The Wake Up Call (Blog entry for 8/26/12)

****Apologies for the lateness of these blogs.  The Grand Canyon has no wifi.****

 The air was crisp and the wind was still, reminding me of the first day of school.  Conveniently across the street, an abandoned school building loomed, while the group of us silently surveyed the scene.  We weren’t alone, and goosebumps popped up over my arms. 

“I… can’t…”

The words barely fell out of my mouth, and my friends silently nodded to each other.  I was led to a tarp covering a pile of dirt, to be hidden away for safety.  It was then the creature emerged.  Dead, decomposing, but still hungry, still lurking… I was shoved under the tarp, blinded but not deaf to the sounds. 

As I listened to my friends battling against the undead, the hairs on the back of my neck flew up and a chill overcame me.  A hush loomed for a split second, as my senses sharpened and then I was aware of something smelling me, nuzzling me, trying to find out what was under the…

My eyes popped open.

I am in the tent.  It’s early in the morning… and…  My shoulder is shaking violently… like Mrs. Brisby was four times bigger and needed me to move, so she was burrowing behind….

“OH MY GOD….”

 I leapt up as far as the tent would allow.

“What happened?” Sam faintly and groggily mentioned in passing before trying to fall back asleep.

“I… think… something was trying to burrow into the tent.” 

 That woke her up.

“Huh?”

 “Something tried to burrow into the tent,” I repeated while using the now activated flashlight to randomly hit my sleeping bag in and around the place I may have been shaken by, what I have now decided to be, a prairie dog. 

 We stared at my empty sleeping bag for twenty minutes, until I was too cold and Sam too tired to care about something that probably found my shoulder too inconvenient to dig through anyway. 

 This was the start of Sunday morning at the Holbrook KOA located just west of the Petrified Forest where we were planning to hike later that morning.

Despite the extremely early five in the morning wake-up call from my little rodent friend, Sam and I woke up in pretty good spirits.  The day would be full of sightseeing and end at the Grand Canyon. 

Look, Ma! There'a a petrified log behind us!

Our first stop was the Petrified Forest where we walked through the stone trees, took a gander at some beautifully formed hills that looked like painted pyramids, saw the remains of a pueblo and their rock wall comics, walked along the rim of the painted desert, toured the old Fred Harvey Inn, and finally bought ourselves some petrified wood at the gift shop.  I wasn’t able to when I toured the national park before, because they ask you to declare any petrified wood in your vehicle before you enter and when you leave the park premises.  I guess I could’ve lied, but lying to a park ranger seems like a horrible thing to do.

Sam looking out at the Painted Desert.

We ended our quick tour and short hikes around 11AM and headed toward Flagstaff by way of 66.  The eastern half of Arizona has you hopping on and off the interstate, so that’s what we did. 

I desperately wanted to go see the Jackrabbit Trading Post, because I missed visiting it last time due to an hour detour thanks to getting lost after visiting Winslow, so Sam helped navigate the way.  When we got there, they were closed.  Devastated, I took a picture of the billboard and of Sam sitting on the giant rabbit in the parking lot.  It’s no awesome bunny t-shirt, but I GUESS it will have to do.

Jackrabbit Trading Post billboard

Sam on the rabbit in front of the trading post.

The corner in Winslow.

 After that, we made our way to Winslow to stand on the corner, and to check out an AMAZING restored Harvey House called La Posada.  As much as I love listening to “Take it Easy” (btw, thanks Beth), my favorite part of Winslow is this refurbished hotel. 



Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona... and such a fine sight to see?

The Harvey House hotels were an ingenious idea by one Fred Harvey.  He decided that the west needed a little more elegance, and he began building hotels that speckled the west.  They were located right off of the railroad tracks, either near or housing the local train station.  Here, travelers could immediately find provisions, a place to sleep, a place to eat, and all the other amenities of the east. 

La Posada

Many of the Harvey Houses are either in ruins or torn down.  Some have been saved as museums, and some like El Garces in Needles are in the middle of a restoration.  La Posada, however, is now in the hands of some very amazing people, and for the sake of time, you can read that story here. 

Needless to say, this was one of my favorite stops eastbound, and I absolutely had to share it with Sam going westbound. 

 After Winslow, we headed to Meteor Crater, one of the best examples of a large meteor crater in the world.  In all honesty… it looks like a big hole.  To pay $16.00 for limited access to a giant hole in the dirt seems a little ridiculous, but the idea behind the big hole… the spirit of education and wonder… is worth the price. 

So what you're saying is a meteor crater is behind us?  For realz?!

While taking a gander at this giant landmark from space, the sky became darker and blacker and more ominous.  This has been the way all of our days have been, and it wasn’t until that day I finally learned that Arizona has a monsoon season.  It lasts from July to August, and this piece of knowledge explained a lot of my weather troubles all month long.

The storm… or very slow moving scary clouds with very little rain… delayed us for about an hour, as I am unfamiliar with this Arizona weather phenomenon and erred on the side of safety by watching what the storm was going to do, before I decided to drive through it.  Eventually, it was moving too slowly for us to be delayed any longer, and we decided to continue on our journey with caution. 

 The rain was fairly light, and not so ominous.

We made it to Flagstaff by late afternoon, and stopped just long enough for me to grab a bottle of beer from a brewery I visited on my initial travels.  Sam made a passing comment about my beer obsession, which lead to a forty five minute lecture on the differences of beer, beer education, and beer history while we headed north to the South Rim. 

Arizona amazes me.  The varying landscapes it houses are all very beautiful, and always surprising.  One moment, you’re looking at a rocky desert, and the next, you’re watching for elk while driving through a pine forest.  The ride from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon is a trip through the mountains and elk ridden forests.  You briefly see the desert just long enough to be reminded of the arid climate the state is known for, and then you weave your way back to the pine trees until the earth opens up to the biggest canyon you have ever seen in your life. 

While driving to the campground, Sam noticed the view through a clearing in the woods and said, “… and here is the canyon.”

I glanced over, and my jaw dropped.  “Holy shit!”

She glanced back, having not actually looked at what she pointed out, and repeated me. 

Sometimes, its the really elegant phrases of the modern day vernacular that really capture a moment.

I don’t think either of us was prepared to see what we saw.  It was a grand canyon in every sense of the word:  size, beauty, and spectacle. 

Our campsite was beautiful… and (drumroll) we were finally able to build a fire for the evening, which we took advantage of by making roasted potatoes, pork chops, and s’mores while herds of elk moseyed through our site to graze. 

Ahhh… the Grand Canyon… glad to be here.