A Grand old time

Wew!!! Its friggin earleeeee!! Suprisingly, i got out of bed without too much fuss, hit the shower, while Sherry was perfuming up the room and we were out the door by 3.35 AM. I waited at the top of the drive way for Sherry who kindly went back to grab some pills for me and while I waited, I noticed that Janet's house had all the lights on. What was SHE doing up at that hour? I tried to mind my own business but i could hear voices. Maybe she was up late cramming for some big exam.

Anyway Sherry rendezvoused with me at the top of the driveway and we walked down the street and around the corner to where the car was parked. I bet everyone was awake now! Gawd those suitcases were loud on the concrete coverering that is Valerio Street. Okay where away!! No wait - We plugged in the town name 'Tusayan' (A town about 5 minutes from the Grand Canyon Village and 50 miles north of Williams Arizona). No go. Hmmm - Okay. What to do? With 'City' being the primary search string of the GPS why cant you enter the street address if it cant pick up the town name. Problem. Luckily my mind is too asleep to even consdier getting in to 'panic mode' and I calmly plug in 'Points of Interest - Attractions - Grand Canyon'. Wholla!!

After about 15 minutes of 103.3 The Vibe we were over it, luckily this Pontiac beast has an Ipod adaptor so it was time for Sherry's shuffle-o-rama. Good beats to start with, almost 'dope' in fact. I didnt make it far past Ventura and I was struggling - Groggy, burping and over-heating. I tried to lie down but my body was just feeling every bump. So I sat back up wearily like a prizefighter struggling to hold on until the end of the round to avoid a TKO. By the time we got to the Burbank, Pasadena freeway interchange I was out.

When i woke we were just out of L.A heading North East. The moon was an elegant crescant against a night sky that was about to give way to early morning half light. If you can imagine the roads still black, most of the sky black but the horizon showing dark hills set against a golden band with a mild pink hue connecting night and day. All this with the moon hanging in the night sky just above the pink connector.

Drive through Sarbucks

Sherry had done well. We'd travelled about three hours and Sherry had not yet had her coffee boost. She could only hold out for so long and she'd missed several exits and was kicking herself. Awake, I pugged in Magic Johnson's coffee house and, luckily for Sherry, there was one just off from the next exit. So we turned off and low and behold - It was a drive-thru! So Sherry ordered her usual triple grande skinny late which was met with the usual upwards inflected 'okay'. We then drove over to Macca's where I ordered 2 sausage and egg mcmuffins for $3.50.  I looked at the cheese options and the skillet but went for quantity. I wasn;'t disappointed. Sherry at first looked at it with disgust but then had a taste and didnt mind it. I finished off my first one and went to the toilet. Imagine my suprise. As I return Sherry has the 2nd Mcmuffin just out of her mouth, her with a guilty look all over her face. Later she told me she was hoping to re-wrap it before i came out.

Back on the road and after the first of many fuel stops (the car only had a 10 gallon tank) and a cool photo of an old pick up truck Sherry entrusted me with the driving duties. Big mistake! We hit the hills and I scared the ba-jesus out of her when I went for the ol' shake n' bake move. Well, to be honest it was more like the 'snake n rake' move as I threaded a closing gap nicely. that tasty manoevre wore me out though and after only two hours of driving i handballed driving back to Sherry.

We then pulled off the road for our 2nd fill-up - how crap is the fuel economy in this car? It's nearly worse than Daryl's PT Cruiser - and that's saying something. We lucked out big time with our fuel stop. Turns out we stopped at a town that was the origin of Route 66. It was a quaint little town that had sadly been driven to the desperate ploy of Route 66 tourist town - with lots of souvenir shops.

Not a very secure jail

Have a bit of a think about it Murray

Fonzie style!

But there was plenty of cool stuff. Lots of stuff from a bygone era, before massive interstates - as Sherry reminded me 'It's like the Pixar movie Cars'. The only crap part about the stop was at one shop they had that old 50's song from Dirty Dancing on. "ohhh Baby!! woooo-oooh oh baby... come 'ere lova boy' Somebody get me a bucket please. Although I did learn that Jennifer Grey's character in the movie was actually called 'Baby'. How sick wna twisted were her parents? They should have changed her name every 5 years or so - Baby, Toddler, Teenager, Young-Adult etc.

Yosemite Sherry

We were getting relatively close to the turnoff to the Grand Canoyon now. The desert had given way to pine trees - sort of a dry green woodland area. Populated by elk too. My sick and twisted mind thought the ideal way to get a photo would be to see th look of horror in an elks eyes as it connected with the front of the car. Nah that would be awful - but a great close up photo. Im interested to know whether the only reason that the vegetation changed is because we are getting close to the Colorado river. I think theres more than that to it.

For the last 200 miles I'd been saying - I bet the Canyon is just over those hills, and when we pulled off to buy our Car pass I thought that the in the distance was the edge of the canyon again. The hill looked like either a pimple or a nipple.

I ended up driving the last 20 miles to the Canyon. For the last 10 miles or so I was looking at the GPS countdown the Distance to Destination and as we got closer the traffic got slower and the speed limit got lower. From 75 to 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 to 25, Man! is it going to end up being minus 5 about 2 miles out? Jokes on you! You can never actually get here.

BANG! There it is. All of a sudden. I just followed my nose once in the National Park area, now we were crawling slowly along - parallel to the canyon, ont more than 20 metres from the edge. I remember when we were in Phoenix and we were told that it was 'impossible' to get a carpark at the canyon - and how you had no hope unless you got there really early and travelled around on the shuttles. Well i got the third park from the first.

I thought I'd wait for Sherry to get out before i ran over to get a better look at the canyon. I could see more than a hint of it and i couldn't wait. But no, it's something I wanted to share with Sherry. So I waited. And waited. And waited. What was she doing? All I wanted to do was get out and run to see it, while Sherry methodically wanted to organise the next year of her life in her diary or something. i was being impatient but she was taking a while. (notice how if you read this you would probably be impatient to see pictures of the canyon?)

It was worth the wait. It is honestly the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Sherry had seen her Mum's photos and was impressed by it, but Caz said that the photos jsut do not do it justice. She sure was right. all of these photos look magnificent but it just doesn't compare to just seeing it. The sheer enormity, the colours, the depth, the shapes. Never have I seen so many reds, maroons, purples yellows and browns in a natural setting. We grabbed heaps of photos of our intial first wallk to the ____ Shrine. I offered to take some photos of couples and they were equally kind in returning the favour, although maybe one of them had an inner ear infection. Beggars cant be chooses though and afterall we did get some straight ones.

We then caught the bus down to another stop. We had a look in a cool old building that was, to my disappointment, filled with overpriced souvenirs. Upstairs was a cool gallery which I checked out. We then walked up the viewing trail and got a slightly different look on things. Some mountain goats had also heard that the view of the canyon around here is apparantly pretty good.

We then stopped off for a feed. We shared a Nachos Gande and also a plate of wings with blue cheese sauce. Both were delicious. The cheese sauce was not to bitey and it also came with celery. Sherry's nachos were the hit though as instead of using corn chips they used thick tortilla bread.

Sherry said my lemonade was nice but a bit tart. I said - yeah but I still like it. She said 'Do you like i tbetter than me?' i said well maybe not but I think thats why I like you and also lemonade. You are both a bit tart.
We then gave our seats to a couple of Pennslyvanian's. As we headewd threough the door we overheard tehm saying how nice Australians were. bah - i disagree. I think if you put people in an environment where they are meant to be happy - and the people are open to conversing with strangers - than everybody comes off as friendly. Being an Aussie tourist in America I find Americans delightful. Really polite and happy to have a chat with you.

We then ummed and arred whether to walk the 3 kilometres back to the car along the trail - seeing the canyon but possibly being cold, or whether to catch the bus back to the car which would hopefully be quicker but would mean missing about 30 minutes of viewing time. We opted for the latter.

The bus ride back was weird. People were kind enought to get up fro some elderly ladies but then when one got up simply to allow the other out this Asian guy swarmed on the open seat. Eeveryone was dumbfounded. One guy said 'What the hell is that about?' fairly loudly, but was ignored. He then got off a stop, then got back on - sat behind a couple of kids and then proceeded to try and open their window hitting them in the back of the shoulders.

It was a race against time to get back to our first lookout - but we had to go for a bit of a bush bash to get to our car. We were horrored to notice that we had left the lights on. Would it start? Would it even open? Otherwsie we would have been a coupla frozen kiddies with an almost flat camera. Luckily it started. We grabbed our jumpers and headed down to Mathers Point. The colours were simply dynamic and we got some amazing snaps.

On the way home Sherry and I had some terrific one liners about the grand canyon, the visitors centre and big rig trucks. hahaha. Sherry. You make me laugh.