Road Trip Diaries Days 17-18: The Grand Canyon

     BAM! Just thought I'd get your attention. 

     Caitlin and I are nearing the end of our journey- we're now just one border away from California, here in Flagstaff, AZ. It feels so far west! So big, so dramatic, so perfectly suited to hopping on horses and galloping into the sunset... but my horses are in California, so continue driving we must. 

In a Nutshell: Overview of Days 17 and 18

Route: Albuquerque, NM to Flagstaff, AZ --> then to Grand Canyon National Park

Miles Traveled: 404 today, 6,027 total. 

Hours in Car: 6 today, 77 total.

Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 4 these days, 25 total. Cortney: 0 these days, 5 total. Combined: 30 cups. 

Food Highlight of the Day: The best soup ever at Macy's European Coffeehouse in Flagstaff. Way back at the beginning of the trip, some hippies at a rest stop told me I needed to go to Macy's. When my friend Amber mentioned it, I remembered the hippies and the fact they tend to have excellent taste in vegan friendly food, and so I went. 

It may not look out of the ordinary, but that red lentil potato soup is the best soup I have ever had in my life. It is so savory, so perfectly spiced, and the potatoes are the perfect melt-in-your-mouth tenderness... regular lentil soup or regular potato soup will just not cut it for me any more.

Quote of the Day: Cortney: "Oh Joel and Caitlin are playing video games." Amber: "Ewww gross!!!!"


Rugged and Awesome Arizona
   There is nothing like a desert thunderstorm. We got stuck in many between New Mexico and Arizona- the clouds roll in, the thunder rattles the car, and all of a sudden the raindrops come with such volume and velocity that driving becomes an exercise in how hard one can squint and squeeze the steering wheel.
     We had to pass through such a storm on the way to the Grand Canyon, and only hope that it would clear up. Like desert thunderstorms do, it soon retreated just enough to provide a stark contrast with the blue sky and eventually moved well beyond the horizon.

The break in the weather as the storm crossed the canyon

    The canyon started out almost blue, filled with mist and rain and distant shadows of the other rim. At some parts it was so wide that we couldn't see across, at least not until several hours later when the storm had completely gone.

    When clear, the Grand Canyon is a brilliant spectacle of geology. Exposed layers of old earth tell a story in many colors and textures. The bottommost deposits we could see, the Vishnu Basement rocks (a name very pleasing to a religion scholar like myself), are over 1.8 billion years old. That means they were around in the Precambrian Period. The continents were jammed together into a big old supercontinent back then, as far as I can discern from a rather complex Wikipedia article. Layers upon layers were deposited, and the dinosaurs walked along the top of them here before water erosion started forming the canyon about 6 million years ago.  

     Sure puts things in a different perspective. 

Here you can see the top 3 or 4 layers. There are still several deeper ones. 

For some reason being on the edge of a cliff compelled me to try yoga.

     After a very informative lecture from a ranger about why squirrels are the most dangerous animals in Grand Canyon National Park (anybody who goes to Sac State can understand this), Caitlin and I went farther out to Desert View, a point with an old watchtower where a handful of people gathered to watch the sunset. Luckily we were attacked by no squirrels. Sounds like they might be even more vicious here than Sac State. Instead we simply had a peaceful sunset surrounded by a variety of people from Europe and Asia. Relatively few Americans at the Grand Canyon, but it is definitely a global destination judging by the number of languages we heard.

Um... you know that awkward moment when you realize you cannot possibly follow something so awesome? Yeah. Feeling that.