“The world overwhelms us, again and again and again. The only way to avoid it is by shutting eyes firmly, but there is no life in that.” – Old Sean
Triumphant Return
My time in the United States has been pleasantly busy. I’ve returned to Garland, Texas, where I’m doing hateful amounts of paperwork, finishing up my college semester and making plans for the near future. However, a smattering of days ago I was offered a ride far West, heading to Phoenix, Arizona to meet with an old friend (Bella) and daughter (June).
Ari, my roommate, and I hopped into her rugged little Kia and trundled off west, making a special stop to pick up my sister in Lubbock.
Our drive was mostly dark and devoid of sight-seeing, though we did get to accidently visit Alomagordo to see the “World’s Larges Pistachio.” We were then supposed to go camping in Lincoln National Park, but a lack of light caused us to miss our campsite.
The original plan had been to camp here and, with the arrival of a new day, rush to reach White Sands National Park. However, with our campsite shrouded from us we pulled into a McDonalds to jack some Wi-Fi and hopefully research the next location on our list.
Unfortunately, our next best option was Dog Canyon. This option was riddled with reviews about an infamous man in a bananas hammock and little else named Bob who claimed to be the camp host. The word creeper was used so frequently, I had to look over my shoulder while reading. Since two of our party are female and I’m easily as cute as any three buttons, we were forced onward for a bit.
Unable to find a spot, we opted to just continue the drive, striving towards Phoenix, where we arrived in the wee hours of the morning.
Arizona Entry
My tiny road trip crew traipsed inside a Denny’s for breakfast where they were allegedly ambushed by a chatty waitress, while I snuggled deeper into the backseat of the car. When I finally awoke, we wandered to Bella’s house and generally lounged around, waiting for her daughter June to visit. The rest of the morning was a quick lesson in every topic under June’s sun (she’s five, chatty, delighted to share everything and an expansive storyteller).
Phoenix was a splendid visit. I took my sister to my favorite restaurant in town, Rula Bula, where we munched on Irish food while folk songs blared on speakers.
Our next food oriented outing involved going to The Taste, a series of food trucks which had turned into a small bloc party with extravagant music blaring across the parking lot. Finally, after a few days of sleeping, babysitting and wandering around local neighborhoods, my sister and I made our first real trip north, towards the Grand Canyon. Borrowing a vehicle from Bella, we set off in the wee hours of the morning.
To the Chasm
I’ve been to the Grand Canyon several times, but this is a first visit for my sister. We ended up stopping in the tiny train town of Williams in the morning for a quick breakfast, but otherwise drove straight towards the Southern Rim where vehicular entrances are $35 USD.
Naturally, we got slammed by traffic trying to enter the park and we ended up spending a full hour inching along the road, and gracelessly nudging the car into multiple lanes for enhanced speed (or a lack thereof).
The Grand Canyon, if you’ve not seen it before, defies the eyes in grandeur. Ripples of red stone forever plummet downward, peppered by black canyons and slashes of grey and white. Scrawny, hardy evergreens grasp outwards from sheer cliff sides and unreachable patches of crisp, sun-denying snow pocket ridges.
Seeing the Grand Canyon is a surreal experience. No matter how crisp the day, or how good a person’s eyes, they never quite register the canyon as real. At best, it seems like a too-crisp green screen lounging in the background.
Exploring the Canyon
Of course, popular culture would have everyone believe the Grand Canyon is an immense cliff surrounded by desolation of heat and desert on both sides. Movies generally show people gazing over the edges in pairs or isolation while Thelma and Louise managed to race across flat, red earth to the cliff’s edge.
In reality, the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon is enormously developed with guardrails in many places, paved sidewalks and enough buildings to make an entire tourist village.
Running along Desert View Road or accessing the Canyon from harder points-of-entry belay this visage, but for the majority of American visitors, the edge of the Canyon must be shared. Dogs, people, children, a few rangers, pack mules and other brands of tourists ring the precarious edge, especially dense around Mather’s Point.
For myself, the best things about the Grand Canyon can’t really be experienced without hiking it. Descending into the gorge, bracing against the waters of the Colorado River and sheltering in yawning caves.
However, that treat usually takes four days at minimum to do properly, and my sister and I were scheduled only a few hours to visit. Our time was spent hiking along the ridge, narrowly avoiding the gradually massing crowd. Due to time constraints, we were happy to hike just a quiet portion of South Rim Trail.
Grey Squirrels found nooks on cliffs to play and tiny grey birds circled branches, pecking with dedication. Driving brought us past a series of shaggy deer, nibbling contently on plateau scruff.
We specifically spent our time hiking along the Trail of Time, which is much less crowded the Mather’s Point and the Village, though we visited both locations eventually. We also managed to find a penny crusher machine, a creation of America’s eldest traditions. (One places a single penny and two quarters into the spokes of gear and rotates until the penny is squished into an oval, complete with a selected image of a place, generally a national park. My sister is a proud collector).
Shops Upon the Edge
In the tourist sections, my sister and I popped into several shops, my favorite being the Hopi House, which was filled with Native American artworks and cultural information. Numerous, extremely excellent books were for sale and I purchased several as gifts.
We also ducked into Verkamp’s Visitor Center which boasted a nice timeline of the Grand Canyon, stretched near the modern era to accommodate post-colonial American history. We even briefly walked down the frozen-packed cliffs of Bright Angel Trailhead to poke our heads into the short tunnel along the cliffside.
Meet the Flintstones
With the Grand Canyon locked in our disbelieving minds, we turned south, trundling until we reached an icon I had only heard about with the utmost amusement.
Bedrock City is a recreation of the town the popular cartoon The Flintstones resided in. This cultural homage to Fred and his friends and family is a widely spaced township of squat, pastel-colored prehistoric houses. Dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and other temporal anomalies decorate the otherwise quiet mock-town.
Bedrock City was sold some years ago and now also provides additional services as a raptor sanctuary. A Great Horned Owl with hauntingly yellow eyes snoozes midday in one of the cages and other raptors hop around in aviaries spread near the main building.
The land’s caretaker was a lovely woman who told us it was common for men around fifty to visit the park and fondly reminisce about the cartoon that landmarked their childhoods. Naturally, most climbed the dinosaur slide in the center of the village and gave it a whirl. Also naturally, my sister and I emulated them with varying degrees of balance.
Entrance was only 5 dollars per person and there are other museums and art attractions nearby.
Petroglyph Hike
Following Bedrock City, we rushed to Bearizona in the hopes of visiting before their gates shut at 4 PM, but were disappointed to find the price ($25) was per person, not per vehicle.
Finding it beyond our budget, we shrugged, drove away and headed to Picture Canyon Natural and Cultural Preserve in Flagstaff instead, where we lurked around the low, picture-defying mountains and spotted an extremely worn petroglyph etched into the side of a steep canyon wall.
Finally, we grabbed dinner at North Pines Restaurant which boasts some seriously impressive pie selections, and then we were due to drive home.
Back in Phoenix, we purchased some cheesecake and coffee from Coffee Rush and the rest of night was whittled away playing chess, a strange diving board game and a numeric matching game called Nines before calling it a night.
Camping Calling
On Monday, we were due to begin our drive home, which we did with the utmost lack of speed. We wandered off to visit another old friend in the area, Trenton and bought Chipotle and Wendy’s to start our road trip.
Goodbyes were long, games were played and upon finally leaving, we opted to sleep on the very edge of Arizona at the somewhat rugged BLM site, Round Mountain Rockhound Area (Since Ari enjoys rock hounding).
A full moon blared above, only slightly muted by clouds and dessert brush rushed away from us in all directions right up to the edges of distant mountains in a perfectly flat expanse. Cows, ever-present, left dry-baked gifts on the cracked dirt and the occasional coyote answered the stillness with unnerving howls. Tent setup was swift, the roads are graded to make terrible bumping and vibrating noises while driving and we were soon all snoozing.
However, thanks to the enterprising efforts of campers before us, we didn’t go rockhounding during the edge of dawn.
Instead, I went for a short hike only to find that rock-hunters before us had abandoned a sizable pile of stones near our campsite. Agate abounded and there were also chunks of quartz and a few somewhat shattered geodes. Everyone picked through the interesting pile and selected a rock or ten to bring home.
Snowsands
Collection complete and camp swiftly packed away, we bundled into the car and vanished westward once more, eating unhealthy fast food every couple of hours until we made it to White Sands National Park. Directly adjacent to the White Sands Missile Testing area, this National Park costed a light $25 dollars to enter.
White Sands is exactly what it sounds like. Vast dunes of perfectly pale sands rush across a desert expanse framed by distant smudges of brownish mountains. Sledding down the dunes is an enormously popular pastime and the park has a nature site filled with hardy grass and other low plants as well as an adorable species of mouse known as a pocket mouse.
We effectively shattered our cardboard-box-sled and instead used some artwork that Ari had scavenged as our downward-slope-velocity-device.
It sort of worked. We scooched and crashed at speeds too low to hurt a newborn. But plenty fast to induct sand grains permanently in our clothes and hair.
I recommend visiting the sands in bare feet provided they surface isn’t too hot. The white resists collecting too much heat, but getting sunburned is extra likely here, as the sun blazes down and the pale grains reflect back upwards with a vengeance.
Sunglasses or tinted goggles might be wise as well, and our COVID masks were welcome additions to blocking sand from our teeth during stiff winds.
Most impressively are the columns of sand that rise before ushers of true gusts. They decorate the sky, scour footprints from the land and needle exposed flesh. When that flat sky blurs, finding a bracer is wide every time.
Overall, White Sands was my favorite part of our road trip. Playing in the dirt, wandering about barefoot, huddling into dunes and dramatically lunging into the winds on a desolate arc of shifting earth checked all my boxes.
We ended up driving non-stop for the rest of the day and night, pausing only once in Lubbock to drop my sister off. The following drive to Dallas was quiet, straight and without drama aside from evading a pair of deer trotting in the road. And with that, I’ve completed my first return-road-trip in the US.
Until the next one.
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written March 30th 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
