Grand Canyon
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2008
1
10
21
Trip End
Ongoing
Jacob Lake (Grand Canyon),
Arizona,
United States
Monday, May 26, 2008
Virgin
. I like this part of America. Somewhere along the road we stopped at this little mocked up 'western style' village called "Virgin". It was tacky as but totally awesome. I fed Donkey from Shrek, Nancy got attacked by a crazy ass alpaca and Jackie and Ryan stopped off at the Hotel Virgin to do something or other. It was pretty sweet.
Back on the road we entered the national park to see massive pine trees and snow! Snow in summer! WTF mate? It was totally sweet... snow, yes that's right legit white snow. I didn't really care at that point that none of us had enough clothes or bedding to sleep somewhere it was snowing. Oh well. We negotiated to share a campsite with some Indian people who had booked a campsite that was too big for them and set off to hike down the canyon. The hike was incredible and the views amazing. The aroma was less than pleasant in parts where mule shit littered the pathways. Some of them must have been eating chili or something because it was pretty nasty. The hike down was beautiful and quick. It seemed in no time that we had reached our turn around point about 5000 feet into the decent. We still weren't close to the bottom. The climb up was much more challenging with Nancy and Ryan struggling big time with the altitude and steep climb..
Real Indians
. pansy ass New Yorkers... To be honest it was a challenge especially after spending a month sitting on my ass in front of a computer in the job in Canberra. Despite the challenge we made fairly good time and headed out to a look out point after an impromptu snowball fight (totally awesome). The lookout was incredible. The photos do NO justice to the scale of the Canyon. I will defiantly come back to spend a decent amount of time hiking through the canyon. Only having one day sucked, but better than nothing!That night we finally met our Indian camp buddies around the campfire... I'd like to say that they were the kind of Indians who lived in teepees and hunted buffalo but alas they were the kind that ate curry and could hold a decent conversation about cricket. Which is what I did. The yanks had no idea what we were talking about as we discussed how great Warney is and the significance of the Indian Premier League in the furtherment of the greatest sport on the planet. I might mention that at this point it was probably hovering around zero degrees Celsius, I was wearing every item of clothing I had with me, we were all huddled around the fire and we were all drinking copious amounts of beer to help warm our bodies from the inside out. Eventually we ran out of wood and the wind picked up so we all huddled in the tent for warmth. Ryan's snoring shook the foundations of the earth and we later saw news reports of avalanches in the area around our campsite as a result. Despite the cold we all survived the night but I kind of wished I hadn't when I woke up with a killer altitude assisted hang over... The car journey out was less than exciting as a result until I saw a deer which nearly ran in front of the car... a real, genuine dear... awesome. After that everything was all flowers and sunshine (I also saw a squirrel - sweet).
We bid the canyon farewell and head for Lake Powel kind of wishing that we weren't working to such a strict schedule. It had been a sort of Contiki tour of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah...
Comments
Novel on the way...
Hey mate,
Great to hear about your interesting travels, but where can we find the abridged version? I used up a whole DOTT period catching up on your travels!
Glad to hear your doing well, a hi from kate and i
Jared