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The following morning we woke up a little more refreshed, and ready to make the 80 mile trip to the Grand Canyon (incidentally today was the day we did our 3rd 1000 miles and realised that our initial estimate of 4000 miles to Florida was perhaps a bit optimistic!) We'd heard various different reports on the place, ranging from "It's deadly boring" to it's breathtaking and awe inspiring blah blah blah". Not ones to be overly influenced by this type of talk we headed out with open minds, and found the National Park easily.
This place is busy, man! I think that on the day we were there we were joined by most of Japan. We parked kind of alongside the Canyon and got out to walk. In all honesty, it's hard to describe...the Grand Canyon, as you might expect, is a bl**dy great hole in the ground. The size is impossible to get your head round really, so you're left kind of in a daze, looking into a big hole. Don't get me wrong, it's very beautiful because of the colours in the rock and things, but the whole time I was there, I couldn't get that bit out of Some Like it Hot out of my mind, where Tony Curtis tells Marilyn Monroe that his one true love (who was as blind as he was pretending to be) was lost as they stood on the edge of the Canyon, he removed his glasses, she removed hers, he took a step towards her, she took a step towards him...think you can guess the rest if you haven't seen the film...We did a lot of the essential oohing and aahing, and spent some time on the shuttle bus so that we could look at the hole from different angles, but at the end of it all I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed. To be fair to the Grand Canyon (because of course it cares what I think!) it had a hard act to follow in the shape of Yosemite...
Anyway, on the advice of various people we had decided that the following day we would visit Monument Valley and so intended to spend the night in a place called Kayenta. By the time we got there it was dark, and we were more than a little dismayed to find that there was no room at any of the inns! Rubbish! Locals advised us to backtrack for 12 miles to a place called Tsegi Canyon (I saw no holes...) where there was a motel which reputedly had a room. Off we went in good faith and we were lucky. The Anasazi Inn at Tsegi Canyon did indeed have a room and thankfully the motel had a cafe attached to it, as there was b#gger all else in the vicinity...We were in a Native American reservation, so the room we were in (the last one available! Goodness knows why everywhere was so busy on a Monday night!) was decorated with those 1970s style oil paintings of wistful looking Indian braves...very atmospheric. The digital clock also told us that we had inadvertently driven into a new timezone - so annoying when you do that! - and so had lost an hour. Not a problem...with all that Grand Canyon fresh air we were ready for an early night, and besides the last bus to the local Ritzys had already left...x
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