Dear friends and family,
My journey continues! Apologies for the delayed update, I will explain the reasons I am slowly devolving into a webcomic artist’s pacing of updates below (Dumbing of Age and its garbage notwithstanding, Spence).
So my original plan after leaving Taos was to meander west along US-64 to Mesa Verde and the four corner region by about May 12th, and then continue to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon by the 18th. However, a couple of issues came up that made me alter these plans: 1) Mesa Verde didn’t actually open up until the 14th 2) I wasn’t able to get your tickets until the 18th and 3) the north rim of the Grand Canyon isn’t opening until June 1st this year due to a late season snowfall. *Sigh* what’s a boy to do?
Haul ass to the south rim and then backtrack to Mesa Verde later, that’s what!
Pictured: what I was haulin ass across
Not pictured: me sitting on my keister in a climate controlled hatchback haulin ass across the southwest 🤠
I decided to jump ahead in my schedule to see the Grand Canyon for a couple days, at least until my reservations came up for Mesa Verde.
I’m glad I did; I found some stuodenously good weather and managed to stay directly in the canyon campsite thanks to some first-come-first-served sites they have. I don’t have much commentary for what I saw because, well, it’s the Grand Freakin’ Canyon. What can I say that would possible add to its beauty? For once in my life, I should probably just hush and let nature do the talking:
What else need be said?
One interesting thing at the Grand Canyon is how domesticated the wildlife is. Elk and squirrels regularly wander concerningly close to visitors:
That’s not mange, elk at this time of year are shedding their winter coats, which they do by scraping themselves against trees, causing their winter coat to come off in patches.
At some point I began to wonder if these guys were on the payroll! But no mind, they mostly kept to themselves and the visitors admiring them stayed out of mauling range. Perhaps these beasts just wanted to take in the views themselves?
@Mom: even Mr. Squirrelioni must stop to admire the beauty of the Grand Canyon.
Some creatures weren’t as enthusiastic about the sights. I think this guy was hired by a recruiting agency because he wasn’t as into stuff as Mr. Squirrelioni was.
This cactus, on the other hand, was getting way too close to the ledge to retrieve a lost hat: must be a summer intern.
I mostly stuck to the rim trails and didn’t hike down into the canyon itself. “But why Evan?” I hear you ask, “why, you courageous hiking soul? Don’t you help run a hiking group back east? Wouldn’t this make for a great hike? Are you a fraud, a charlatan?! Was that a doppelganger leading all those LMH Hikes?!?! En Garde! KILL YOUR DOUBLE what’s the deal man???”
Easy, tiger! The long and short is that I caught the flu and it. Kicked. My. Ass. I got to Williams, Arizona (the last town before the park boundary) on Sunday night and basically holed up in a hostel until Wednesday because I was so sick. I managed to get Tamaflu, which probably helped me get over the flu much sooner, but I was still noooooot up to the task of hiking the South Kaibab (@Chelsea I’ll have to attempt your one-day rim-to-rim exploits at some point in the future :/ ).
Thankfully by Wednesday I was up to the task of getting into the park and actually setting up my tent. It was a pleasant stay, and on the upside of things, not hiking all day meant that I was sure to be up to catch the sunsets every night:
On one day it rained for a little bit too, which was cool because I didn’t know it could rain at the Grand Canyon:
Oh geez do you think we’re on high enough ground up here?
One more interesting thing to note is that despite having its handiwork all around you, you can’t actually see the Colorado River from most places on the rim because it’s just so stinking far down there. I did manage to get a coupe of shots from different areas along the south rim though:
All told? I give it a 10/10. Definitely America’s greatest hole in the ground 💙
But is there a competitor? Who is the number 2 greatest hole in the ground?
My friends, allow me to introduce the great heel of this blog post, the inimitable METEOR CRATER:
Meteor Crater is a tourist trap roadside attraction east of the Grand Canyon; I went there after leaving the Grand Canyon and returning east towards Mesa Verde, around this past Sunday. Meteor Crater is exactly what it says on the can: it’s a well-preserved meteor crater in the middle of the Arizona desert! Interestingly, it’s apparently the first such crater that was proven to have a meteoric origin (most people at the time thought that volcanism was to blame for this pockmark on the Earth): that’s why it’s just named meteor crater, as opposed to the “Arizona meteor crater” or otherwise, because it’s literally the first meteor crater people knew of. What a fun little etymological tautology!
Mind that the crater is privately owned, so it does have the trappings of many classic roadside tourist traps.
Classic American Kitchz, as viewed through a worn out telescope.
Is this America’s second greatest hole in the ground? Perhaps! Is it worth $27 admission for two hours when Grand Canyon is only $35 for a week (or free with a national parks pass)? Well… I’d say it’s up for debate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Perhaps I shouldn’t fault the Meteor Crater’s kitchz, especially given where I stayed the night that evening:
(I stayed in the motel behind the fiberglass teepees, mind, since it was a lot cheaper 😅).
The last thing I saw on this leg of the journey wasn’t a hole in the ground, but what comes out of it instead: petrified wood! Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park was on the way between the Canyon and Mesa Verde so I stopped there too:
They call this bit the “blue mesa” but to me it looked a lot more purple-y. More like the blueberry ice cream mesa if you asked me to name it.
I finally got to Cortez CO, near Mesa Verde, around Monday, and good Lord have I seen some cool stuff since. After I see Cliff Palace tomorrow, I promise I’ll soon post a HUGE update with some stuff you wouldn’t believe. And I mean it: just in the last 3 days, I have seen the by far the coolest stuff I’ve seen on the whole trip.
But for now, as always,
Back to the road 💙
Stay well everyone,
Evan