleaned a couple of good size external drives, which together with a bag of cables covered us for the entire trip.
The cameras we took were
For some of the locations we were planning to visit we’d need tripods, so we took along our tripods, further complicating the packing!