Flagstaff is great! Got up this morning and joined the long parade of cars headed north to the Grand Canyon. One of my favorite drives is up through Coconino and Kaibab National Forests on the way to the canyon. You pass by Humphrey's Peak, and the rest of the San Francisco Peaks, and it is just gorgeous (especially so in the spring and fall, but this day in July was pretty nice, too).
We passed through Tusayan, and approached the main gate for the park. It was packed!! We finally found a parking place on the side of the road, and loaded everyone off (or “disembarked”, which has been Stewie's favorite word recently), and trudged through the scrub to the South Rim. Beenie's reaction: “Wow!”
We took the requisite photos of the family with the canyon in the background, and then worked our way over to the Visitor's Center. The kids got the information on what it would take to become a “Junior Ranger”, and we started to fill out the booklets. Part of the procedure was to take a ranger-led class, and the next (and most convenient) one was “Storytime” at the El Tovar Hotel. We bustled onto the shuttle bus and headed off to the hotel.
We got there in time for the last half of the talk, although by the time we found where it was, the ranger was on his last “story”. Since part of the booklet had the kids filling in something they learned at the program, we were pretty limited on that, so everyone basically put the same thing (“we learned that tarantulas build their webs underground”). Still, the ranger okayed them all, and signed off on that part of the program. A couple of exercises later, and the kids were all sworn in as Junior Rangers.
After an ice cream treat, we hiked down part of Bright Angel Trail. The kids wanted to keep going, but I got in about as far as I thought we should go, and told them that I wasn't going any farther. They reluctantly turned around, but they were all sucking wind by the time we got back to the top!
We headed back to the car, and along the way Keke made the comment (a couple of times) that the only part of the day that was bad was that we were going to have to leave eventually. We piled into the car just as it started to sprinkle. As we were making our way back toward the East Rim, it began to rain a little harder. At one intersection, the rain puddled up at the edge of the road, and much to our surprise, quite a number of elk appeared out of nowhere to drink from these puddles! It was all mother and baby elk, but they seemed to catch everyone off guard as we all progressed slowly and carefully through the intersection.
We eventually made our way through the rain to Moran Point, where Ellen and I got engaged 15 years ago. It was our first time back. It was still nice, although I couldn't figure out how we got to the place where the actual proposal was made so many years ago. Then again, if it hadn't been windy and about to storm maybe I would have had a chance to figure it out.
As we were already on that side of the park, we decided to keep following the road out the east end of GCNP, went to Cameron, and turned onto 89S toward Flagstaff. It was a good day. (And all the way home Stewie kept saying, “I want to go back to the Grand Canyon.”)
