Po-tay-toe.

For those of you who haven't heard, I recently spent four days with my brother in the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. We had a time. A TIME, I tell ya. Having never been to either before, he was like a kid in a candy shop, and it made me appreciate the Grand Canyon that I'd seen years ago on a whole new level. I'd never been to Zion, which was part of my grand plan, and I think I saw more because he was there poking around even though he claimed not to be a hiker. Example:

AND I successfully maneuvered around any political talk without causing any sibling rife. Bonus.

What I didn't know going into this, is that he's on some variation of the Atkins diet, where he needs to eat slabs of meat approximately every 4 hours or he will become food-grumpy. This was fine, schedule-wise... Sure, you need to eat, let's take a break, we're on vacation for God's sake. Except that being in the Southwest, with every slab of meat inevitably came a potato of some sort. He was very considerate of my marathon training carb-intake needs and insisted on getting a baked potato with every meal, so that I could eat it then or take it with me. Of course most of my veggie burgers* came with fries because we were in the Southwest... But we also had microwaves in the hotel rooms, very convenient for heating up late night snacks like baked potatoes... So over the course of four days I ate a lot of freakin' potatoes.

I never thought I would say this but: if I never see a french fry or baked potato again, I will be the happiest person on the planet.** I have never been so happy to eat non-iceberg-lettuce salad and asparagus and tofu as I have been these past few days.

As for me, I only had two grumpy days (according to him). One was the second day when we were walking down a trail admiring the view and I realized it was 6:30pm. The last bus was to leave at 7:30pm, so I started to panic about finding the road and the bus stop. He was fairly patient with me while we got to the bus stop, where I proceeded to freak out because we'd just missed a bus when we arrived, and 20 minutes passed and the next bus hadn't come by (they were supposed to run every 10 minutes). Then I consulted my "Grand Canyon Guide" and noticed that the buses were only running every 30 minutes after sunset, so I calmed down slightly and then did a little "the bus is here!!" dance when it arrived. And he just nodded.

The second grumpy occasion occurred late in the trip. We parked in the Hard Rock parking lot in Vegas after 3 fun-filled days of 100% nature. (Neither of us are gambling folk, we were just killing time until the airport.) After wandering around the smoke-filled, screech-ridden, neon-infused Hard Rock Hotel for about 30 minutes I got a terrible headache and asked that we walk down to the Strip for some air. It was all downhill from there... With every sex poster or spring-break-group-of-guys-looking-to-hook-up, I got more and more ill. My brother tried to be patient with me - it had been my idea to show him Vegas after all - but I just kept saying "I hate this place" and after some key Kodak moments, he got me off the Strip and we found a place to eat in slight peace, then headed for the airport.

I've been told I'm a patient traveler, but I really have to hand it to him for putting up with me that last night.

The bus night though - that freak-out was totally justified.

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* Veggie burgers!! In Arizona!! My, how times have changed.

** Of course, all bets are off the next time I go to Barneys. Mmmmm... curly fries.