Desert grandeur... Arizona

"Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon. "
I WHISPERED, "I am too young,"
And then, "I am old enough;"
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
"Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair."
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love.
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon. --Yeats

This was the much awaited Grand Canyon tour.

...AND since there is no dearth of information about the Grand Canyon on the internet, I will not waste characters on the details.







What I will focus on in this one instead is what not to do:
when you are crunched for time there… DO NOT take “the desert tour”.
And try to avoid the driver “Joe” if you can. He rants Wikipedia details and urge you to actually enjoy it. I love guided tours make no mistake. But he breathes down your neck, picks at people, starts late, big talks about himself and completely ruined my supposed-to-be 4 hours $38/head trip.

You can use those 4 hours + a little research and drive to the overlooks yourself and choose what appeals to you! That’s what I’m doing the next time.

Next, the Bright Angel Lodge was a nice place to stay (we slept for only 2 hours…reached at 2 am and left by the 5am sunrise tour), I sure would love to have a fireplace like that in my family room! But better temperature control was expected in the rooms…

The tour-guide for the sunrise tour [youngish person with lots of piercing ;) ] was very nice. Very helpful, informative and truly a “guide”. Forgot his name, Tim? (he resembled a distant uncle I have like that’s information you can use).

With his suggestion I tried deep-fried rattle-snake at the Yippee-ei-o Steakhouse…. Except for the fact that I was tasting snake for the first time, nothing was good about this place. Bad service. Bad food. The salmon stank, the biscuits sticky, the steak yuck! And did I mention it was super expensive and had the gratuity in the bill…? And gratuity for real bad service if I may add. NOT money well spent!!

But as if to make up for our bad experience at lunch, Tim’s (I don’t remember his name so lets call him Tim) other suggestion to go visit Sedona and Red Rock Canyon was SUPER good.

We took scenic Rt. 180 and stopped at a couple places including a Native Indian store which was scary and weird and fun at the same time.

The view of the San Francisco Peaks was breathtaking. Miles of flat flat land and then suddenly in front of you standing are the peaks streaked with snow… not to mention all day we didn’t get good sun and GC was rather disappointing without proper sunlight, but now the skies were blue, white floating clouds, peaks that ranged from brown to green to white!

We took pretty long to reach “Red Rock” but when we did, it was WOW and all I could think of was why didn’t we spend the night in one of the cabins there instead of GC?

We drove down all the way and as if by luck, the sun which had disappeared again, shone for a few right on the brick red stones. Grey overlaying heavy clouds, peek-a-booing blue and bright slant rays of gold on red! Aha… the drive was so worth it! Thanks Tim (and my friends who suggested Red Rock)!