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Published: August 9th 2010
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Shorter drive ahead of us today. We opt for the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet which is full-on. Kids again free (yippee!). I have scrambled eggs with chorizo sausage, refried beans in a tortilla, a 'breakfast burrito' that looks like a deep fried tortilla wrap stuffed with egg and capsicum. Pancakes with fresh blueberries, stewed apple, maple syrup and whipped cream fills up my plate (yes, that was just my breakfast!). But I still find room for two pastries with coffee 😊. Ky tries a few things, decides the omelette and french toast don't taste very nice but enjoys the plain scrambled eggs and bacon. Joseph and Liam pig out on fruit loops, rock melon, watermelon, little sausages and more.
In the car, we drive north up the Strip first to have a gander, then back down. Ky takes shots out the window. Eventually we find our way to the road to Boulder and the Hoover Dam.
The dam is impressive. Would be nice to have time to take the tour. Red coloured rock walls lean over the huge dam, with the giant arch of a new freeway bridge on the downstream side providing a backdrop way up high. We stop
Hoover Dam
new freeway in the background briefly for a couple of photos then move on.
Lunch at a burger place in Mojave, then later on we stop to grab a drink at a little shop in the middle of nowhere. Sign next door reads "geodes" but is closed. Helpful shop attendants say we can get them in Chloride, 4 miles off the main road. Feeling on schedule and with a little time to spare, I drive us to the tiny town with character that's one step away from your typecast ghost town (in a nice way). Local market shops sells gold ore , large rocks that are assayed at 0.75 ounces per tonne, but we can't see the gold in them so don't buy them. Owner directs us to the end of the road where an old man wheezing through an oxygen hose tells us what chrystals and rocks we are looking at. We get a piece of corbalite (that's what I think he said) "Dinosaur doo-doo", and some "Apache tears", little rounded stones that I think are obsidian.
He has a really nice polished petrified wood bookend set but it feels pretty heavy so I reluctantly leave it. Again I form new ideas
for a bigger trip: spending a few months in Chloride away from it all (literally), just rock-hounding. Eventually we reach Williams by the Kaibab Forest. Fascinating to find forests in Arizona. I'd always pictured it as desert country but the Kaibab Forest is as woody as any NZ forest. The lady at the Howard Johnson Inn is very friendly and helpful and I'm suddenly reminded of the great hospitality offered in the little towns.
We take a short break then head to the Grand Canyon. Keen to get there, the 51 mile drive seems to take forever. We finally get there around 5pm, and hop on the shuttle to the South Kaibab Trail.
O.M.G.! (Oh My God). This place is mind-blowing. With my (wanna-be) photgrapher's eye I see stunning vistas with every ocuple of steps. I take about 180 photos walking down the steep path in around 40 minutes. The camera irritates me with its auto-light detection. Sunny bits mean distant shadowy areas that we can see clearly come up too dark in the photo, and if I focus on the distant darker areas the close areas end up over-exposed. Liam slips and falls on his back early
on, so Ky consoles and waits with him while mountain-goat Joseph and I head on down. Joseph is right in to his Junior Ranger booklet that he collected from the visitors centre, and stops every few meters to jot something down. As we walk down, we meet others coming up. Panting, sweaty, exhausted we are greeted with smiles. Hmmm: looks like hard work coming back up! Joseph and I turn around after 40 minutes, having reached an outcrop where the trail heads east to see a completely different section of the immense canyon. The sun is being kind, coming in and out behind clouds to give highlight ridges and showcasing the canyon.
A little way back up (panting and sweaty), we meet Ky and Liam, now recovered from his agony and tears. I talk Ky into walking down a bit further to get the view east, while I walk back with Liam and Joseph. Liam starts telling me this wierd story about an alternative version of Jack and the Beanstalk which involved an endless supply of cans of beans.
Finally back at the top, shuttle back to the visitors center to look around the bookstore before it closes
at 8. Joseph needs to attend a ranger talk to get his junior ranger badge so we drive to the Mather Ampitheatre. But its late, we haven't eaten and the talk on horned toads was going to take 50 minutes so we leave and drive out to Tusayan.
Dinner at Sophie's Mexican Restaurant is really great, highly recommended. Then back to the hotel for bed.
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