7/5 - A Grand Birthday

Maria's birthday - starting in Kingsman Arizona, and ending in the Grand Canyon.

Our hotel room for the night was a suite, and while there was some road and rail noise (the length of the trains out here must be seen - each carriage with 1 or 2 shipping containers - and you can see the entire length of them because of the sweeping plains) everyone got a good night's sleep. We sang Happy B'day to Maria and the kids gave Maria their presents - birth-stone mickey mouse earrings (small and as tasteful as Mickey Mouse earings can be...) from Zoe, and a Pluto "doll" (that Maria thought Grant was buying for himself as his memento from Disney) from Grant. She was very touched by both gifts.

Checking out of the hotel we took a short drive around town because it is famous as a historic Route 66 township that has preserved some ofthe buildings and flavour of that time. Certainly the road is massively wide with a number of large businesses (hard to explain butI mean set right back from the road, with large tarmaced areas surrounding them), and strange 50s style signs (think of Happy Days). Then some quick shopping at a local k-mart and we were set to go.

As for yesterday's drive, more interesting country greeted us, treeless desert slowly graduating into pine country - with the occasional dust-devil (in my mind I can still see a large one swirling around a Subways that sat beside one of ther Interstate exits). It wasn't long before we were on the out-skirts of the park - with the usual suspects for such locations ... Park information centers, over-priced souvineer and food places (heh, even the McDonalds had higher prices than usal and a sign to explain why).

For those who haven't been to the canyon I should say that on the South Rim (where we are and the usual tourist destination), you can't see the canyon till you are right up on it. Most of the buildings are set back a mile (well, I've been thinking and working in the old imperial farenheit, gallons, and miles for the last couple of days) or so from the rim and there is good tree cover. So the kids still hadn't seen the canyon when we went to checkin.

We were too early (checkin at 4pm - about the latest checkin I'm aware of anywhere) so we took the short drive to Bright Angel - one of the famous places on the rim and the site of the main trail that descends into the canyon. Again, to create the scene I should say that the canyon is not all fenced-off, but rather has massive exposure at every turn. That is, dramatic drops of, in many cases, 100s of metres, right along the rim wall or the trail that descends into the canyon.

I was somewhat disappointed with the lack of extreme reaction from the kids on seeing the canyon for the first time. I don't know if its because they have become jaded world travellers (and seen places like Santorini's caldera), were tired, or whether I'd talked the place up too much; but there you go. To try and give them some feel for the size of the canyon (which has a depth of more than 1 mile) we walked10 or 15 minutes down the trail - a piddling amount in the scheme and size of the place (Maria and I had walked down past the Plateau - the last stop before the ranch at the bottom - with Jim and Sue many years ago...a trip that the guides say takes 6-9 hours as a round trip).Grant was very nervous due to all the exposure; though the path isabout the width of a car. On the other hand Zoe's flippant, and at times less than 100% controlled, approach made me very nervous - ohh the joys of parenthood.

Then some browsing of the various rim curio shops (several of which are historic monuments in their own right) and back to the Lodge to checkin. After discussing possible plans for the next day we jumped over to the cafeteria for dinner (unimpressive) before buying a quart of icecream as a treat to share for dessert (Maria got to pick as b'day girl). It was rather comic rushing to tuck into the quite hard icecream with our plastic spoons - the rush because we wished to attend a ranger presentation at 7:30 (there's one each evening on a different topic) on how the canyon was formed.

A further point I should add about this area is the temperature range. Today it will range from a low of 27 to a max of 61. If I haven't forgotten my translation formula we're talking about a high of 21 Celcius or so, and a low of -3 or so...I thought we'd left such temperatures well behind in Japan (indeed we sent considerable warm clothes home from Greece). Anyway, that knowledge precipitated a change in evening clothing for all into trousers and warm jackets (particularly as we thought the presentation was to occur in an ampitheatre outside - it turned out to be inside).

The presentation was excellent - the ranger (Jim) had been doing it for 23 years but was still extremely passionate and very good at conveying the complexity of major geology to a lay audience. One thing that struck me was that twice or perhaps three times during the presentation he'd say something like "with science we know that the oldest rocks on earth are 4.6 billion years old, but not everyone accepts the scientific view; I realise that". It was kind of a rote chant and made me realise just how strong creationism must be in the states. Sad.

Anyway, with the talk finished we came back to our room. Maria and the kids are playing cards Greek style, while I've been writing on the PDA here in the bathroom so they wouldn't have to whisper so as not to disturb me. Think I'll go join them.