It Really is Grand!

On Thursday, we walked a large chunk of the rim trail. We all would have liked to go down into the actual canyon, but dogs are not allowed, unfortunately. I think a large part of what makes the canyon so grand is the light. The transient nature and the ever shifting movement; the play of the sun and the rock is really unbelievable. Every minute a new shadow emerges, or part of a wall becomes visible. It's pretty majestic. While we were there, they were doing some controlled burning outside of the parkwhich caused any distance view to be incredibly hazy. The misty distant mountains were mysterious and shrouded, which was gorgeous in it's own right, but I wish we could have experienced a clear view. The scale is really unimaginable, but even more so when part of your view is obscured. That night, we set up camp and took showers for the first time is four or five days. The combination of hot water and soap after a long hiatus from either is quite heavenly. Neither of us needed the whole of the eight allotted minutes of wash time, but dang it if we didn't enjoy every last second! Our lullaby that evening was a warm shower and a comfy fire. We awoke to two humongous mule deer bucks grazing, and borrowing a cool drink from the leaky spigot catty corner to our tent. They were perhaps twenty yards from us, and incredibly worrisome to Gunk. She shivered and growled at them until they were scared off, but what a treat and sight to behold while they hung around! After cleaning up camp and grabbing a bite, we headed south to Sedona. Everybody told us we would love this town, and perhaps we would have, if only we had taken a hike in the canyon instead of walking through town. It was okay, but it rather to reminded me of downtown Juneau in it's homogeneity and cheap touristy feel. That aside, there were a few really neat Indian style trading posts with buttons and skulls and old cowboy boots and the like. Anyhow, after we got bored of looking at the junk, we drove up into the mountains, and through Jerome on our way to Prescott. Jerome is a really funky ghost town. It's is littleterally built into the side of the hill, and apparently plays host to a very diverse arts community. Cool! Prescott was down the other side of the mountain and in a big valley. We set up camp south at White Spar campground, and took a hike up behind our sight and into the sandy cactus crusted Arizona wilderness. We hiked up and over a ridge and down to a little stream and rock pool. By then, we were getting hungry, though, so we heeded back to camp and then to Pam's house. Ben's boss from The Phantom Gardener had just happened to move out to Prescott recently, and wanted to cook us dinner. Road etiquette declares that one should never pass up a free meal, especially from somebody you really like to visit with, so we made our way to her lovely home for some grub, a good chat and a load of laundry When we finally crawled into our sleeping bags And switched off our headlamps, we though we were done for the day. Around 2:30 am, however, that assumption was shattered, when I awoke to something shuffling outside the tent while Gunk again growled and shivered inside. Pam had warned us that the javelinas traveled in packs and were not afraid to gore a dog with their sharp tusk-like incisors, but would leave humans alone. It only took me a second to identify the shuffling, snorting and rooting on just the other side of our canvas enclosure as a band of what were probably more then thirty javelinas. I elbowed Ben awake, and we calmed Gunk down so we could all listed to the pack as they scavenged their way through camp. All in all it took about half an hour for the beasts to pass, but we came out of it just fine, considering we were neither gored, nor sprayed by The javelinas. We woke up with The sun the next morning, and headed cross desert with a fury. It was scorching, bit eerily made a stop at the Joshua Tree National Park visitors center, only to realize that what we had been calling truffula trees were actually Joshua Trees. They are funny tufty little things that look a bit like palm trees with hairy trunks. At this point, we were both getting a little tired of the desert, so we high-tailed it through Los Angeles, and are currently on the side of highway one, headed for the coast. It feels like we are finally Alaska bound!