Friday, July 14

We were on the road by 8:40 AM for the five hour drive to the Grand Canyon. The drive around Hoover Dam is very scenic! They are building a very high bridge that will act as a bypass to the switchbacks and hilly terrain surrounding the dam. I think it will be done in 2008. After 9/11 trucks and buses are prohibited from crossing the dam for security reasons, and I imagine there is quite the lengthy detour.

After getting past the dam, the scenery is like something out of an old western movie. The road is very straight, and to my recollection, the land is pretty flat. One thing we didn’t realize is THERE ARE NO BATHROOMS FOR ABOUT 60 MILES. We took a short detour, about four miles to Chloride, Arizona. Chloride is famous for having the oldest continually operated mine in Arizona, and also for some murals that we couldn’t drive to in our rental car. Maybe I’ll Google it and see what I can come up with. Well, anyway, we found a quaint little mom and pop store that advertised it’s “clean bathrooms”, bought several souvenirs, candy, earrings and sunglasses (for Susan) before finding our way back to the main road.

Once we hit the interstate it was time to put the pedal to the metal. The interstate speed limit is 75 mph, but as the friendly guy in Chloride told us, “there’s no speed limit in Arizona so go like hell.” Again, it was about 50 or 60 miles to the next service station, and when we stopped we noticed that regular gas was $3.499 a gallon! YIKES! I guess that’s why it’s a good thing to have a monopoly.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon about 2 PM, and wouldn’t you know it, our room wasn’t ready yet. No problem. We walked to the rim and were just blown away by the awesome, majestic, spectacular, beautiful… you get the idea… view of the canyon. I think the first word out of both of our mouths was WOW! Based on the recommendation of Frommer’s Grand Canyon book, we had lunch at the Arizona Room, which has large windows that overlook the canyon. The food was pretty bad, but while dining I noticed a GIGANTIC bird soaring past the window. It was a California Condor! After lunch we noticed the numbered tags on their wings. It turns out about 60 condors have been released in Arizona, and we just happened to see about 5 or 6 of these soaring above the South Rim. What a blessing! For me, that was the highlight of our Grand Canyon experience.

We finally got checked into our room in the White Fir building of the Maswik North Lodge. Very nice! I recommend you stay here. It’s about a 5 minute walk to the rim, and very close to all of the historic buildings in the Grand Canyon Village. Also very peaceful at night. We drove all the way out to the eastern end of the park, then watched the sunset at Lipan Point. The canyon was very hazy though, so the colors weren’t as nice as we had hoped.