I just lost my drain of thought

I didn’t tell a lot of people, but I went to the Grand Canyon for Memorial Day weekend on a Chinese tour. There was a lot of canyon and a lot of sleeping involved. I don’t know how many hours I spent on the bus, but most of the time I was sleeping so it doesn’t matter.

We left home Saturday morning at around 8am and rode the bus for many hours until we got to the Grand Canyon Caverns, which is where I took this lovely picture. The Caverns was probably my favorite part of the trip, because I am a big dork that loves rocks, I guess.

The story behind it was that there was this guy named Walter Peck who was on his way to play poker but fell into this hole in the ground. The hole was actually deeper than he had fallen in and he thought there was a possibility of gold in there somewhere. He sent samples of the dirt and whatnot to be tested and before it even came back he bought up all the land above the caverns so no one else could claim it. Unfortunately there was no gold down there and it turned out that he just bought a giant cave in the ground. He wanted to make some money off of it, so he began letting people tour it. He lowered people on a rope for a quarter and I guess they walked around and marveled at the underground awesomeness.

It really is a cool place, literally. It stays 56 degrees all year round and there is only 6% humidity down there so there aren’t any bugs or anything. One of the cool things down there were the crystallized snowballs. There are also some animals that were found down there, one of them being a bobcat. The bobcat was mummified due to the humidity but some of its bones are missing because when it was found, the construction workers didn’t know what to do with it, so they passed it around to look at and play with. Gross.

One of the funny things about the caverns (located in Peach Springs on Route 66, inspiration for the movie Cars!) is that during a time when dinosaurs became all the rage with little kids, they decided to get in on the action and put up that dinosaur head over the entrance of the elevator and there’s also this giant fake dinosaur outside. The thing is, there has never been any dinosaur remnants found in the caverns. hahaha.

So after the Grand Canyon Caverns, we stayed the night at a Holiday Inn. For dinner, we had the options of eating at the 24-hour McDonalds, Jack in the Box, or Pizza Hut. My family initially wanted to eat at Pizza Hut, but I guess those lazy b-words were going to close sometime in the next 24 hours and decided it was too late to serve us unless we wanted to take it to go. All the parentals began yelling in Chinese as we headed for the door and trucked on over to Jack in the Box. Apparently I don’t pay attention to the content of commercials, because I didn’t realize they served breakfast food all day. When my sister told me, I recalled faintly a commercial where guys were dressed up as different meals… Anyway, I got the friggin’ awesome breakfast burrito and slathered it in salsa. The cashier was a little on the slow side and my dad was kind of making fun of him to my mom, but really…if your job is to push clearly labeled buttons on a cash register that tells you exactly how much is owed and the amount of change you need to give back, you shouldn’t need to tell people to slow down their orders, especially when they speak perfect, audible English, rather slowly, might I add, so the cashier would stop freaking out. At least my burrito was good..

The next morning we woke up at some ungodly hour and headed over to the south rim of the Canyon. Our first stop was the Desert View Watchtower. It was my first encounter with the actual Canyon and ’twas exciting indeed. We took lots of pictures and saw an Indian reservation from afar. There were cute drawings all over the inside of the Watchtower, one of which looked like that star from Mario that makes you invulnerable to those buggers that try to kill you.

We went to another place to look at the Canyon again after that. I think it was Hopi Point. My sister and I kept walking around, but the view stayed the same and it was getting to be quite hot. We lost track of time and ended up being the last people on the bus. That’s always embarrassing. haha. After that we went to Lookout Point to see where the California Condors hang. It’s cool that we got to see so many because there’s only like 300 in the world or something. They are really awesome looking and can have a wingspan of 9 feet. Luckily none of them attacked, because I’m sure they could totally lift people.

That evening we went to watch the sunset at Mather Point, which was really pretty but to get there, we had to cram into this bus and it felt like Hong Kong. I took way too many pictures of the sunset and will probably have cataracts…just like beets. Never mind. I watch too many commercials. Before going to watch the sunset, though, I managed to get hit on in the cafeteria of the place we were staying at by these fobby guys working there. How they got there, I will never know. One of them kept talking to me in Mandarin, so I guess I got to put my education to use. I tried to stay away from making conversation, because really, all I wanted was my parmesan meatball sub. I’m sure they were nice guys, but I’m waiting for my Takeshi. haha. A lot of people, including my closest friends, seem to think that I am particularly fond of fobs. Contrary to the belief that I go around searching for the perfect fob, I just like guys that appeal to me, not any particular “type”. Yes, my future hubby Takeshi is one, but that’s not why I love him.

After sunset, we crammed back into a bus to go to our rooms, and the next morning, we woke up at an even ungodlier, courtesy of my dad. The wake-up call was at 4am, but my dad decided to wake us up at 3:30. My parents wanted us to have breakfast in our bellies before our next trek. We left at 4:30 to drive back to Hopi Point to watch the sunrise, which was also very pretty, but I liked the sunset better because it was more colorful. I don’t remember where we went next, but there was more Canyon to be seen. At this point, every location was the same to me, but this time we actually got to hike in it. I can proudly say I have been in the Canyon and back. haha. We were on this route that eventually led to the Colorado river, but that’s a 15-hour mule ride. What’s gross is that the mules leave trails that smell horrible. We only spent about half an hour or so hiking and then it was back to the bus. Things were a little blurry after that, because it was mostly sleep from then on. We stopped somewhere for breakfast, then somewhere for lunch. Later on, we went to this souvenir place in Seligman, Az, on Route 66 that sold all this Route 66 stuff. There was this old gas station place next door that housed a bunch of old school cars and more souvies. It was a cute little town that reminded me of the Disney movie Cars. My sister saw the guy who brought Route 66 back to life. He was the guy who made everyone aware of its historical value and whatnot, which is really cool. He just hangs around there and runs a barbershop. That was our last tourist-y stop and then we were on our way hooome. Weeee. Very long bus ride though. Not so weee.

I’ll post more pictures when I have a chance! Hope everyone else had an awesome Memorial Day weekend, too.