First things first, breakfast!! We headed a few blocks into town and ate at Old Smoky’s Restaurant. Just a little diner with old tables and chairs… and great food! The menu claims that Elvis ate there, which I suppose could happen. But who cares really? The food was great and the people were the best!
After filling our bellies, we headed to Grand Canyon. It’s only a short drive from Williams to the rim, and the trip was amazingly green. Again, I had expected a dry, toasted desert with bleached bones of all the people who ran out of gas before they got there, but it was nothing like that at all!! The hills around us were covered in trees that were about 20 feet tall, and every square inch of ground was covered in green. It was an awesome drive.
We got to the rim at about noon and expected to be lobsters in about 30 seconds or less, but we brought the cloud cover with us and the cool temperature, so all was good. Since the weather was cooperating we were able to spend hours and hours gazing into the great abyss, and it really is a beautiful, wonderful place! I’m certain my brain has stretch marks from trying to soak it all in.
There is an awesome visitor’s center there, and we traipsed across the grounds to “use the facilities” and check things out. On the way back across the grounds we spotted (I hope I get this right the first time… ;o) ) an elk grazing alongside the barrier fence. She was just munching along happily and wasn’t paying a bit of attention to all the tourists snapping what years ago would have been rolls and rolls of film. I am so thankful for digital cameras. I have no idea how many pictures I have taken of my finger or the floor, all while winding the film in the camera. I’m dating myself, I know.
One of the sites to see was a lookout tower. It had stairs winding up to the top, which is three stories. Thankfully they give you a break on each floor so you can catch your breath, which really is a necessity at 6,000 feet above sea level. I was gasping for air like I had just run the Boston Marathon. Of course one has to maintain composure while trying to maintain consciousness, but that can really be a challenge at times. I found the best thing to do was pretend to be looking out one of the observation windows, but all the time I was really only putting my forehead up against the cool glass and watching my labored breathing make little storm clouds on the window.
We left Grand Canyon and headed to Utah. And I found that flat, dry, crusty desert I had been expecting. Just before dark we drove through Monument Valley and caught some of the rock formations right inside the park. Unfortunately dark came upon us just 10-15 minutes in, so we only saw the first few. But they were really, really spectacular.
Before we left for breakfast we had made reservations at a privately owned campground in Monticello, Utah. We had a goal and we were going to have a bed in a cabin, and we really needed the sleep at that point. Unfortunately, when we arrived to get our cabin and snuggle into our warm and cozy sleeping bags, we found the place to be the nastiest little dive this side of the Mississippi. We checked out the bathroom facilities to see if maybe they were tolerable, but no. Those were even nastier.
So we kept trekking down the road and finally found a hotel room in Moab, Utah. It was midnight by that time, and Tia just flopped on the bed and passed out fully clothed. It really was a long and tiring day, but those are the best days when the tiring part of the day is play!
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