I don't expect much from a vacation apart from the unexpected, the surprising and whenever possible, the bonus! I am nothing if not easy to please. So, after a few years of discussion and postponement in order to avoid being predictable tourists, we finally gave in and bought tickets to Phoenix, and booked a lodge (Yavapai) in the Grand Canyon National Park.
With Christmas around the corner and no other alternatives, I resigned myself to seeing what everyone and by that I mean EVERYONE seems to have seen. Incidentally, my husband has been there before too with his mom and dad.
Come December 23, I looked up the top things to do in Flagstaff and Grand Canyon NP. Next, I called up the highest rated touring company to find that they only had a tour for December 28, by which time we would have already spent two days in the park.
I wanted an overview tour, preferably on the day after we got there so that we could have local advice on what were the things to do here. They recommended that I call Canyon Dave (another, older, touring company). And surprisingly enough, it was one of those rare occasions where I was unexpectedly lucky as that was the best recommendation I have ever been given.
Canyon Dave is a trained geologist who taught the subject for years before he started organising canyon tours and knows everything there is to know about the geology of the Grand Canyon. We didn't meet him as his wife, Dora Thayer was our tour guide and was equally well-versed in the topography of the area. She was wonderful, enthusiastic and well-read and the canyon itself was her classroom where we learned about the upheavals that caused its formation, long before the dinosaurs came and before long we were smitten by its sheer scale and magnificence.
We sat on a man-made limestone ledge and looked on mesmerised as she showed us the rocks that made up each layer. Rocks that she had carried with her in order to show us the real thing. With a live demonstration of moving tectonic plates (you have to see that for yourself!), this was a one-of-a-kind experience. The various formations looked like buildings from far with tiers and crenelations at the top.
They were very appropriately called temples and named after Hindu and Greek deities as the geologists saw fit to name them like the Vishnu Formation that used to be at the bottom of the absolutely oldest mountains in the region (it forms the base of the canyon now).
"It is all very spiritual," said Dora as she pointed out their names. Yes, that they were even though they were kind of hard to tell apart for someone seeing them only for two days.
But that was just the beginning. She had more stories on the "canyon" people — from the arrival and movement of the various native American tribes — to their various myths and legends. She told us about the ancient tribes who lived in the area in houses with small windows and even smaller doors built to merge seamlessly with the canyon cliffs and walls themselves. Later, we saw the site of the ancient Pueblo people and could relate to it so much better because of the context that Dora had set up for us.
We have cool petrified wood pieces as souvenirs from the tour. We also saw bigger pieces of petrified wood outside the Navajo trading place and the restaurant that we stopped at in Cameron. The most surprising thing we saw (although, almost everything she taught us was new for us) were the rock slabs containing, wait for it... yes, dinosaur footprints! These slabs were unwittingly used to build a gallery/antique store selling native American handmade art. So it remains just a wall... up until you see the dinosaur tracks!
It was a memorable tour for many reasons and also included the history of the different types of people that have made the Grand canyon their home or workspace (like Mary Colter, the eccentric architect of various buildings at National Park, including the Desert View Watch Tower).
Canyon Dave would be my first and only recommendation for a true glimpse into the history and geology of the Grand Canyon (check out details on www.grand-canyon-tours-1.com). It was an educational trip and to me, an open museum is always better than parts of the real thing in a far off land!
One good thing was that we didn't spend much time at the gift stores. Also, inside the NP, the food is nothing much to really write home about.
The added bonus of the trip was the route we took to get back to the airport in Phoenix: the sunset crater drive with its lovely lava smeared rock on the right and its peaks covered in snow. Also, this view was enhanced with one of my favorite radio programs playing in the background. Additional bonus was the slide rock canyon that we saw on our drive through the Red Rock Canyon Scenic Byway.
Grand Canyon must be one of the most photographed places on the planet. It doesn't have many plants or trees and seems to be very passive and slowly eroding and thus offers wonderful photo-ops of its stark features as light and shade intermingle through the passage of the day. I am most definitely not a landscape photographer, however, unable to help I did take several photos of the landscape, the weird trees and birds. All of the region, right upto parts of New Mexico and Colorado is a plateau and that plateau has sub plateaus, one of them is Kaibab, that is also the name of the topmost layer of the Grand Canyon.
This is a dream destination for a hiker though all we did were a couple of very easy hikes. Well, what else can I say, while we must tread the less travelled road, the road most travelled also has more stories...
Ishita Das is a neuroscientist and blogs at www.implicitself.wordpress.com