Eastern Europe Trip

The following morning dawned bright and sunny (again!) and we packed our bags before heading down for breakfast. It was here that we met our fellow guests, an Italian couple doing the same trip as us, although they were heading back to Vegas from the Grand Canyon. They were having trouble finding accommodation in the Grand Canyon area, so Tracy dug out the details of the motel we’d booked and passed them on. Then Monty (our host) revealed a real talent for cooking scrambled eggs, using a technique I’d not seen before. With no salt or pepper, he simply broke the eggs (6 between Tracy and me!) into a frying pan with a knob of butter and then broke and folded them with a spatula until cooked. And they were delicious – at least a match for mine – so I’ll be trying that technique when we get home…

Once again with our stomachs fit to burst, we bade our farewells (and had our photo taken for the “Monty and Kathy guest scrapbook”) and set off south. It wasn’t long before we passed the turn off for the Valley of the Gods and then saw the fantastic sight of Monument Valley – so familiar from all those Westerns – in the distance…






We then drove into the park, paying our entrance fee (the Monument Valley park is part of the Navajo nation, and so not covered by our Interagency Pass) and parked up at the visitor’s centre to admire the view. And what a view…






We then took the dirt road that winds its way round the park, stopping very frequently to take endless pictures of these famous rock formations. Once again, I think it best to let the pictures do the talking, as words can’t really convey how beautiful these weathered red rocks are, or how bizarre the shapes they take, shaped by endless winds over the millennia…






















When we finally managed to drag ourselves away from this wonderful landscape, we rejoined the highway and made our way on via Katenta and Tuba City before heading on to Grand Canyon National Park, entering the park at the East entrance. Armed with the usual park brochure and newspaper giving basic information, we made our way along Desert View road to… Desert View overlook… and it was from here that we caught our first sight of the Grand Canyon…






Now, like almost everyone else on the planet, we’ve heard about how “awesome” the Grand Canyon is. And it is. As we’d been warned, its scale is simply astonishing. Whilst the above picture looks like many other landscape photos that have appeared in this blog, it’s worth taking a moment to examine it in a bit more detail… If you look in the middle of the picture, there’s a brown river running down from the upper right and disappearing behind the hill on the left. That’s the Colorado River, and it’s about 100 yards wide at that point. The rim in the distance on the left is the North Rim, and from here, it’s over 10 miles away. So yes, it’s big. Very, very big.

But then we were in for something human and almost as impressive. We’d noticed a Ranger hanging around, and within minutes of us arriving he started giving his talk – a once-a-day talk on the geology of the canyon. Now I’ve noticed that some Americans can be a little animated, but this Ranger had a style all of his own. He first started by explaining that he was going to teach us an easy way to remember how the canyon was formed, using the acronym DUDE. D is for Deposition – the upper layer of the canyon (Kaibab Limestone) being deposited over millennia as the sediment at the bottom of a vast ocean that covered the Colorado plateau – basically the remains of millions of sea creatures. U is for Uplift without which the canyon would not have existed – as the continents moved and collided, the Colorado plateau was formed by the tectonic plates pushing together and raising the whole plateau (out of the ocean). D is for Downcutting (I love how Americans make up words!) which is where the Colorado river, which originates in the Colorado rockies at 14,000ft and reaches sea level at the ocean over a relatively short distance erodes the rock with its enormous energy (unlike most rivers, which lose their height over vast distances, the short distance travelled by the Colorado means it had much greater energy and so eroded the canyon). Finally, E is for Erosion. But not by water (that’s covered by the 2nd D) but by wind, rain, snow and ice, carving out the vast canyon walls and leaving what we see today. He demonstrated this process using a pile of books… and it obviously worked, because I can still remember it several days later!






Full of this new and entertaining insight, we went inside the Watchtower. This structure contains some examples of Navajo and Hopi Indian art and affords spectacular views down into the canyon, and despite the height, once again Tracy was fearless and stood close to the windows to admire the view…














Once we’d had our fill of the view for today, we reluctantly left and drove the Desert View road through the park to the South entrance, and on to Tusayan where we had booked into the Red Feather Lodge for 3 nights. As with the Days Inn at Cortez, this was a case of “affordable, available and in the right location” rather than “a great place to stay”, so I neglected to take my usual photo of the room. It was comfortable, though, and with an en-suite bathroom, huge bed (I get the feeling American couples mustn’t like being close at night) and a big TV. We were soon showered and ready to find somewhere to eat, so loaded up the laptop and tried to find some recommendations on the Internet. They were mixed to say the least, so in the end we plumped for the Café Tusayan which was next door to the motel. There was a weird smell in the restaurant, which reminded Tracy of a public toilet, which didn’t bode well, but the food was edible, if a little bland, but the cheesecake was good. Once again stuffed to the gills, we decided we’d find somewhere else to eat the following night…