THE Grand Canyon

Within an hour out of LA the passenger side window broke. Jill tried to fiddle with it and the entire thing fell through the door. Which meant we had to drive through the mountains at 7am, which is freezing cold, even in Southern California. Lauren wrapped herself up in blankets in the backseat in a little ball and slept. Then for an hour it was bearable. Then we got to Arizona and the desert and holy shit it was hot. We were on Route 66. The iconic route 66…and we needed a mechanic. Lauren and I put on our short shorts and tried to impress the men at the Route 66 Auto Repair shop with our feminine wiles, yet we were ripped off, of course being 3 girls in the middle of nowhere. However, we got good advice about where to stay in the Grand Canyone- Desert View: about 25 miles East of the main viewpoint where all the tourists, especially U.S. tourists, crowd up the trails and pay extra money to camp.

Anyone who says the Grand Canyon isn’t that impressive should leave the country. When we first saw it from the road we collectively screamed, a little from excitement, a little from fear. We saw it about 7 more times from the road before we got to the campsite, and screamed each time. At the Desert View the campground was only 12 dollars and the only people there were Italians and French tourists. There was a large stone watchtower built in 1932 to commemorate Indian masonry and art. We took the spiral staircase all the way to the top caught a sick view. The best part was down below beyond the lookout guardrail. There was an empty train without any barriers that allowed you to walk out onto ricks at the edge of the canyon. Every time we got to a point that seemed near death the trail went on a few more feet even further and so did we. At the end we dangled our feet over the edge and for the first time in my life I felt a fear of heights. I would look out to a distant cliff and realize nothing was preventing me from falling into the abyss. I held on white-knuckled and Lauren asked if I was feeling the rush. When we turned back people started to walk down the trail we were on…we started a trend. We looked up at the people still penned back behind the fence. I said, “Look at those losers behind the guardrails!” Jill replied, “We eat guardrails for breakfast.”

We opened a bottle of wine and toasted to the sunset. The wind was ridiculously strong and there were birds just soaring, riding it. They must be the extreme sports junkies of the bird kingdom. I contemplated that a lot. We spent 20 minute on our hands and knees looking for a piece of camera a good-looking, shirtless European with a fanny pack dropped. Then we went back to the site for dinner. We still had no lantern, no firewood, and our tent was getting smaller as we added people. So we used the highbeams from the Jetta, and bartered firewood for smores from a group from the Netherlands. They looked confused by them and I spend way too much time worrying about whether or not they liked them. Lauren and I walked to do dishes and ended up doing them in the dark and getting soaking wet. A nuevo-hippie with long hair and a head light approached us asking if we needed a light. And I wanted to respond: No we do not need your light or your camping equipment, I make fire with sticks and I can do things in the dark thank you very much. I am getting way to independent-minded on this trip.

I could actually see the Milky Way, that’s how ridiculous the stars were. I understood the obsession the ancients held. I just wanted to lie on my back and figure them all out, find their pattern, make sense out of it. This new appreciation would be very important when I got to Taos and met Aileen. Meanwhile, Jill wasn’t too happy about not having a big fire, or a lantern, and she was miserable in the tent, waking up continuously over the heat. Finally at 5:30AM, I just gave up and woke up to, packed the car, and we got back on the road to New Mexico.