When the going gets tough, the tough get going
Trip Start
Mar 08, 2008
1
6
9
Trip End
Mar 28, 2008
Grand Canyon National Park,
Arizona,
United States
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Grand Canyon (or le Canyon grand as they say in French) is one the greatest natural wonders of the world and just one of the many things that God has blessed America with
POD at the Grand Canyon
. They don't say God Bless America for nothing, or maybe they do. I digress. It is the scene where the Brady Bunch went for their family holiday in summer but we went in winter and took the chance that the weather would be bad. We weren't wrong. A massive storm front had been moving into the area and so our time here was marked by strong snowfall and build up on the ground in 0 degree and less temperatures. Do you know what happens when you come to the Grand Canyon and its snowing? Well actually you can't see anything! You go to the look outs and look out at the Grand Canyon and all you see is this massive formation of white nothingness. Its the most amazing thing. What's that you say when you look out - that's the Grand Canyon. Here we saw American sarcasm at work, people would call home on their cell phones and say, 'I'm here at the Grand Canyon honey but I can't see anything'. The few people we met there apologized for the bad weather as if it was their fault (thats very Australian). We went round to all the different lookouts, at one of them we even saw another bit of rock and got all excited and took lots of photos but for the most part all we saw was white nothingness.The next day we were there we had high hopes of the sky clearing, the sun coming out and everything looking good. Well actually I decided to be completly negative and sleep in when one would normally be out at sunrise trying to get good photos
View from the lookout
. Vaughan was more of a go getter and went out in the early morning cold of -8 degrees and snowfall to see if he could catch a glipse of the grand canyon. And clear up it did. He returned with reports that you could actually see the other side and so we were off. Its the most amazing thing seeing the Grand Canyon when its covered in snow and the sky is (mostly) clear. Its simply beautiful watching the layered rock formations covered in white going all the way to the bottom. Of course we shared the event with a busload of German tourists, as well as Japanese. You know you're at a real tourist destination when a busload of German tourists turn up. Vaughan got to work taking photos for the girls travelling together on the bus. This is his thing over here, asking girls taking photos of their friends if they'd like one together, in the hope of meeting a girl, or just another traveller. Its a good plan and he's met alot of different people this way. Anyways after seeing all the ice and snow on the ground and slipping around and walking slowly we were amazed to see all these crazy people going out on the trails that take you down to the bottom of the Canyon. Now imagine this, you're on a rock ledge walking down, there is ice and snow about, 1 slip and you could well be over the ledge as there is no handrail. Possibly I read too much of 'Fatalities at the Grand Canyon' (a book you can get here) however all these crazy thrillseekers were out walking down to the bottom in gear that didn't look all that appropriate
Sedona - View of the Rocks
. Maybe they should've saved time by throwing themselves over the ledge to begin with? Then we saw the mules (or horses - I can't tell the difference - I don't like farm animals) with people on them following the same trail down. Now if the animal acts up, or slips, you're off taking the fast way down to the bottom. We didn't hear of anything going wrong so maybe its not as dangerous as I think. And so after getting some good shots of this place in the snow we left, heading straight for the McDonalds so I could add Arizona to the state count. Now I've had McDonalds in 10 US States, another 40 to go. If I ever do all 50 states I then need to do US territories. We headed south for a bit of a deteor, to the beautiful town of Sedona. Climbing to the dizzy heights of 8000 ft, easily the highest I've been since I once had 3 coffees before lunch, we entered the largest Ponderosa Pine plantation in the world and took the most scenic drive in the state, and indeed one of the most scenic in the country, down through a narrow Canyon that dropped thousands and thousands of feet in just a few miles. At first you could see a new lot of snow covered mountains (with their snow covered Ponderosa pines on top) almost around every turn you took before the snow gave way to beautiful Red Rock formations (I thought they named the chips after this place) that could well feature in numerous westerns and indeed some of them have. We ended up in the beautiful town of Sedona, packed with tourists, and ate a lovely lunch on quality US bread that is quickly dispensing the false myth Australians have that you can't get good bread in America. You actually can - just look harder. We turned around and went back up the Canyon road to do it all again because the scenary was so breathtaking.
After all this we headed back to LA.
PODWATCH - Riding in a car with Vaughan
Driving and travelling with Vaughan has been a positive experience. Of course Vaughan has benefitted from the rules and regulations that Allan & I came up with after 2 overseas trips. Naming our GPS 'Maybe' and our car 'Steve Holt' (or Stevie) is all part of the in car fun designed to make things more pleasureable. Sharing the driving, the non driver is responsible for navigating and double checking that the information 'Maybe' (our GPS) provides is correct. We have found that the higher we went the more mistakes Maybe made as the GPS seems to lose accuracy. We have also found that in America many changes for freeways are not exits in the Australian way but more you must be in the left 2 lanes to go here, and right 3 lanes to go there etc... And so you always need to check for this. Many exits are right on top of each other and so you could get 3 or more exits in very quick succession so you need to know what you're doing. The drivers themselves seem to be very aggressive, northern suburbs from Melbourne type but more extreme, used to the fact that if they don't try and push in they will never get their lane. Its all good and we haven't had too many problems after our first big day of driving.
Actually, the hardest part of driving in America on the wrong side of the road is not the fact that right is left, and left is right - this you get used to pretty quickly because you just follow the traffic. The hardest thing is that because you're on the left your sense of 'centre' of the car is now different. We both found ourselves continually drifting off to the right hand side of the lane because we kept thinking we were too far left. This meant that sometimes we were sticking out of our lane. We got used to things pretty quickly but this issues still creeps into our driving occassionally. The roads may be worse then in OZ but people fly down the freeway doing at least 80mph.
