Beacuse I'm a big meanie, I'm leaving my VLV post til last haha So we'll skip those last few days in Vegas and go right ahead to the Monday when we departed Sin City headed south for Arizona. By the time we picked our hire car (a Chrysler C300 thank you very much) up from the hire company it was around 1pm and with a 4 hour drive ahead of us to Phoenix, we hit the road hoping to make good time. It's hard to make good time though, when you're surrounded by such stunning scenery.

 

Still, it wasn't long before we hit Arizona. We were originally going to stop in Flagstaff but after some good advice from the locals, we decided to continue on to Phoenix for the night. While simultaneously navigating and booking our accommodation for the night, I also managed to snap a few pictures. We got into Phoenix around 5.30 pm and were surprised by how modern the city was. I guess when you think Arizona you think desert and wild west. But that was to come.

 

We walked a couple of blocks from our hotel to downtown Phoenix and decided on a cool blues bar and restaurant that had interesting decor and a HUGE range of local and boutique beers. Dinner was delicious and I had my first taste of REAL American Mac & Cheese. Mmm mmm! Our friendly waitress got to chatting with us and recommened we check out Tombstone tomorrow if we had time. It was only a couple of hours past Tucson (where we were headed) so we decided to head straight there the next day before heading back to Tucson for the night.

 

Tombstone was very cool. Wild west at it's best. The Arizona we were half expecting to see I guess.It was the last wide open frontiers of America's old west and was home to the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, a shootout where Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp and the Earp brothers shot and killed outlaw cowboys Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury after tensions between cattle theives and law enforcement came to a fatal conclusion. The town was wonderful to walk around, with many buildings and artefacts preserved. We also got to see a re-enactment of the gunfight.

 

 

After a fun day in Tombstone, we headed back to Tucson for the night. We'd heard about a tiki bar in Tucson called Kon Tiki from artist Doug Horne during Viva. While we really respected his opinion, we weren't sure what we would find all the way out in southern Arizona but we certainly weren't disappointed! The restaurant and bar was AMAZING! We had a great night enjoying dinner and drinks and marvelling over the art, treasures and oddities throughout the place. The tiki drinks were awesome, the food was great and the atmosphere was fun. We only wished we could have visited on a weekend when I'm sure the place would be rockin!

 

We didn't have too late a night though as the next day we were headed to San Diego, our biggest drive of the whole trip. 6 hours from Tucson, the drive was spectacular! But more on that later this week...
 

You can catch up on the beginning of my USA adventure in Vegas including my Vegas tattoo, the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender, the wild west and tiki bars of Arizona, our San Diego experience, making it back alive from Tijuana, Long Beach and the Queen Mary, amazing Palm Springs and all the adventures of Hollywood!