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WELCOME TO FURY ROAD 2015...WITNESS MEEEEEE!!!!!!

Welcome to Fury Road, 2015. Three families. Ten people. Ten Stops. Lots of patience. One white van. Witness me. WITNESSSS MEEEEEE!!!!

What originated as a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea, a "Wouldn't it be crazy if we..." turned into a "Yeah, we should..." turned into a "We leave this Sunday." Well, that departure date was yesterday, and we loaded into our white van and tore out of town for some brain battering adventure...

"Wait, what? A white van, you say? All ten people? For thousands upon thousands of miles?" 

YYYYYYYYEP.

"But but but...I thought you loved each other. I thought you wanted to continue loving each other. I thought you gave up being masochists?"

EH.

A white van.  A Ford. Nothing too kidnappy. In fact, it's very space shuttle-esque.

We christened our white van "Vinnie" as in "Vincent" as in "The Van that...Goes."  Vinnie blazed across the desert road. Our first foray into adventure happened right off route 66 right after we passed the Arizona border right near Kingman City...we were running low on fuel (Fumes, maybe? Who knows.) Tiffany was feeling clenched staring at the gas gauge, and gas stations were seemingly few and far between the endlessly stretching road. I outwardly appeared quite cavalier about the whole thing with a lot of obnoxious "WE'LL MAKE IT TAKE A CHILL PILL!" but inside I was starting to quiver a bit. The needle was at "E." Just in time we found a place curiously called "Crazy Fred's Brothel and Truck Stop."

"WHOA WHOA WHOA!" you might proclaim as your chablis comes out of your nose. "Look at all the children in the above photo! This is a family vacation! And you take them to a place with 'Crazy' in the name?"  I totally agree with you, and know what you mean. In this day and age condoning such insensitive labels to the mentally unstable is inexcusable.  But we needed gas. Eric, the one adult in our group who is single did take the personal initiative to investigate how a place could come upon such a name...but after walking about for two minutes he quickly returned with a look on his face that simply said, "How soon can we drive away from here?"

After that we drove for a few minutes on the actual Route 66 all the way to Mr. D'z Diner. (I guess they don't teach proper spelling along Route 66.) The Dodge tribe had been to Mr. D'z before and always had a good meal. And it was the same this time... after lunch, Tai Dodge Yu took its collective first selfie with Joyce's selfie stick.

Not too bad. We'll get better. But we were a spectacle to watch try to take this...grouping together...screaming at one another...trying to get the sign in the frame as well.  And admittedly, I look like I photobombed someone else's photo...



But after some more road we finally made it to our first real destination: Meteor Crater...for selfie attempt number two...

Again, there was much turmoil in the taking of this picture. Much screaming, elbowing, jostling. Swearing. Other tourists were starting to watch us instead of staring out at the crater. (BTW the crater was amazing and big and science and stuff.)

Charlie's hand-sketched postcard for Meteor Crater.

Driving back from the Meteor Crater to Flagstaff the heavens opened and dumped on us. The rain was pounding on noble Vinnie so hard that visibility was almost to nothing. It was so utterly violent and dramatic and fun. And then within a half hour or so...

DOUBLE RAINBOW!

BOOM!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

IT MEANS THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST ROAD TRIP EVER...

maybe we'll see...

Then today team Fury Road woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to Williams for the obligatory pre-Grand Canyon visit Wild West Show. It didn't dawn on the adults until after some shootout action was happening and some of the small ones in the group were already flinching and grabbing onto arms for security that at this very moment we were introducing them to the idea of cold blooded murder as entertainment. It must have been perplexing when everyone started to clap after some of those cowboys dropped dead...oh well, welcome to the human race...

As it was the two other times I've seen it, I always have difficulty completely wrapping my head around the fact that the Grand Canyon is real...but it is, and magnificent.  So we took more photos.

This time our group selfie as more efficient...yet I still look like I'm some idiot passer-by jumping in at the last moment.

Tomorrow, we leave Flagstaff... and head to Albuquerque... a place I'm very much looking forward to visiting... until then.