ROAD TRIP SOUTHWEST: A Day of Natural Beauty and Human Ridiculousness

Opening Location: Tuba City, AZ

Closing Location: Las Vegas, NV

Mileage: 440

Gas Expendiure: $50

We headed south from Tuba City into the Grand Canyon National park. Along the way, members of the Navajo Nation had set up wooden booths by the side of the highway, warning us of their presence with such signs as “friendly Indians ahead” and then after we passed “friendly Indians behind you,” “you just passed us,” and “turn around and shop.” We entered the Grand Canyon from the North entrance of the south rim, apparently not the most popular way, so we got some pretty empty views at the start of our journey. Colin enjoyed hearing German at basically every stop. It was a little overcast so we missed the sun for most of the morning, but I think our photographs still turned out pretty amazing. At one location, the Grandview Point, we found a path going down. Colin and I went down a few hundred feet to get interesting pictures and then Colin, a wee bit afraid of heights turned back and I said I was going to ‘go on a bit.’ I followed the path down the canyon on and on, eventually caught up with these two guys from California and we continued the descent, eventually reaching a mesa in the middle of the canyon, the Horseshoe Mesa (I found out later). I decided I better head back, knowing the way back up would be harder than the way down. Colin had come down to the last point he saw me, calling it the “stairs of death” with visions of me falling over the side of the canyon, and called out to me just at the right time (I was thinking how much fricking further do I have to climb). After I got to the top, massively hydration deprives, I read the sign about how many people die in the canyon each year and saw that I had descended at least 2500 feet, but of course was going back and forth, back and forth across the face of the cliff. A few more vistas and a visitor center and I was done. I was probably done as soon as I got up the canyon face, my ankles were throbbing, but I powered through. We hit the two gift shops in the village, one which featured several signs warning people the products were ‘not made by native americans’ and another one which seemed to have some legitimate native American art and artifacts. I strongly recommended to Colin that he not buy the fake Indian art and he allowed himself to be influenced - by his own admission he thought the legitimate art was better than the faux art.

I blurted out to Colin that the Grand Canyon was big but it wasn’t going to be real for me till I saw it on the big screen. So we headed out of the park to the south, stopping in Tusayon ten miles away to watch the IMAX Grand Canyon movie – which I am pretty sure I’ve actually scene before, I don’t know where that would have been but it seemed too recognizable.

We filled up our tank in Williams Arizona and then headed out on historic Route 66, the longest stretch of it left in America. There were lots of little shops and gas stations along the way all either done up in period or actually left over from period. Two particular highlights were this crazy gas station in the middle of no where (well, Hackberry) all done up with signage, and this hotel with a giant stone head in front of it, ‘Headicus.’ We ate in a Rt. 66 diner in Kingman which was pretty good, but a little of the faux side (that’s the second time I’ve typed faux in my life) – (that was the third time).

We headed up in to Nevada and crossed over the Hoover Dam – they had to search our car before we drove over it – I guess 9 pm is prime terror time. We were wondering how far it would be to Vegas until we began to see the light bleed into the night sky and at about 30 miles away we could already see the stratosphere – the tallest manmade structure west of the Mississippi. But that’s for another blog…

Soundtracks for the Day: CANYON DREAMS, authentic Native American Flute Music, LOUD, FAST, AND OUT OF CONROL, the Rhino collection of 50’s Music, and the SWINGERS SOUNDTRACK.