Slideshow

Here are some of the photos from the trip.

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Sunset Crater

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

It's amazing how I lose the urge to blog the second I walk into my kitchen. This may be linked to the stupid mileage we accrue on the final day of these trips - I find it hard enough to communicate sentiently with the cat, let alone the Internet, by the time we actually get through the door. But I don't want it to be Monday yet, so let me at least wrap up the statistics.

Friday's stats:
Started driving: 05:50 MST (if you include our trip out to watch sunrise)
Finished driving: 22:25 MDT
Miles: 483
States: 2
License plates: 2 more - South Carolina and New Hampshire
Breakfast: Yavapai Lodge, Grand Canyon
Lunch: cookies on the road
Dinner: Cracker Barrel, Gallup, NM
National Parks visited: 3
Junior Ranger badges awarded: 4
Years since Sunset Crater erupted: 945 (ish)
Feet descended into Walnut Canyon: 185
Types of lava flow identified: 2

Saturday's stats:
Started driving: 07:28 MDT
Finished driving: 23:45 CDT
Miles: 826
States: 2
License plates: no more :(
Breakfast: Denny's, Santa Rosa, NM
Lunch: candy from the gas station
Dinner: Applebees, Mansfield, TX
Activities other than eating & driving: none (unless you count ignoring the rugby and staring at the super-moon).

Total trip:
Miles: 2703
States: 3
License plates: 47 - we missed Hawaii, DC, Delaware and Rhode Island. I refuse to be disappointed by that.
National Parks: 4
Number of family members keen to return: 4
Number of family members ready for school/work tomorrow: 1

Mike's favourite thing: the Painted Desert

Laura's favourite thing: the aptly named Grand View

Chris' favourite thing: staying in a Wigwam and the moon.

William's favourite thing: going down the canyons.

Backwards

Thanks to the magic of technology, I am writing this on the road. Literally, somewhere along the I-40, eastbound, just shy of Albuquerque and heading for Santa Rosa, New Mexico.

It's roughly ten at night. On either side, the desert is a flat black slick despite the light of the full moon high above us. It sits behind a veil of diaphanous cloud that stretches almost to the horizon. The boys are asleep behind us. Laura is driving. We are coasting along on the ceaseless thrum of our wheels on the road, over which we can just hear Flanders & Swan dropping another hat. The cabin is lit by orange dials and passing cars.

I love this bit. Even as a passenger I still relish the sense that we are making progress, chewing up miles and states and gradually, forcibly, bringing our destination closer.

Satisfying though this is, it can't and doesn't detract from the fun we have when we stop and look about. We managed to do a lot of this today as well.

We sauntered around a thousand year old lava flow at Sunset Crater, AZ. It looked freshly ploughed, an avenue of great chunks of clinker and black sand from which these beautiful Ponderosa Pines had sprouted.

And then we clambered around some similarly aged cliff-dwellings, hewn from the wall of the (modestly sized) Walnut Canyon by ancestors of the Hopi tribe of Native People. It was a strenuously peaceful walk: the cool stone weaves between the sunlight and the shadows of trailing trees. The only sounds, the wind and the caws of ravens.

But before all that we had to tear ourselves from a grander canyon. Long ago, in the dark, we got up, wrapped ourselves in all our clothes and set out to watch the sun rise over the rim. Funnily enough, in the dark the abyss isn't anywhere nearly as scary and I was able to perch happily on the low wall above the drop to wait for the sun to peep. The sky faded to grey and below us the rippling folds of rock gradually materialised from the murk, like leviathans swimming up from the depths. And then finally a needle of orange light pierced the gloom and the canyons burst into colour.

Return journey

I'm trying to ignore my ENORMOUS frustration at the fact that the internet works JUST FINE for silly blogging, but won't let me send the countless work e-mails that I've spend the last hour writing on my phone. There is a CONSPIRACY, I tell you.

It never really occurred to me that it might not be sunny. I knew it would be cold at night - we're well prepared (we actually had to buy William a new coat last week, as he just hasn't needed them in Houston - ah, well, it will come in handy again when we head back to the UK in June...). But I'd thought we'd have glorious sun and radiant colours during the day. So, try as I might, I'm disappointed that today was a palate of greys. Impressive greys, yes, but not what I'd planned. Turns out even I can't control everything. Though if it's everything apart from the weather and someone else's WiFi network, I guess I should stick.

This place is wonderful. Mike hates it (in a good way, I assure myself), but we'll be back. The boys have made us promise we'll trek to the bottom one day - I randomly suggested that I'll let them do it when they're 10 and 12. I will now spend the next four years in cardio-vascular training.

Actually, with Mike's proclivities taken into account as well, I think we'll raft in along the river. And it will be sunny. And there'll be 3G coverage by then. Perfect.

Down

I've never been good with heights, particularly, but I'm often okay. Good enough anyway to cope with the Empire State Building and castle turrets.

I can't cope with this. The thought of the spectacular drop off the side of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is enough to turn my vital organs to jelly. Even here, at a relatively safe distance of a mile or so from the edge, I'm not comfortable. I may never be comfortable. Maybe just knowing it is there, behind me somewhere in the desert, will be enough to interrupt my sleep from time to time for the rest of my life.

My sense of scale, having already been tested by the journeys and vistas I have experienced around America, has now been tortured too. The canyon is ten miles across and more than a mile down. A mile down. A beautiful, magical, breath-taking mile down. But you wouldn't want to take the short cut.

Apparently people only fall very rarely, but you'd never believe it from the way people skip and prance around the paths, or swing their legs out over the precipice, just to have their photo taken. The wilful ignorance or denial of their own mortality is taken as a personal affront, obviously. It's bad enough that I have my children with me ("Dad, puhleese, I DO know what I'm doing"), but every step or pose struck by my fellow visitors is like a knitting needle jabbed straight into my jangling nerves.

I can't help it. People may only fall very rarely, but when they do, they always fall to their deaths. The potential is what terrifies me, the sudden irrevocable moment where a holiday turns to a tragedy. I am a big scaredy cat according to my kids, but I can't help but think that the Grand Canyon would be even more beautiful and amazing experienced from the bottom. The only way to find out is to come back here and walk down the cliffs of course, but I can't help but be convinced I would become happier with every step.

The Painted Desert