El Grand Canyon

So as some of you may have heard, we had some reservations about visiting the Grand Canyon. It's not that we didn't care, per se, but we felt like we knew what was in store -- "wow, it's pretty big" snap-snap back in the car. (For Jon, most of this comes from Chevy Chase's Vacation. He can tell you about it, although as you may have guessed at this point, his blogging strength is waning. More on this in a second.)

Anyway, we even debated skipping to the Grand Canyon. But by the time we were in Bryce and on our way to Santa Fe, it would have been hard to avoid it. So we drove towards the North Rim, set up camp at Jacob Lake, 44 miles from the entrance to the park and went off to discover one of America's Greatest Treasures.

I wished Jon the best of luck in trying to chat up a Mormon chick.

One really good thing about our visit to the Grand Canyon is that it wasn't mobbed -- hardly anybody goes to the north rim because it's a pain to get to and unless you're hiking rim to rim, there isn't a whole helluva lot to do there, except maybe sit on the porch of the lodge and periodically look up from your Dean Koontz novel to check out the view of the canyon. (I'm not judging, just reporting!)

After we drove around and took our required photographs, we decided to do a little hike into the canyon, since when were we going to be at the Grand Canyon again? We hiked a mere 1.2 miles to Coconino Overlook (and the return uphill still almost killed me). At the overlook, we met a couple in their 60s who was enjoying the last little bit of their 5 day backpacking trip -- they hiked down the south rim and were now coming up the north. For those of you unfamiliar with the Grand Canyon, the South Rim is about 7 miles down, you cross the Colorado and then hike up 14 miles (the North Rim is both 1,000 feet higher and less steep). Anyhoo, you can probably do it in 3 or 4 days if you feel like rushing through the Grand Canyon, but these two were into nature and birds -- when we passed them on the trail up, they were examining some leaf or some such thing. Anyway, they made me sort of ashamed of my lack of backpacking the Grand Canyon experience, but mostly they made me happy that being 60 doesn't really have to change much.

After that, we drove back to Jacob Lake, where we sprung for dinner at the Inn. There was a little diner with counter seating and we ended up next to a couple who was also driving cross-country on their honeymoon. We talked wildfires closing I-80, traffic into San Francisco, how hot and terrible Vegas is and how beautiful Montana is -- the things you talk about when you're on the road. They had come from Syracuse and were about to start a five day drive back. When they finished their dinner and stood up to leave, the guy said, Great talking to you guys -- we're glad to see that there are some other young people doing this, instead of all these old guys in RVs.

I appreciated this because we pull into all these campgrounds and set up our little tent and sleep on the ground, all in the middle of a sea of RVs. To cheat by jumping forward slightly, in the place we slept last night, there was an RV with a palm tree made out of Christmas lights. (Don't worry, they turned it off when they went to sleep.)

My point is, there are a lot of big RVs out there, and apparently that's the vehicle of choice if you're traveling cross country by interstate. I'm not ragging on it, just observing how different an experience it would be. Believe me, I wouldn't give up sleeping on the ground. It turns out to be really, really good for my back.

The other funny thing about Jacob Lake was our waitress. She had a little ponytail and cute glasses and was sweetly perky and Jon kind of had a crush on her. I teased him briefly about that, and we struck up a conversation with her (which includes her telling us that her parents went camping on their honeymoon). Turns out she's just down for the summer working at the Jacob Lake Inn, but she's in school in Salt Lake City. Well, we look around at all the other sweetly perky people who kindly staff this establishment and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we're surrounded by Mormons. I wished Jon the best of luck in trying to chat up a Mormon chick.

In the morning, we motored out of the Grand Canyon, heading through a bunch of Indian reservations before we made it down to Flagstaff and hooked back up with the interstates. In case you're wondering, Indian reservations are still depressing. Although we did listen to Native Life Radio (or something like that), which I enjoyed.

You'll notice this entry includes no pictures. Intentional. If you want to see the Grand Canyon, you'll just have to check it out yourself. Plus, the pictures aren't really an adequate representation. Just imagine something really, really big.