Saturday 28 February 2009

Preparing for the Grand adventure

We've been bloomin' busy today. Stephen was up at the crack of dawn to go to the Rangers Club and watch the football. I had a little longer in bed, but was still up at 8am and doing laundry. We had to pack for our trip and also make up the beds and clean up the house as the day we get back we have visitors arriving. It was all go! On top of that we had a couple come round who have just moved from the UK and were interested in buying some of our electrical goods.



When they'd gone we had to make another trip to Target as Stephen wants to take his heavyweight tripod on vacation with us and it wouldn't fit into the case, so we had to find a large enough holdall. As luck would have it we found this pink and black mizuno bag which was long and slim. It didn't have a price attached to it, so we began the search of the area for the shelf it came from. I didn't fancy standing at the check out for 3 hours with a huge line of irate people forming behind us, whilst they searched the store for the mystery item! As it was Mizuno we tried golf...nope, not there. It was time to find a sales assistant as we could easily spend a fortnight searching the store for it!



The sales assistant was really helpful. It was apparently a baseball bat bag, so he took us to the correct aisle. Stephen was really wanting one that wasn't such a lurid shade of hot pink, so the sales assistant got us a $9 bag down from the shelf. It wasn't pink, but it also wasn't big enough (nor was it mizuno!). The $17 bag was also not quite big enough, so having run out of options he said he'd write down the stock code for the $9 bag for us to take to the check out with our hot pink mizuno one. What a star! I had a quick look on the interweb when I got home. We made a BIG saving!!



We've been struggling to get all the stuff we need into two cases and the hot pink bag. The airlines charge an arm and a leg for checked baggage and we are already going to have to check the large case and the hot pink bag. That's $30. If we check another case then it costs another $25! What a rip off! I had a brilliant idea. Take the small carry-on case and pack both our camera bags and the few odds and ends that we had left over in it. That way we're both only carrying on our one allowed carry-on case each, plus our one allowed personal item.



The reason we're struggling for space in the cases is that we're having to take clothes to cover a pretty wide range of temperatures. Albuquerque is 23C during the day and Grand Canyon is minus 9C overnight. We've pretty much having to take both swimsuits and thermals!! I've just checked the 10-day forecast and the Grand Canyon is expecting snow both days we are there. Aaarrgghhhh!

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