Day 3 - Flagstaff, AZ - Mather Campground, Grand Canyon

  Dim morning light begins to fill the T@B.  We are up before 6:00 beginning the coffee ritual.  We want to get on the road as early as possible to address the mechanical issue.   But is has rained lightly during the night & we need to allow the tent room to dry before packing.  That's good b/c we enjoy the morning cool of the campground.  Everyone around us is stirring and most seem to be preparing for days filled with outdoor activities; biking, hiking, fishing.

   Soon we are off.  Our first stop is to a Camping World a few miles down the road.  They seem to be the Wal-Mart of camping equipment but the one in Flagstaff has only been open a few months & doesn't have their tire & brakes service department up & running yet.  They send us to Flagstaff RV.  The mechanic there is VERY helpful.  He takes a look @ our wheels & declares us road-worthy.  Bryon & I chest bump over this bit of good news!!  However, they don't carry the European sized lug bolt we need & he refers us to O'Reilly's.  Bryon makes the call and we locate one that has about 12 of the size we need so we head over there & buy extra.  As I am looking in our T@B owners manual I notice a big sticker placed inside the cover saying to check your lug nuts every 500 miles & when you are embarking on a trip.  There's also one on the hitch.  I guess that means they think it's important, huh?  I SWEAR this is the first time we've seen this!!  
 
  We use Urban Spoon to locate Satchmo's a BBQ joint that is excellent & they play great blues music too.  Our waitress goes to GC all the time & had some great recommends for us.  We are really getting excited now,  almost there.  One last thing before we go, a re-stock of groceries.  Even though we have been having fun, it has been a gruelling two days on the road.  So we decide to have a FEAST our first night.  So it's steaks all around.  And fresh corn, a salad, quesadillas (of course!!) and s'mores for desert.  A few other items & we are ready to head north.

   The Grand Canyon is only about an hour & a half drive from Flagstaff and the moment you leave the city limit you are right back in the high desert again.  Just before you get to the park you pass through a small village, Tusayan,  that seems is only there b/c of the canyon.  There's a tiny airport & hotels & motels line the street.  We move through a roundabout & next thing you know we are at the entrance gate to the Grand Canyon National Park.  It is $25 for our vehicle to have access here for one week.  We are given a map & we begin navigating our way to the Mather Campground.  As we meander around the park roads we catch fleeting glimpses of the magnificent canyon.
 
   I have always heard the sites fill up quickly.  So I literally sat my alarm for 6 months to the day that we wanted to be here.  I was even able to look at different sites online to make our selection.  I chose something in close proximity to a bathroom :)  Once we located the campground I went up to the window to register.  This is the moment I've been so anxious about.  Will our 31 feet be allowed or will we be turned away.  We did see some signs that there were available sites at some of the other campgrounds but they are miles away from here & I for one want to get settled.  Well, I needn't have worried.  They didn't even look twice at us.  We had already paid online for the site; a whopping $54 for three nights!!  We pulled in easy breezy & once again were fully functional in under 15 minutes.

      Our first order of business, once we'd had a moment to just relax & enjoy that we are here, is to take the mile walk over to the south rim to get our first true canyon view.  My limited vocabulary can't even BEGIN to describe the Grand Canyon.  To quote the park guide it is "one of Earth's most powerful landscapes- it overwhelms our senses."  That's putting it mildly.  The first time I came here with my parents & Miles it brought tears to my eyes.  I can't wait for Bryon to see it for his first time.  And Ernesto - we came here on a helicopter ride out of Las Vegas a couple of years ago but we only had about 30 minutes to experience it.  What kind of inspiration will he take from here?  That's what this is.  It's more than a place, it's an experience.  And a pretty profound & spiritual one for sure.

    We take a stroll through the beautiful landscape over to the Trail of Time, a 1.2 mile walk along the South Rim.  This is an educational trail designed to help your mind grasp that what you are seeing is 184 billion years old!!!  Every few feet in the path a penny is embedded.  The distance between pennies represents a million years.  Every 10 feet or so a rock representing a layer in the canyon is presented with some information about the era.  At the bottom of it all the mighty Colorado River is continuing to carve through the layers.  It has "only" taken it 6 million years to reveal what we see today.

Heh heh

Gratuitous vacay photos...

  We are able to scramble of the path & go as close to the edge as we dare.  Some of us dare more than others!!  I was terrified Ernesto would fall in.  They have a special sign of a guy falling with sliding rocks warning us to stay at least 6 feet from the edge.  It's wild here and very few areas have railings preventing a fall.  Enter at your own risk!!  We follow the trail to its conclusion where the time increments become less until it gets to individual years.  We each take a photo on the year that represents our age.  There is a geologic museum on Yavapai Point with some scale models of the canyon and lots of neat books & souvenirs.  One book is about an inch & a half thick is all about people who have died in the canyon.  I point at the cover & glare at Ernesto.  We spend a delightful 2 plus hours meandering, exploring before heading back to camp to prepare our celebratory feast.

This one's for you James Harden

  The sun is beginning to set & we get our campfire going.  All around us people are returning to their sites.  We have noticed that English seems to be a minority language here.  We are hearing a lot of French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and every so often English.  The night sky is beginning to glow with millions of stars.  Which reminds us; just as we set up camp a young girl, a graduate student, came over & asked if we would like to participate in a survey about the night sky.  We said, "sure" so we pulled it out & began answering questions.  It had to do with light pollution & what kind of light would we like to see in the park.  Our responses were that we wanted it to remain as natural as possible.  Even at the expense of safety features.  If I'm going to be walking around a campground at night I expect to need to use a flashlight!!  That's part of why we come to wild places; to experience wilderness!

   Soon all is ready & we sit at our picnic table & enjoy the best meal I've had in I don't know when!!  All the stress, worry & planning have been worth it.  We are in our heavenly home for the next three nights.