Day 1 –
Travel Day
September 3, 2008
I am so excited about this trip, I can barely contain myself. After three stressful weeks at work (the whole summer was stressful, but the stress had ratcheted up during the past three weeks), I am more than ready to embark on a new adventure. Last summer, Nancy and I completed a rim to rim (north to south) in the Grand Canyon. We traveled with a tour group called The World Outdoors. We were two of twelve in the group and it was a great experience. Nancy has a deep, spiritual connection to the Canyon – ever since her 2006 17-day river rafting trip down the Colorado, she has been nurturing her love affair with this vast, ancient, and beautiful place. My first visit was last summer for the rim to rim.
Nancy knows she wants to go back and I know I want to go with her so thinking that a year in advance is long enough she calls to make plans. The person she speaks with laughs, saying she has to call thirteen months in advance and that nothing is available. The problem is finding space at Phantom Ranch, the only lodging available in the bottom of the Canyon. We aren’t ready to try the backpacking/camping thing – I really want to sleep in a bed. Nancy keeps trying to find a date and eventually finds dates one day apart – part of a recent cancellation – so she makes the reservation, not knowing if the dates will work for me or not. I make them work.
And here we are loading her suitcase into my car and heading to the airport in Manchester for our flight to Detroit and then on to Phoenix. The first leg is uneventful – the second leg from Detroit to Phoenix is delayed and we sit on the airplane without moving for almost an hour while the Detroit maintenance and Northwest Airlines Minneapolis based maintenance folks argue about protocol. Once resolved, we’re off on our 4-hour leg, a whole lot easier to bear than the 10 hour flight we endured on our Patagonia Chile adventure.
It’s 100 degrees when we arrive in Phoenix, at the tail end of what they call their monsoon season. The day starts off cloud free, then as humidity rises and clouds develop, there’s the inevitable downpour and thunderstorm in the afternoon. We take a shuttle to a huge megalopolis of a car rental place that hosts every rental company in the book and while every other booth stands empty, we stand in a line for half an hour at the Dollar Rental counter waiting to be ripped off by Arizona taxes and additional fees for a second driver. The agent tries to get us to pay even more for an upgrade when he finds out we are driving to the Canyon, saying the little compact car will have a tough time puttering up the mountain passes. We say no hank you.
Our little Dodge Caliber does just fine flying up the Arizona highway at 80 miles per hour – 75 mile an hour speed limit. I start thinking about our return day and the timing of things – our flight is to leave at 9 am – we need to be at the airport at 8 am or earlier – it’s taking close to four hours to drive from the rental car place to the Canyon – that means we will have to be up and on the road by 3 am on the day we leave. Besides the early hour we have to deal with the stress of finding the car rental place, returning the car, getting to the airport, finding some breakfast and making our flight. Blah… we decide to investigate leaving on the afternoon of the 9th and staying at a hotel near the airport in Phoenix.
We see an incredible sunset on the drive – oh how I love the big sky out west! By the time we arrive at the South Rim Village, it’s full on dark and it takes some maneuvering to check in at El Tovar and drop our stuff at the Kachina Lodge and then try and find parking. It’s 1 in the morning EST when we burrow our way under the covers and find some sleep…
…until maybe 1:30 in the morning Pacific Time when we are awakened by people sitting in the grass outside our window talking really loudly. Nancy, bless her heart, gets up and yells (nicely) out the window, informing them that people are trying to sleep and to please keep it down or move on. Silence. Phew.