Arizona

Sorry we've been so slow updating the blog but we've just been having too much fun!

The first week in Arizona we stayed with my friend Jo and her new partner Angie in her underground dome home. It was nice to chill out there for a while after the craziness that was California! We took a lot of photos (because Jo is a photographer and a great inspiration to me) and we even got George into photography. Turns out, he's pretty great! We also took a trip to Sedona and camped in the forest. Me and George went to Slide Rock which is part of a river where the rocks are very slippery and you can slide down them into pools of freezing water! That night, we made a fire and put my camera on a very slow shutter speed so that when you moved around with a torch pointing at the camera, it makes light trails. You can then draw pictures with the torches like this:

   Unfortunately, that night I got really sick with stomach pains and a temperature. I spent the rest of the next day in the car while Jo, Angie and George enjoyed the sights of Sedona.

The next two weeks we stayed with my friends Nick and Shannon in their new house. Nick is 24 and Shannon, his girlfriend, is 23 so they are much closer to our age and live much further into town. We had so much fun with them! They took us to do some amazing things like go karting, lazer tag, we went to see a baseball game and went to the BodyWorlds exhibition at the science museum. Me and Shannon and her sister Bryce also did some girly things like went shopping and got manicures and massages while George and Nick re-built a bench for Nick's mum and built a whole skateboard ramp from scratch!

Nick, Shannon and Bryce also took us for a weekend to the Grand Canyon where me and George booked ourselves on a River Rafting adventure tour! The tour was 12 hours (6am to 6pm) and started off with an airplane flight over the Grand Canyon. That was spectacular! I've been to the Grand Canyon three times now so seeing it from the air was magnificent! It was George's first time to the canyon and it was great to share that experience with him. Next, we took a jeep tour to Antelope Canyon which is a small canyon on an Indian Reservation which was carved out by flash floods. This means the walls of the canyon are rounded and very smooth. Our tour guide was a bit of an idiot and kept telling me I wasn't taking photos the correct way and that my settings were all wrong! I let him correct me, but he changed my settings to auto and took a very blurry, over-exposed photo and told me that was much better! Here are my photos, tell me what you think:

  We then took a 4 hour trip down the Colorado River starting at Lake Powell and finishing at Lee's Ferry. That was the best part for me! Our tour guide was very interesting and obviously loved his job and we got a packed lunch which we ate on the side of the river. George even got the opportunity to swim in the Colorado River (even though it was freezing cold!!) We found some ancient Indian petroglyphs carved into the rock face and just had a really amazing time.
Here are some photos from the airplane tour and the river tour:

 River tour

 Airplane tour

 Me and George on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon

 View from the plane

 Us on the plane

 The petroglyphs

 George about to backflip in the Colorado River

 Our friendly tour guide, Frank!

View from the raft down the Colorado River

We are now in New York and (hopefully) George will update you with how we're getting on here! I can tell you know, we're having the time  of our lives!

Lots of love to you all. We get back to England on the 29th May...... it's too soon!!!