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Part 1, The Grand Canyon
When I first got my June schedule, it was clear that I was going to have some time off for a motorcycle event called the Honda Hoot in Knoxville. With some minor schedule trades, I was able to end up with 6 days off in a row. While the Honda Hoot is an exciting event, we started to really talk about the other opportunities that we could enjoy with such a large stretch of days. We decided to go out west, since I had never been to the Grand Canyon, and since Tabitha had always wanted to go to the bottom!Here is the story of our trip, in free digital picture glory. For the first time ever on jaredyates.com, we've combined the pictures from both of our D70s, and teamed up to provide commentary about each day. My comments are in black, and hers are in blue like this. Like most of the pictures on the site, you can click on the small ones to see a larger version. If this page looks a little too long, try our super-efficient short version by clicking here.
We started the holiday in Washington DC on an early Monday morning. We had plans to catch a direct flight from DCA to PHX, but since we were traveling standby our plans were only goals. Since the flight was full, it left without us and we started working on the next alternatives. Since DCA is a "focus city" and PHX is a hub for USAirways, we had several good options for connections. Our final winner was a DCA-DFW and DFW-PHX pair.
We used Enterprise for the car rental and we were treated like royalty, as usual. By the time we got the car and made it out to the open road it was about 2:00, which was 5 hours behind our expected schedule. While we would have rather been on the road earlier, the benefit to our late arrival was that we were in PHX at lunch time. Amy had recommended two mexican restaurants, and we went for the one that she thought was more traditional and more exceptional. It's called Aunt Chiladas.
These are some pictures of the food, but since they are from my cell phone's camera, the quality isn't so good. They don't do the dishes justice, because just as Amy had promised, the food was the best Mexican food I can remember. There were two salsas, one that was fresh and delicious, and one that was cooked. The latter was also delicious, though a little more spicy and a little less like pico de gallo. One big difference from mexican restaurants back east is that the chips were a mix of both corn and flour tortillas. This mix added even more intrigue to the meal.
Laden with the beautiful "post fiesta/need a siesta" feeling that is all too familiar after a mexican lunch, we set out on the road. Our plan was to drive up Interstate 17 to Flagstaff, then to head for the canyon from there. Phoenix is in more of a desert climate, and flagstaff is in more of a mountain climate. The drive between the two makes for a nice display of the transition between the two. Below you can see how the cactus transitions to the tree as we climb in elevation and annual rainfall.
Once we got to Flagstaff we set out to find some groceries. We knew that this would be our last big town before the Grand Canyon. Our plans were to spend the night in a tent campground in the Grand Canyon National Park, partly to save money and partly to have fun. We found a Safeway in Flagstaff on Highway 89, just north of I-40. We took a picture of the I-40 sign because we live on I-40 in Hickory and I used to live on it in both Memphis and Wilmington. It seems that I-40 is just in a nice slice of the country.
Tabitha really liked this hill because of the way the colors changed, which looked like some sort of mining operation. We left the Safeway with a back seat full of delicious vittles, including some cherries, dried fruit, marshmallows, chocolate, tapioca pudding, and that sort of thing. There are two ways to get to the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff that are readily apparent when you look at a state map. The first is to take US180 North through Valle. The option we took was to go up US89 to Cameron, then west on 64 to the other entrance to the park. This is a smaller road and probably the one a bit less travelled. We had originally planned this route for several reasons. The first was to plan a stop in Cameron at a little store that was mentioned in our guidebook. This would have been our lunch break if we had been on the original travel plan. Since we were running so late, we decided to go on through Cameron without stopping so that we could be sure to be at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon before the sunset.
By using 64 to get to the park, our first stop was the watchtower. The signs told us that the building was built for tourists around 80 years ago. When we parked the car we found someone's wallet in the parking lot. It didn't have any official looking ID's, but it appeared to belong to someone from Europe. We dropped it off with the ranger, so we hoped that it would make it to the owner without too much trouble. This was our first indication of the global tourism that is common at the south rim.
We left the watchtower and went down the road to Moran point. One guidebook said that this point was named for a photographer who especially enjoyed it. We figured that would be a good spot to watch the sunset.
We had heard that the south rim would be crowded, and it was. That part of the canyon is very accessible, so there were lots of other people standing around. I was taking pictures of the sun just as it was setting, and a guy next to me was narrating the action. He was telling his partner about how much of the sun was setting, and his partner commented about how fast it all seemed to be happening. By then I was really starting to wonder where this guy had been for the past few days, since the sunset is something that happens every day.
Then about 30 seconds later I heard enough to realize what was going on... the partner was blind. The talker, his dad, was doing his best to describe what the sunset looks like at the grand canyon. After hearing more descriptions and discussions about the breeze and memories of the past, it became clear that the son had not always been blind. Even the guide books say that you just can't put the grand canyon experience into words.
This was a bit of an epiphany for me. We had started our day at 4:00am Eastern Time, and it was now approaching 19 hours later. We had hopped on an airplane as though it was an open box car, practically transcended time and space to cross the country in mere hours. We somewhat hastily make our way to what I thought was going to be an overcrowded place sprawling with tourists that I didn't want to be around. I had been more interested in where we were going than where we were standing. Yet, the accessibility of the South Rim that had allowed the crowds also made it possible for a blind visitor to be there, and he didn't even have to speak in order to remind us all about how easy it is to take the "sight" part of sight-seeing for granted. Overall, this for me was the most profound aspect of visiting the South Rim. Indirectly, the overcrowding that I most dreaded turned out to be the best part.
Another uncommon finding in this international sight-seeing stop was a family group sitting down for a picnic dinner, but unlike the PB&J we're used to, they had their traditional staples with a rice cooker as the centerpiece!
It's amazing how some traditions transcend culture, but can still turn out so differently!
After we were finally done taking lots of pictures of the rocks and the fading colors, we made our way to our reserved tent site at Mather campground. We decided to stay in the park because it was cheaper than a hotel, and because it wasn't too hard to bring along our tent and sleeping bags. In retrospect, it might have been wiser for us to have used a hotel, considering that we never did use the camping gear again. I think the effort of hauling around the tent and sleeping bags was worth the proximity for the sunrise and sunset at the canyon rim. The other reason for using the tent site was location. We knew that we wouldn't have wanted to drive very far after the sunset, and that since we had to be in Peach Springs so early the next day, that we were going to have a pretty short night. We reserved site number 252 and it was conveniently located close (but not too close) to a bath house. We were glad that we had reserved it in advance, since the campground was full when we arrived. The reservation cost us $18 and we booked it about three weeks in advance. At that time there were several sites available. The other nice thing about the campsite was that I met some neighbors and borrowed some of their coals to make smores with the supplies we had bought earlier! It was nice to sit and relax outside and given more time, it would have been nice to spend another day camping. It definitely required more supplies to make it work, but like for the family that I met with 2 adults and 3 teenage children, $18/night is amazing savings for them to see the sights!
I thanked my fire friends and left them with my remaining chocolate for their smores, then made my way back to our tent.
There are walking paths from the campground over to the lookout and the temperature at night was comfortable. I can not say what the morning temperature in the tent was like because we never stayed that long! We arrived after the gate ranger was gone and left before he was there in the morning!
Just as expected, our alarm went off at 4:45am mountain time. This wasn't very early for us, since we had been up almost four hours earlier the day before. I had not even put the rain fly on the tent because the climate was so dry. Likewise, the tent itself was also very dry at packing time. We had everything back into the car just as the sky was starting to glow. Tabitha insisted that we go up towards the main part of the park before we left, so we did. Below you can see some pictures of the morning light on the walls of the canyon. This was our main reason for staying so close to the rim - to see the color changes against the canyon. On my first trip with Maxine, a lot of our pictures all looked the same because there was not a significant light source change while we were there.
It was neat to see the first light on the Canyon, especially because just the morning before, we had seen the start of the day on the Potomac!
Enough fun and games! It was time for us to get back into the car. We had a long way to drive, and a very inflexible deadline. We were on the road 15 minutes before the official sunrise. I was glad for the chance to see the first light coming over the canyon! What a great start to any day!
Click Here for Part 2!
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