Big holes, crumbling buildings, and old wood
09/24/2009 at 22:34 from (35.140278, -111.672218)
We started out our second day in Flagstaff with some mighty ambitions. We planned on driving up to the Grand Canyon in the morning, making our way east along the rim and then south to the Wupatki ruins, then finally joining back up with the freeway and heading back into Flagstaff from the east. We assumed the trek would take the whole day (at least) and told Jennifer not to wait up for us. She dropped us off at the car rental place and we picked up our Pontiac Vibe (the only car I've ever driven with a blind spot that extended from horizon to horizon).
The drive was gorgeous from the very beginning, taking us through progressively shorter and more sparse pine forests until we emerged on a broad, flat plain dotted with bushes and the occasional yellow flower. Before we made it to the canyon, we stopped to watch the IMAX film at the visitor's center outside the park (by doing so, we also qualified for a discount on our tickets). The movie was good, sure, but perhaps not as incredible as I remembered it being a decade ago.
Once we had bought our obligatory postcards in the gift shop, we jumped back into the car and headed to the rim, intent on taking full advantage of the day's unseasonably good visibility. We arrived at the rim just before the crush of tourists, enjoying an almost personal experience with the canyon before it was inundated with tens of thousands of chattering visitors toting cameras and flinging garbage.
The pictures we took (and there are hundreds of them) don't do the canyon justice, and no photo ever could. To be honest the sheer vastness of its depths are too hard for even the senses to truly comprehend. In photos, the canyon looks deep and wide, sure, but somehow not as deep and wide as it is. Even in person, it's hard to get a sense for the scale of the place without walking out on a ledge and looking straight down onto the back of some soaring bird. The Grand Canyon is big. Really, really, impossibly big.
Marijana, who had never seen it before, marvelled at the geology set out in front of us. I tried to impress her with my bravado by climbing out to a spot where Goosey had taken a photo of me 5 years earlier. To reach it, though, involves jumping across a cleft in the rock, onto a pillar that appears to just barely balance itself on a narrow pedestal half a mile below. This time around, I didn't have the guts to make the leap.
I stopped at the gap, too awed by the drop in front of me to even hazard an attempt. An eagle circled lazily in the dizzying depths under my heels and what I had originally thought were bushes upon first glance turned out to be full-grown trees almost a mile directly below where I stood. When I scrambled back up to where Marijana had been standing, she hugged me and thanked me for letting my rare sense of self-preservation trump my typically dominant sense of stupidity.
We continued along the rim for a long while, snapping photos and mocking the busloads of Japanese tourists who seemed more intent on heading to the gift shop than staring at the wonder of nature right in front of them. Pulling in just behind them were legions of bikers, whose raucous motors shattered the breezy peace of the place. By the time we had returned to the parking lot to retrieve our car and continue on, it was crammed from end to end (and along the ditch running its length) with thousands of cars and sweating tourists.
We continued east, parallel to the rim, for a couple hundred miles, stopping occasionally to gaze from a new vantage point, investigate a tower, or wander through some ancient ruins mere steps from the precipice.
As the canyon began to dwindle in depth and width, we curved south. Just before our turn toward Wupatki, though, Marijana saw a Navajo craft stand and begged me to pull over. I begrudgingly obliged, but as we turned in, we were treated to an incredible sight: impossibly steep canyon walls shooting into the earth for what seemed like an eternity. We paid some pitance of an entrance fee and parked at what we learned was called the Little Colorado River Canyon.
We wandered through the craft area (set up at this location to capitalize on the twin markets of sightseers and craft hunters) to the edge, gaping in amazement at walls even steeper and on a more comprehensible scale than those at Grand Canyon. When we were reasonably sure nobody was looking, I took a rock and hurled it straight out from the rim and we counted the time it took to hit bottom. The first two rocks were too small and we lost sight of them after 7 seconds. The final rock was quite a bit larger, but we lost sight of it, too, until we saw a puff of white at 9 seconds as the rock hit bottom and exploded. By our calculations, that meant the depth was around 400m (about 1300 feet) straight down!
After our dangerous (to any potential hikers below) science experiment, we picked up the pace, racing to Wupatki to catch the ruins before sunset. We explored a couple of the ruins on the perimeter before a nice gentleman explained that the big ones are further in and, if we hurried, we'd catch them just before the sun went down. We thanked him, ran to our car, and got there just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. The walls were in remarkably good shape and it was clear that the official depiction of the people who erected these buildings as "primitive" was inaccurate. I don't know many modern buildings that would last a thousand years, let alone be in still-livable condition. These displayed a strange sort of symbiosis with the surrounding desert that no other house we saw in Arizona seemed capable of.
After an enjoyable visit admiring the sunset hues on the red stone walls, jumping through the ball court, and marvelling at the blowhole (a natural hole leading to a massive subterranean chamber that, when the pressure below is higher than outside, expels cool air quite forcefully), we made the long, dark drive home, arriving to a delicious meal that Jennifer had lovingly made for us (again, way over the top, Jennifer). We passed out, fat, relaxed, and happy, our longest day ostensibly behind us.
The next morning, we rose early and arranged to meet with Uncle Hank in Winslow after visiting Meteor Crater. Before that, though, Jennifer kindly offered to give us our flu shots. We were her practice run before the season kicked into high gear, and we happily took a free poke in the arm (the best shot I've ever been given, I must say).
Then we were off to Meteor Crater. The center was, sadly, a tastelessly over-exploited tourist trap, but the key attraction (the hole itself) was a breathtaking sight. The force required to create the landcape we saw must have been terrifying. We snapped a few photos as the owners of the place stared, hoping we'd visit their overpriced souvenir shop, rock shop, Subway, or theater. We left without spending another dime, continuing on to Winslow and meeting Uncle Hank at the appointed hour at a gas station on the outskirts of town.
Zane's car, he explained, had broken down, so he would escort us to Heber, where he would leave his Bronco for Zane to use. Then he would accompany us through the Petrified Forest on our circuitous route back to Winslow for dinner with him and Aunt Arlene.
Zane looked great, and the cabin was just as I remember it, if a bit smaller than in my memory. On our way there, we passed through the Dry Lake Project, Arizona's first commercial wind farm. Marijana, initially, couldn't beieve that the turbines really were larger than 20m tall (a fact she made me confirm online when we got back to Jennifer's). It was incredible the distance from which we could see the gently turning rotors. Their massive size, and the lack of anything contextual to compare them to, provides a similar illusion to that of the Grand Canyon: they appear to be large, yes, but not as large as they really are.
After visiting with Zane and his family, we headed out to the Petrified Forest with Uncle Hank as our guide. He pointed us first to a rock and gem shop outside the park with an incredible assortment of fossils, gems, rare rocks, and curiosities, not to mention their literal warehouse of petrified logs. We continued onto the park, making our way to the visitor's center. We agreed that we would keep the trek brief (Uncle Hank was supposed to be helping Aunt Arlene pack at the time), so we made a quick excursion up to the logs before meeting Uncle Hank back at the visitor's center, where we found him reading a book of apologies from people who had stolen from the park (reasons for returning their finds include guilt, shame, fear of prosecution, and "the curse that is on these rocks").
We pushed on to several lookouts over the Little Painted Desert, admiring the sun on the multi-hued rock as Uncle Hank complained about the poor lighting (it was gorgeous, no matter what he says) and I raced from lookout to lookout, trying to get ahead of a tour bus filled with somber French people. The sun began its nightly dive, so we completed the loop and headed back toward Winslow, where Aunt Arlene was waiting. After a brief glance at Uncle Hank's fascinating fossil collection, we were off to their favorite Mexican joint (not bad, I must say). We polished our plates, said a long, drawn-out goodbye, then headed back to Jennifer's place to get some well-earned sleep.
