This weekend was a nice little 1,000 mile road trip to the Grand Canyon for my wifely friend and I's second wedding anniversary. Hard to believe we've been married two years. Well, honestly, hard to believe she has put up with me for two years.

The trip was made all the more interesting by the fact we made the trip in her Miata, which was designed for people about two inches shorter than myself. This produces a certain low throbbing in the leg region after the first 200 miles.

But the drive was nice. The wife drove and I gazed out the window, searching for feisty alien craft. If you believe the literature, those little guys are just zooming around all over the place out there, waiting for an opportunity to mess with unsuspecting motorists' heads. But I didn't see any.

The Grand Canyon is, of course, just totally breathtaking. There's no vertigo quite like Oh-my-God-I-could-totally-fall-off-this-mile-high-cliff vertigo. They should also give you those little signs that say "Yipes" that Wile E. Coyote holds up right before he falls off a cliff. Those could come in handy.

We stayed at the Bright Angel Lodge, which is right on the Southern Rim of the Canyon, and is the beginning of the Bright Angel Trail that goes down into the Canyon itself. This is also the trail that you ride burros down. We walked a mile or two (or maybe, like, 500 yards) down the trail, dodging packs of Gore-tex clad German tourists, until we began to fear our flabby bodies wouldn't make it out again, and turned around. Surprisingly enough, it's a lot more difficult going up.

Anyway, hopefully we'll get some pictures up soon.

On the way back we drove through the very confusing town of Wonder Valley, California, near Joshua Tree. In Wonder Valley, you have these huge expanses of nothing. Just desert and rocks and Joshua Trees, and every once in a while there's a little tiny shack. Do people live in these things, writing their anti-government manifestos and saying "Mr Gummint Man" a lot? I guess so, because there sure isn't anything else to do out there.