Grand Canyon

A few years ago, probably in 2000, the phone rang and it was Bill Huffman.  He was our former news director at WVVA-TV and practicing law in Princeton, West Virginia.  We were in Salt Lake City.  I was working for Pfizer, Randy was teaching junior high music in Park City, and Krystal was now living with us.  Our families had become close friends over the years, and he proposed that he, Diane, their daughter Rebecca, and cousin Kelli fly out to Salt Lake City, and we'd jump in a couple of cars and take a tour of the West, to include Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas.

We were 'all in', and before long we were packing for the trip.  We had two shetland sheepdogs that were getting to be pretty old dogs, and as luck would have it, one of them just up and ran off.  They would do this from time to time, but hadn't as of yet at our home in Salt Lake City.  We searched and searched and although we should have been really looking forward to the trip, and their arrival, we felt a sense of dread about leaving home for a week.  What if we didn't find her?

Our friends arrived and we were still so excited to see them. We caught up for a bit and then shared the news about our missing dog.  Now if you were to visit Diane and Rebecca's facebook pages, you would see that they are more cat than dog people.  They have even been known to put up a photo of a cat as a profile picture.  Yes, they were concerned, but what were we going to do?  Cancel the trip and stay home and look for a dog that we may never find?

So, of course, we went on with the trip.  We started out showing them a beautiful canyon in Salt Lake, called Big Cottonwood Canyon.  It's a beautiful drive, with great mountain views, craggy peaks, and an abandoned mine entrance here and there.

Just after this picture was taken, the 'girls' all piled in one car with the men in the rental car behind us.  We thought it would be so funny to pull over on the side of the road on the way back down the canyon and pretend to be broken down, that it would absolutely freak the men out.  So we pulled over, figured out how to raise the hood, and all five of us peered into the engine and waited.  We were all laughing so hard we were shaking.  The men would be so worried.  The men's car approached, quickly surveyed the situation without slowing down, and whizzed right on by us.  When we caught up with the men and asked them what kind of husbands and fathers they were, not to stop and help us, they told us they knew it was a set-up, that there was no way all five of us girls would have our heads perched over any car engine like that.  So smart they were. 

The next day, it was southward down Interstate 15 to Zion National Park, near the Utah/Arizona border.  Some say they like Zion better than the Grand Canyon.  I'm not one of them, but it is unbelievably beautiful and worth a visit or two.

Rebecca, Kelli, Diane and Bill in front of a rock formation

Krystal and Loretta in front of same rock formation

We enjoyed as much of Zion as we could, but it was time to get back on the road and head to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  For most of us, it would be our first trip there.  We had booked a couple of cabins and were so excited for the adventures ahead.  We headed mostly south and a little east, through still more beautiful scenery, and then started to climb the Kaibab Plateau.  Once you're on the plateau, you start to feel like you're nearing Grand Canyon territory.  There are fragrant pinion pines, and interesting high mountain desert scrub.  You descend a little bit, the trees start to get taller...ponderosa pines, spruce, and aspen trees.  We saw miles of burned out trees from a forest fire years ago.  Still standing and as charred as ever.  It's amazing the toll that fire takes out there.

We kept on driving and finally we neared the historic lodge at the North Rim, nestled in pines and surrounded by cabins, two of which would be ours for a couple of nights.  The lodge is beautiful, and the view of the canyon from it would take one's breath away.  We hung around the lodge, had dinner there, and an electrical storm moved in with lightning that lit up the entire lodge and deck and some of the canyon.  We moved into our cabins, and Krystal remembers Randy and Bill drinking beer on one of the porches and screaming that they were almost struck by lightning!  We figured that it was just crazy beer talk, but sure enough, lightning did strike a tent nearby.  It was a big topic of conversation around the cabins and campground that next morning.

I think the girls had perhaps looked at pictures of the Grand Canyon before the trip and expected lots of cactus, and maybe a bit warmer temperatures.  That's the South Rim, only 10 miles straight across the canyon but a 200 mile drive to get there.  We loved them, but there was no way we were going to drive to the South Rim.  Sometimes I think the Grand Canyon's more enjoyable for the adult, as we envision what it must have been like to first stumble upon it, how to get around it, and live within it.  The canyon changes color all day long and shadows and light trade places.  As much fun as Monet seemed to have painting haystacks, he would have had a heck of a time painting the ever changing Grand Canyon.

We spent a couple of days there, and then the night before we were to leave, we decided that we all needed to get up before sunrise, to see the sun come up over the canyon and then go.  Randy was in charge of the wake-up call, and, well,  as you can see from the picture below, it's already light out.

 We all marched anyway, single file, to the nearest overlook.

This picture says to me, this is great and all, but can we just get on the road and head to Las Vegas?

We did leave for Las Vegas just after that picture was taken, and for some reason we stopped taking pictures.  We can be a little bipolaroid when it comes to picture taking sometimes.  But I remember the drive well.  We drove and drove, and would meet fewer and fewer cars and the girls got to see a lot of that desert landscape they didn't think they were going to see.  The sun moved deeper into the western sky, and we'd play cat-and-mouse on the road, and catch up to each other side-by-side and roll down our windows and sing whatever song might be on the radio or make goony faces at each other.  Just like all of us were 12, and not just the passengers in the back seat.  We came upon an old gas station and store in the middle of nowhere, it seemed, and we relished the opportunity to go inside and take a break from the road.  It was a place more for the locals, than the tourists, and tolerated us in our cowboy hats and tennis shoes long enough to take our money for gas and snacks.  There were some dusty souvenirs inside, and old slot machine and I'm pretty certain Randy and Bill put a couple of dollars in, just because they could.  Back on the road, the sky turned its usual pinks, oranges and reds, and then the stars popped out.  It was very, very dark out there.

We drove some more, and then started to descend a little and way off in the distance was the glow of Las Vegas.  When you've been driving for hours and surrounded by so little, it's somewhat comforting to see the sparkle of Las Vegas out there, waiting for you.  When she saw the glow of the lights, I will never forget hearing Rebecca whisper from our backseat, "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

The traffic increased and soon we weren't alone anymore, but surrounded by the sensory overload that is Vegas.  The girls were in a trance, and were excited to be there.  We had booked adjoining rooms at the MGM Grand, and they would be a far cry from the cabins at the Grand Canyon.  We had a great time there, Randy and Bill would plot to sneak off and gamble in the middle of the night.  If Rebecca hadn't heard them come in at 4:00 in the morning, it's doubtful we would have even known they were gone, except for the dwindling 20 dollar bills in their wallets.  There was the legendary story that while playing blackjack, one of them told the dealer to 'hit' on 21.  Which is really quite funny, considering the two of them had bought books prior to the trip, so they could read up on how to win at blackjack.

Before we knew it, it was time to go our separate ways.

Bill, Diane, Rebecca, and Kelli went on to L.A., and even though it was Diane's lifelong dream to see the 'Hollywood' sign up close, Bill would have nothing of it (I think that's a direct quote).

We went on home, and a few days after we got back, Randy scoured the area, and found our dog over 30 miles from home.  A woman who rescued Shelties from animal shelters had found our dog, and knew she was someone's pet and we got her back.

This trip will always remain my favorite vacation, with the best of friends, and to top it off, in our beautiful backyard.