Old Timer Garage

This morning, it is raining… no, I am just kidding, of course it is sunny. Like every day since we arrived.
We spent the night in a motel in Flagstaff. The temperature is a little colder this morning because we are higher in altitude than the previous days. 

While the girls finish to get ready, my brother and I drive the car to fill the tank up again. We drive around 300 miles per day which is roughly one tank of petrol. My brother’s car is a Hyundai Veracruz (the model just above the Santa Fe but not commercialized in Europe). The 260 hp are nice to drive and not too thirsty (just a little bit, American cars need to be American cars right? J) But considering the price of petrol in the US, the tank costs us around 45 dollars to fill up in Arizona and just a little more in California.

Today, we get ready faster than the previous days because we don’t have to pack up our luggage again since we will be back at the same motel tonight for a second night and spend another day tomorrow at the Grand Canyon before carrying on on our trip.
So after a quick breakfast and a quick shop at Walmart for our lunch, we are heading to the Grand Canyon.
The scenery around Flagstaff makes me think of the Buddy Longway stories.

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A few ski stores towards the exit of the city remind us that there must be quite a decent amount of snow here in winter even if the current weather makes this hard to imagine. Except from the pines, it is still a very dry vegetation that passes by our car and the roads are much curvier too.

 

We spot a few very nice cars on the way: modern Mustangs, a couple of hot rods and an industrial quantity of RVs which pretty much all of them belong to the same rental company.

After a last series of straight lines, we arrive at the entrance of the Grand Canyon National Park. There is a small queue to pay for the entrance but there won’t be more than 5 minutes. We pay 35 dollars to get in and we are given our pass valid for one week which we need to tape on the windscreen so we can go through faster tomorrow morning when we come back.

Just a few more miles to drive amid the forest and we arrive on a huge car park. The only thing left to do is to find a parking space… much easier said than done. We will drive around the car park for a good 10 minutes before finding someone who is leaving and we can take his spot. Parking spaces don’t have time to cool off here! 

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We are now ready to go and meet this Grand Canyon I have imagined for so long during the past few years. From the car park, nothing leads us to think that we are close to the canyon and yet, we won’t have to walk more than 5 minutes to get to the edge of it.

It isn’t hard to find, you just have to follow the flow of people if you can’t read the English signage, you can’t get it wrong.
Everybody has seen pictures or watched videos of the Grand Canyon, myself first and yet I didn’t think it would shock me that much when I got on the edge.
It is not that much the width of it that is shocking. Although it is around 10 miles wide in some places and around 300 miles long, everything is so huge that in the end it doesn’t look that big if that makes sense. You tend to lose the proportion of how gigantesque it is.

 

What is much more impressive though as far as I am concerned (it took my breath away for a moment when I got there) and what you don’t realise on the pictures and videos is how deep the canyon is. Around one mile deep in some places and most of the time very very steep. And as soon as you walk away from the touristic spots, there is no longer any barrier that prevent you from going right on the edge of the canyon which makes it even more impressive.
After taking a few pictures, we walk along the edge to get away from all the tourists. We walk for a while on the edge path to enjoy the view before going back to the car for a quick lunch with what we bought this morning before leaving Flagstaff.
We will then spend the afternoon taking advantage of the free buses running along the Grand Canyon to go a little further and try to get a different background for our pictures and find a nice spot to wait for the sunset.

We are far from being the only ones in having thought about that considering the huge amount of people with cameras trying to find the perfect spot along the edge of the canyon and the sun hasn’t even started to go down yet. The good spots are expensive. For us it will be easier, we will just enjoy the scenery while chatting the afternoon away and admiring the colours changing to orange and then red, revealing the relief at the bottom of the canyon.

As soon as the sun is down, there is a rush back to the car park. First of all, the temperature goes down pretty quickly and second, the bus services only run for another 45 minutes before stopping for the night and there are so many people waiting to get back to their car that there is going to be a long queue to get on the bus so we leave among the first people to try and catch the first buses.

It is almost pitch black when we get back to the car. The hour drive back to Flagstaff allows us to reflect on everything we have seen today and after a quick dinner in town, we won’t be long to go to sleep.

Tomorrow we will go back to the Grand Canyon for a second day there but we will go to a different place before finishing the day heading to our next stop: Monument Valley.

To be continued… here: 9- Grand Canyon and Kayenta

 

 

 

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