Travelblog 2: The Revenge

Yesterday was mostly a driving day. Farmington to the Grand Canyon, according to my mom, is about 8 hours. That’s not true. It’s probably about six and a half. Granted with stops (to be detailed) it ended up being up around 9 hours. But it really wasn’t bad. One good thing about going on a road trip with your family rather than your friends is that there’s a whole lot less farting in the car.

First we passed Shiprock, which as mentioned in a previous blog, is featured in the Tony Hillerman novels my dad likes. I didn’t realize at the time but Shiprock isn’t actually a town. It’s…get this…a rock. A big rock. In the middle of the desert. Seen from afar, it’s looks like the teleporting castle from Krull.



Let me just take this time however to say that the landscapes here in the Southwest are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.

After a few hours we stopped for lunch at the Anasazi Inn. Apparently, even though the Anasazi mysteriously disappeared en masse off the face of the earth hundreds of years ago, their recipes remained. Including the ultra impressive Navajo burger. Take a piece of frybread—which is just like it sounds: fried bread; much like fried dough but not sweet—about the size of a small pizza, fold it in half , stick two burgers in there with all the toppings. With portions like this it’s a wonder that the Navajos aren’t all the size of Augustus Gloop. I must humbly admit, however, that I did an admirable job on mine.



Next stop: Four Corners. This is the one place in the United States where four states touch one another. No, not sexually; Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona are all very chaste states, as far as I know. Now to stand in one state is free. To go and straddle two states anywhere in the country, also free. To have the privilege of standing in four states at once? $3 a person. Land of the free? C’mon now.

Anyway, onward and upward. The next stop was the Grand Canyon. But let me address that a bit more in a minute. We went in one gate of the Grand Canyon national park and drove about 25 miles. After a brief stop at a hotel on the lip of the canyon to browse yet another gift shop and to have a beer at the Grand Canyon we split to our hotel was just outside the south gate.

That was yesterday.

Today was the Grand Canyon day. We had signed up for a tour that took us around to a couple of different spots in the GC. Well, not in the GC, but along the rim. For what is essentially a massive hole in the ground it’s really impressive. 217 miles long, 10 miles wide on average (18 miles at the widest point) and approximately 1 mile straight down. That’s a big damn hole. I probably took about 4 dozen pictures (half of which I deleted because they came out crappy.) You can see them here. The pictures don’t do it justice. One because my camera is crappy, and two because the scope is just unbelievable if you haven’t seen it.

Anyway, we’re back on the road now, on our way to Sedona. Which Chuck Klosterman describes as “a Narnia in the desert for adults.” <-- Paraphrasing. Which I’m guessing means more hippies. Which seems to bear out in that my mom was reading me some descriptions that extolled the many psychics and vortexes.

Should be fun.

Peace out.