Made it to Phoenix

We are in Phoenix,Arizona now at our friends' condo. We had no problems crossing the border into the US at Coutts. Jay and Halli drove us to the bus station in Great Falls (these three pictures are from that leg of the journey). We decided to take the bus all the way through to Phoenix instead of getting a rental car in Salt Lake. This was probably a wise decision as the sleep deprivation we experienced from the first night on the bus would have left us in no condition to drive a car for 15-20 hours. The second night on the bus was much better. The first night, there were just a lot of strange passengers with some obvious anger or substance abuse issues. One drunk guy smuggled a little puppy named Kahuna onto the bus. His buddy was an old hippy who kept trying to play his guitar or harmonica but was yelled at every time he did. Then there was a guy with a really loud southern drawl whose purpose of his trip he kept saying was "to go scare the repo man who took my car". There was one man who was travelling all the way through to phoenix who was excited about the 4 1/2 hour layover in Las Vegas so he could "get messed up, brother". I was not looking forward to this, but it turned out he sat at the front of the bus the next day and didn't even make a sound. Aside from a few scary people, everyone was very nice. I like the atmosphere on the bus when everyone is getting along. Being forced to spend several hours on the same bus makes you get to know people that are not in the same social circle as you. Our kids really liked this friendly trucker guy named Ross.