Days 200 to 203: Grand Canyon

Sunset at Grand Canyon

We spent Friday getting really bad hiking advice from a park ranger, buying a trail guide for South Kaibab trail, watching the park movie and hanging around taking photographs of the Grand Canyon.  We also went to a very interesting evening program talk by a photojournalist Stan Honda, who is trying out night sky photography in his spare time.  He gave us lots of ideas.

So why was the ranger's hiking advice bad?  Basically, if someone asks them for hiking advice they assume that person has never hiked before, has just arrived at this altitude from sea level and that it is the middle of August.  They have 5 million visitors a year and they have to rescue 250 of them, so they would like to reduce that statistic by encouraging everyone to 'look, don't touch'.  They dissuaded us from going to Indian Gardens which would have been a good day hike for us, where we could have mooched around in the shade and taken our time.  Instead they encouraged us into a poxy stroll along part of South Kaibab trail where you hardly even get into the canyon at all.  In the end, my conclusion is, if you have to ask a ranger for hiking advice you shouldn't be hiking in the canyon!  The National Parks are a bit ridiculous in what they choose to call day hikes at the best of times.  I've noticed that if anything goes uphill at all, and if it's longer than 2 miles, they call it strenuous.  I would call what I did strenuous, but not exhausting (see below).

We were down there somewhere!

We all managed to get on South Kaibab trail by 7am the next day.  I could have wished we had been about an hour earlier which is when it just starts to get light.  Mike and Antonia went to Skeleton Point, which is a 10km round trip for a 610m elevation gain.  It took them 5 hours, mooching along in the cool, and often in the shade.  I went to Panorama Point, which is about a 16km round trip for a 1000m elevation gain.  At that point I was only 450 m and a couple of km above the river, but I didn't try to go all the way to the end.  I figured it would add 3 hours to my hike and I was out of radio contact with Mike and Antonia by that time, so we couldn't plan anything.  In the end, I got back to the top at 1pm about 40 minutes after they did, having done my walk in 5 hours.  I didn't take my camera, and I did take more food and water than I needed, so all the photos here are from other days.  Obviously, getting to the river and back in a day would have been quite feasible for me, though maybe not for Antonia.  Another time, I would go down South Kaibab, starting an hour earlier, and up Bright Angel trail, which is supposed to be a bit shadier.  October seems like an ideal month for hiking in the canyon.  It really isn't too warm, nor too cold either, at least in the daytime.

The Colorado River from the Watchtower

We spent the afternoon doing laundry, having showers (at great expense) and cooking a nice dinner, so at least we made good use of our time after our 'half-day hike'.  Mike even made a nice campfire out of bits of old firewood he collected from all the empty fire pits.  This was good, because it is freezing cold here at night.  Despite the vegetation looking Mediterranean, we are at 2000m above sea level in October!!  It is not getting down to freezing point, but it is well below 10C.

Watchtower

We left Grand Canyon park slowly on Sunday, stopping to take lots of pictures.  The most enjoyable thing was the surprise discovery of the watchtower at the end of the desert view drive.  This is really an architectural folly, built just to amuse visitors to the canyon, but it is beautiful.  It was designed with reference to south-western Indian watchtowers and is painted all over inside with Indian inspired murals.

Ceiling mural

Days 199 & 200: The Buttes resort in Phoenix

The pool by moonlight (at least that's what it looks like)

Mike took us to stay in this cool hotel in Phoenix that looks like something out of a James Bond movie.  It's a Marriott Resort hotel called the Buttes, and fortunately, we did not have to pay full price. Mike remembered that he had some points with them from a business trip he took to Phoenix 20 years ago to explain to someone how to use a computer mouse properly.  Mike wanted to be here to see some people so he was kind of busy, but Antonia and I had a great time hanging out in and by the pool, the hot tubs, the gym (aaah, the gym!).  We even went to the restaurant by ourselves.  The next day we went to see Mike's step-grandmother who lives in special apartments for elderly people.  They are pretty nearly as good as the hotel resort.  We had a nice time visiting with her, but unfortunately, we hung around there so long that we arrived at the Grand Canyon campground nearer ten o'clock than anything else.  There is no way we are doing a big hike tomorrow, so instead we are mooching around and casing the joint and all that kind of stuff.

Day 198: Petrified Forest National Park

Painted Desert

Petrified forest is one of the best national parks even if they do close early to make sure that nobody steals a piece of 250 million year old tree during the night.  It's really impressive to walk through the site of a huge forest that's been turned to stone, but the park has a lot of other things as well: a beautiful adobe inn that was constructed in the Depression and only used for a few years, the Painted Desert which is desert in more colours than a paintbox, ancient pueblos, including one made of petrified wood, and a fossil museum.

This is pretty much all that's left of Route 66 around here.

...don't even think about it, or else...

...this might happen to you!

Of course, you'd need a truck to get that lot away.

Petrified forest is one of the few parks where you can't camp in case you take advantage of the opportunity to steal the trees (they really have a thing about this), so we had to go to a KOA. This is a big chain of campgrounds across the US.  They turn out to be pretty nice because they have things like a children's playground, heated shower rooms, a dinner stand that did fairly reasonable food....  nicer than a National Park campground, actually, at twice the price!

Day 196: Kiwi birthday cakes

Antonia had kiwi cakes for her birthday.  They are eating larvae (jelly beans) because that's what kiwis eat.  Strangely enough, the jelly beans in that container really did disappear somewhere and I didn't get a single one!

Actually, we did nothing much but eat today.  We went for New Mexican breakfast at the Tecolote cafe at the end of our street.  New Mexican breakfast is eggs and potatoes and stuff like that, but covered in red and green chilli sauce.

Then we did nothing but mooch all day.


Then we had artichoke petals, pizza and kiwi cakes for supper with the lady who owns the house we're staying in.  We had a very nice evening, especially because it's the first time we've had someone over to dinner for a while!

Day 194: Pino Trail

Yesterday, we went on our first really long hike in ages. Somehow, the National Parks just don't seem to lend themselves to hikes of the right length.  I need the right amount of distance and/or climbing and natural beauty, otherwise nothing at all happens with my endorphin levels.  Yesterday, I did just fine on endorphins, and today I am completely dead, aching all over, and needing an afternoon nap.  Antonia fell asleep as soon as we got back in the house, then woke me up at 3am claiming she couldn't sleep and hadn't had dinner, etc...  Oh well!

First things first, yesterday was also a good day for adrenaline, because it is the day Antonia actually spotted a wild bear.  As everyone knows by now, it's always Antonia...  She said it was about 20 metres off the path, and that it looked towards us, then scrambled off into the woods.  Apparently, it had big claws, brown fur, and would have been one and a half times the size of Mike if it stood up.  She was incredibly excited, well she described herself as 'alarmed', which is very Antonia as vocabulary goes.  I was alarmed too, and encouraged her to keep talking at the top of her voice all the way back to the car park.  I was glad that a) she saw this bear towards the end of our walk and b) she saw it before it started to get really dark as it was when we got back to the car.

Apart from that the hike was fantastic, very, very beautiful and surprisingly autumnal.  The higher up the mountain we got the more trees there were changing colour.  We were climbing up over Albuquerque, with a kind of telepherique way off to one side, and an immense view in both directions once we got to the crest.  So although it looks nothing like Grenoble, it's the same general layout.

Day 193: Balloon Ride

By Antonia:
Today, Thursday, Daddy and I woke up at 5 AM and drove to Albuquerque to get on a hot air balloon. We watched the balloon become bigger and bigger.  We made a few videos of it.  When it was ready we got in and watched as the scenery got farther and farther away.  We stayed on one side of a pretty river called the Rio Grande and then came to the other side.  The balloon driver steered the balloon two feet away from the water.  When we landed on a place near the road the crew which followed us did up the balloon.  It was customary after a balloon flight to have champagne (I had orange juice).  The crew drove us to the original take off spot and we drove home. 

Actually, she forgot to mention that this was the second attempt at getting up at 5am and driving for one hour to try to get a balloon ride.  The first day was just too windy for them to go up.  I'm glad they made it at last because this was her tenth birthday treat.  I think this is a pretty amazing thing to have done by ten years old.  The whole family is now recovering from far too many late nights and early mornings chasing round after balloons!

Day 192: New Mexico Museum of Art

Indios, by Ray Martin Abeyta

New Mexico isn't all about Georgia O'Keefe.  Santa Fe is full of art museums and galleries, most of them in amazingly beautiful buildings. This is my favourite painting from the exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art called How The West Is One.   Paintings in this exhibition are mostly about two things: changing visions of the interaction between Native and European Americans and the beauty of the landscape.  Well, there is also a little section on the development of nuclear weaponry, which happened not far from here.  What a place!

Anyway, this painting, obviously, is about the confusion of Christopher Columbus who wasn't quite sure where he had arrived when he started dishing out the name 'Indian', even though it seems to have stuck.  What I really like about this painting, other than its extreme artifice is the optical effect of the two layers of eyes on the Indian on the left.  My brain just didn't know what to do with it, and I'm so used to optical illusions these days, that not many of them phase me.