We drove along the road between the Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim and the Desert View campground where we were staying for the night (about 25 miles), stopping at all the viewpoints along the way, so we saw a few different perspectives. At one of them we walked partway down into the canyon – not real far, but it certainly seemed long enough when we were coming back up!
We watched the sunset at the Desert View lookout, and it was really spectacular. Not the typical glowing red sunset that you see photos of – it was too cloudy for that – but spectacular all the same. There were rays of sunlight shining out from the clouds, and since there were a few managed fires during the day there was a lot of smoke floating around the canyon, picking up the rays of light. Needless to say I took an incredible amount of photos!!!
On Saturday I thought about getting up early to see the early morning sun over the canyon, but pulled the curtains when my alarm went off to discover a flat grey sky without an ounce of colour, so decided sleep was more valuable instead!
We ended up driving back to Las Vegas on Saturday, since we had to get around the Grand Canyon on one side or another and figured we might as well go where we knew people. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (mmmm, chocolate fudge brownie sundae...) and nearly made ourselves sick from eating too much(!), then came outside to discover our car wouldn’t start... Just what you dread when you are on a road trip! So in the middle of a sunny carpark on a typical Las Vegas summer day that would have been close to 40 degrees, Justin set about trying to work out what the problem was! After a very hot, uncomfortable hour, the car started again, but rather than putting the engine cover back on straight away we decided to drive on to Gavin & Vanessa’s place first and do it there, since Justin had a few more things he wanted to play with while it was off. The theory was that we could find some shade at their place. The few miles to their place had seemed quite short on every other occasion, but this trip was one of the longest of my life... The air temperature inside the car at the point was 40 degrees Celcius, and the air blasting from the engine/radiator straight up into our faces would have been at least 60 degrees! By the time we arrived we were absolutely dripping!!! A swimming pool has never felt so good as Gavin & Vanessa’s did just then...!
Interesting moment of the day:
Listening to a lady absolutely hysterically shrieking at her daughter (loud enough for me to hear clearly across the carpark), “Noooo, what have you done to your hair?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! I just sprayed it!!!” Then to her husband, “Look, she’s just rubbed her hands right through it!!”
Um, this is the Grand Canyon, I don’t think anybody is going to be too worried about your daughter’s hair....
For more photos (lots of photos!) see http://picasaweb.google.com/canadianmport/GrandCanyon?authkey=Gv1sRgCIv7seqB1s6KKA#
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