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Sun 4 - Mon 5 May
Getting to the Grand Canyon was an adventure in itself. In San Diego we bought road maps of California, Arizona and Nevada and googled the best routes to take. By major freeways the journey would have taken us about 8-9 hours. But we found one guy’s description indicating a far more interesting route that took about the same time. Well, he got the interesting part right, but the journey all up took us 17 hours (dramas included) and we arrived at the Canyon a whole day late.
So the first drama started when we went to pick up our hire car on Sunday morning. The rude man at the front counter said our things wouldn’t fit into the compact two-door car we had booked, so we would have to pay to upgrade (but he could do it for $11 per day for us). Sean asked to see the car and the man said he had ‘over 2000 cars out there’ and wouldn’t be able to show us. Also, if he wrote up a contract for a particular car, we wouldn’t be able to change our mind. We paid the extra money and ended
up in our blue Toyota Prius, but as we were leaving Sean asked the car attendant to point out one of the compact cars we had ordered and she said they didn’t actually have any! Needless to say, Sean talked to the manager and we ended up getting the Prius at no extra cost.
Our first day of driving took us over the Santa Ana mountains of California (very rocky and dry) as we followed the border East. We started heading North East at El Centro and drove through sandy desert, with huge cacti growing everywhere. Just over the Arizona border, at a teeny town called Quartzsite, we discovered the front right tire had bubbled out on the side. So we found a shed to offer some shade from the 91F heat and changed it out with the compact spare in the back. Fortunately, when I rang the 1800 roadside assistance number, the man on the other end of the line said we had extended protection and would be reimbursed the cost of a replacement tire. In the evening we started heading towards central Arizona, which included a rise in elevation up to 6000ft.
My first camping experience
with Sean didn’t turn out exactly as planned. As we spent most of the day driving through desert, there seriously was nowhere for us to camp. We decided to set up at the first site we came across, which was right on dark in a pine forest and just outside of a town called Prescott. Prescott was just beautiful, a welcome relief after seeing dry, flat desert all day. It was a small mountain town, which reminded me a lot of Thredbo. It was also very, very cold. We set up the tent in the dark and ate two minute noodles for dinner. I only had my $20 Target sleeping bag, so Sean gave me his foam mat and silk liner, which left him cold for most of the night. (I also slept in my two polar fleece jackets, beanie, gloves, tracksuit pants and socks.) Neither of us slept particularly well, partly due to the cold and also because we had been too tired to organise payment of the $10 camp fee and thought every vehicle noise was the ranger coming to get us.
We woke at 5am and hit the road to make up some lost time. Early
on we passed through another tiny town called Jerome (population 500) that was carved into a hillside, making it look rather European (according to Sean). We read that Jerome had been the home of a huge copper mine and at one point had been inhabited by about 20 000 people.
We pulled in to get the tire changed at Cottonwood and the mechanic pointed out that we also had a nail stuck in the rear wheel, and that it would also need to be replaced. I couldn’t believe our luck; who gets two flat tires in less than 24 hours?
The remainder of our journey to the Grand Canyon (GC) went smoothly. We stopped at Flagstaff (an historic Route 66 stop and home of the Arizona Winter Olympics) to buy me a silk liner and foam mattress (oh bliss). Surprisingly, about an hour from the Grand Canyon village we passed the Arizona Snow Bowl, where the mountain peaks were still covered in snow. So after two days driving and two flat tires we arrived at the GC just a little tired and in desperate need of a shower!
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We love it !
23/5/08 Sean and Megan, This blog of your travels is brilliant; flat tyres, beanies in bed, sunsets in Mexico, Disneyworld photos, snow capped Arizona mts. and hummingbirds. We love it all, esp. the writing, and hope you can keep us supplied with more. Happy travelling !