Road Trip, Part Three: It's a Grand Old Canyon

On Tuesday, after a yummy breakfast of french toast in the garden, we headed up to the Grand Canyon. I was thinking, "If we're this close, we really ought to see it," but I wasn't sure how much Carson would get out of it. Well, he was blown away, loved it, took a ton of photos, and it was totally worth the day.

He also got to see what a really popular park is like in the middle of tourist season. Boy howdy! We got to the park entrance at 10 am (thinking we were on the early side - hah!) and there were 5 lanes/kiosks, each at least 4 cars deep. That should have tipped me off NOT to head to the visitor's center, but I did anyhow - we managed to park about a mile up the road from the actual parking lot, but of course, seeing how the walk back to the center had one of the most spectacular views on EARTH, I shouldn't complain! Carson oohed and aaahed, and we went to the lookout points, and it was wonderful despite the lack of elbow room.

After the visitor's center we trekked back to the car, and started winding our way out along the rim to the east, stopping at every lookout. The crowds dropped away almost immediately (whew!), and the views just stayed gorgeous. Near the end, we were at a lookout with a good view of the (far away and tiny) Colorado River, and we had the binoculars out, and I realized that we could just barely see rafters dropping through a rapid, and a few boats eddied out upstream. That was totally cool. There were thunderstorms crossing the canyon, and we saw an eagle, and the rain only fell when we were in the car between lookouts - it couldn't have been better!

Finally we got to where the road leaves the canyon, and headed east and then south again towards Flagstaff. But on the way we stopped at Wupatki, where Carson got his first taste of ancestral puebloan ruins. (They don't say "Anasazi" anymore. I got a kick out of listening to all the rangers on our trip trying to say "ancestral puebloan" as if it rolls off the tongue, which it doesn't. Try it.) Wupatki was beautiful - they had built it around a spine of rock, and you can see the giant slab of sandstone in the middle of the rooms. It's all a gorgeous deep red color, and the desert there was surprisingly green.

We grooved on Wupatki, admired the construction, the kivas, the ball court, and then, very tired, headed back to Tom & Helen's, and dinner, and bed.