The Grand Canyon

September 24, 2011

We went to The Grand Canyon today!!!  I must say, I was VERY excited to finally go see it.  I had been wanting to go see The Grand Canyon for years and years.  In fact, I had even placed "See the Grand Canyon" on my very lengthy list of long-term goals.  It was just above "See an active volcano" and "Write a book."  I try to keep things listed in order of achieve-ability.

Anyway, our guide, Kevin arrived at our hotel to pick us up bright and early.  Lucy and I claimed the back bench in the van for ourselves.

Lucy's excited! 

I'm SUPER excited! 

Then we headed out to pick up the other people who were going on the tour with us.  In our group we ended up with a darling young Italian couple visiting America for the first time, a really friendly couple from Minnesota and couple from Wisconsin that Lucy and I privately referred to as "The Debbie Downer Couple."  They were actually a rather amusing addition to our trip.  Everything that the woman said (and she said a LOT of things) really could have been followed by a "Waa, waaaaaaaa" - it was all so negative and depressing.  Fortunately, her penchant for finding something negative to say about EVERYTHING was so impressive that it actually ended up being sort of hilarious instead of depressing.

On the drive from Flagstaff out to the Grand Canyon, our tour group stopped at a gift shop for a short break.  The gift shop had one of the coolest bathrooms I have ever seen.  The door handles were guns!  I was too embarrassed to take a picture of a bathroom door, so I talked Lucy into doing it instead.  The shop also had lots of trinkets for excited tourists to buy.  I purchased a few postcards and a magnet.  Lucy purchased a jackalope, or as I like to call it, an angry bunny.  See for yourself.

Cool bathroom door.

A jackalope! 

 They really do look angry, don't they?

Lucy and her very own angry bunny. 

At last we reached The Grand Canyon itself.  I will not attempt to describe how completely awesome it is to see.  I will simply post all of our best pictures here.  But please keep in mind that pictures, even though they are worth at least 1,000 words each, still cannot do justice to The Grand Canyon.  It's THAT cool.

We spent pretty much all day at The Grand Canyon, driving from lookout point to lookout point, wandering on some of the nearby trails.  We also had lunch with our tour group.  That was actually quite fun.  The couple from Minnesota started talking with Lucy and I about our cross-country drive.  They asked if we were related.  We said yes, we're sisters.  They asked if we were twins.  I said no, we are seven years apart.  The husband said "Wow...one of you is REMARKABLY well-preserved!"  Thank you, sir.  I use formaldehyde.  The four of us then started talking to the Italian couple.  For their very first trip to America they had chosen to visit Arizona and California.  They were seeing the Grand Canyon (obviously), and the next day they were going to see Monument Valley.  I was a little jealous.  I wanted to see Monument Valley too.  But I figured Lucy would kill me if I made her take another detour on our trip.  I'll get there someday.  Anyway, the Italian couple said that they were going to San Francisco for the last few days of their trip.  I'm quite fond of San Francisco, and the couple from Minnesota had also been to San Francisco.  We mentioned several highlights that the Italian couple might want to see:  Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square etc.  The Italian man said they were looking forward to seeing...well, he didn't know the word in English, but in Italian it was something like "lion sea."  The first thing that popped into my head was this:

I was about to say..."No man, I think that's in Singapore"  when, after muttering "Lion sea, lion sea, hmmmm, lion...sea..." the man from Minnesota suddenly says "SEA LION!"  Everyone at the table, even the Italian couple, was like "Ohhhhhh, yes, THAT'S it.  Sea Lion!  Of course!"  And then I thought about my 7th grade Spanish classes and felt kind of dumb for not figuring out the whole noun/adjective swap sooner.  But seriously, the image of the Merlion in my head really threw me off.

Eventually, our day at The Grand Canyon came to a close.  We all piled back into the van.  Lucy and I got the back bench again.  (Yes!)  We arrived in Flagstaff again at about dusk.  Lucy and I decided to get in my car and go to Barnes & Noble.  Listening to my cds and Lucy's ipod for hours and hours and hours over the past several days has been fun and all, but I decided maybe we should finish up our trip with a book on tape.  Excuse me, cd.  Book on CD.  And I knew the EXACT book I wanted too.  I bought Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.