RoadTrek USA: Day 4- 11/15/12 Canyon Day

This is the day where we finally reached the Grand Canyon. We pushed through to late evening and stopped at a hotel in Phoenix. We had dinner at a place called Guadalajaras in Tucson because Jenn really wanted authentic tacos. I had just had a spicy chicken sandwich at McDonalds while trying to track down the McRib. While driving through El Paso, I had heard on the radio that the McRib was back. As of yet, I've still not encountered it.

The first photos begin with a Land Rover I saw the next morning in the parking lot. I scoured it for ideas to improve the trail readiness of my own rig. Anyway, these will mostly be pictures of the canyon with not a whole lot of captions or narration.

Seeing this truck in the lot instantly made me miss my roof rack and cargo basket. It would have been overkill for me to mount both the basket AND the rear tire carrier. But at some point, I probably will put both on there just for the photo opp.

Carefree Highway. I started humming the tune to Lil' Wayne's song "No Worries". Not kid-appropriate.

Cacti!

I think I just caught her in a blink. Although the driving make for a tired wifey. Jenn was saying she thinks her parents might have taken her for drives as a kid to get her to sleep because being on the road puts her to sleep pretty quickly. I think either that or the fact that she works so many swing shifts at the hospital.

I tried to take a lot of shots of what the roadways and scenery looks like in each region in case I never get to go back...or it's something like 20 years later and I'm trying to recall how different things may be by then.

Along the winding roads and switchbacks heading up from Phoenix through to Sedona and Flagstaff, there are these elevation markers. I kept missing them for photos until I got this one at 7,000 feet. Then behind us was the sign in the picture below.

These shots don't quite do it justice. This was like a little baby mountain I had to climb to get up here. Jenn wanted no parts of this.

But I think she enjoyed watching me struggle a bit to make my way down. Kind of a "you didn't have any business running up there in the firs place" moment. :)

I'm not sure what passing motorists must have thought of me/us. I guess mostly me. The wife is the more rational/sane of the two of us. Kind of a funny thing that kept happening is that people would approach Jenn to clarify the function of certain things on the truck. I don't know if they were nervous to ask me or what. It would generally happen while at a service station. I'd be out there setting up the pump and everything and then would head in to pick up snacks or something. Only then would people approach and ask questions.

It's like the same photo 15 times, but I really like this back end shot of the truck.

There's land for sale along route 64 if anyone is interested. I am trying to see if I can convince Jenn to move this far out away from a city and into one of these little townships. I think my truck would fit in better. And we could raise llamas.

We are HERE. This is the 'gate' if you will to the Grand Canyon. $25 for private vehicles.

After a walk of about 400 meters or so, you can get to this overlook from the parking lot. There's a 25 mile loop of more views down to the Colorado river along the desert rim, but we skipped that. When we come back with children, we'll make more of a point of it. For us, this is primarily what we wanted to see. And we took lots of photos and meandered around the visitor center and bookstore.

Photos don't really do justice to the sheer immensity of the formation.

Also, you can very easily fall into this thing. There are guard rails and stuff; don't get me wrong. But they are not idiot proof. The intent was probably not to make them so intrusive as to compromise the views down into the canyon. A small child could easily slip past and through some of the voids where the railing abuts adjacent rocks or shrubs. Other places, the railing is low enough to pretty easily amble over to "get a better look"...and then have it be your last look.

This is my Tom Kennedy parka.

I tried aiming the camera down...that's at least a 100 foot drop before you hit the first major outcropping. You will likely not get back up from that little stumble.

Aww.

We staged this. She doesn't go around pointing at things.

Now I hung back a little bit, but this lady spied a little ground hog burrowing. She had a pretty nifty camera with the real photographer lenses. Nonetheless, she was like 2 feet from this dude snapping shot after shot. I noticed her before I noticed it. So then I took these two shots and kept it moving. She was damn near in the burrow with it though. The rangers warn against getting too familiar with the wildlife. There are also signs showing how badly a squirrel gnarled up some dudes hand that tried to feed it. A squirrel will mess you up, man! I had no idea.

I messed up the Captain Morgan stance. Failure.

There's a hand print in the center medallion. I asked Jenn to put her hand in it, thinking she would just shake her head at me being silly. But she did it!

Post office. I parked my truck there solely for the photo.

The sign in the background is literally the name of the restaurant. I thought it was a clarifying tag line beneath the company name as there were several other shops listed on the marquee. Nope. This is the name. "Welcome to We Cook Pizza and Pasta!"