Setting off on another US road trip only ten weeks after the first, I assumed I would get sick of being in the car much faster. You see, the days during a road trip are great. It’s light out, there’s usually something to look at (even if it’s only corny roadside billboards) and you can listen to music and munch on snacks while feeling good about being in the car and covering so many miles.
Then, once night time comes, it can get pretty old pretty fast. Suddenly you’re feeling tired, you can’t see anything except the hypnotic string of car lights ahead of you and all you want to do is eat and go to bed. Yep, as many of us know, driving at night can be a bit sucky.
So I expected all three of us to be over the whole thing before it had even started, especially as our first two days of driving were going to be our longest, racking in around thirteen hours of driving each day.
I’m happy to say that that didn’t happen. The weather was gloriously sunny, we were stocked with plenty of drinks and snacks, and we had even made a nice comfy little den for the dog on the back seat, complete with her own duvet. I’ve never seen her react so well to being in the car!
Our main goal for day one was to road trip to Grand Canyon. If you remember my initial road trip itinerary, we were planning to head there first, after setting out in the wee hours of the morning, and then drive through Utah to Colorado.
Well, like most best-laid-plans, we decided to change that up. Firstly, we didn’t want to leave at the crack of dawn when we had been busy until late at night the day before. Secondly, we still had a lot of stuff to do, as well as cleaning our house in Phoenix and making sure everything was in order before we left. It takes a lot of effort to move your whole life abroad in the space of five days.
So, we decided to take it easy and leave around mid-morning. This meant that we didn’t have time to get to Arches National Park or spend the night in Colorado. Instead, we decided to drive back along part of the route we had driven along on our Route 66 trip, this time planning to see a couple of the things that we didn’t see the first time around.
The weather was glorious when we arrived at the Grand Canyon, although the $25 entrance fee took me aback slightly. As the surly ticket officer said to us as he handed us our ticket, after seeing our faces pale at the price: “Our neighbours on the Skywalk are charging twice that and the views aren’t as good.” Well, we’ll have to take his word for that one.
Last time I’d visited the Grand Canyon was as a teenager and my family and I had taken a helicopter tour over it, which was just as impressive as it sounds. I’m not sure if age has hardened me to the sheer amazement of such fantastic sights, or if I was just too busy trying to keep the dog away from the petrified Asian tourists, but it just didn’t feel the same.
Add to that the fact that we only had around 45 minutes to spend in the park due to having to get back on the road, and we really couldn’t do it justice this time around. It’s still a beautiful thing to behold, and definitely one of the world’s greatest sights, and I’m so glad Scott finally got to see it.
We’ll definitely be back, next time to hopefully hike and maybe even cycle through parts of it, to really experience the sheer vastness of it all.
We headed back to the car to shouts of “Ciao! Bella!” (to the dog, not to us) and drove the rest of the way to Tucumcari where we indulged in some Buffalo Wild Wings and a heavily-discounted Motel 6 purchased from a cracked-up transvestite working the reception desk. But that’s a story for another time…
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