North to the Grand Canyon

Got away from Phoenix by 8am today. Considering it is a Monday the traffic was pretty light. The drive to Grand Canyon, or Tusayan to be precise would be the longest of the trip so far taking 3 and 1/2 hours to cover the 223 miles.

It was amazing to see the scenery change so much over such a relatively small distance. It started very flat and desolate with lots of cacti, to barren rocky hills, to forested mountains.

Stopped in Flagstaff to stretch the legs and grab some gas. I’ve worked out that if I run it down to a 1/4 full, I can prepay $20 worth and it almost brings it back up to full. This saves me having to leave anything with the cashier while filling it up all the way. I also took the opportunity to nick in to the local Walmart to pickup a new charging cable for my iPod. Walked past a few massive stacks of DVD’s at $5 each. It took everything I had to ignore them, telling myself there will be plenty of time for such splurging when I get to LA.

Arrived in Tusayan just after midday, tried to check in to my hotel but my room wasn’t ready yet. Headed down the main street to the IMAX theatre which also serves as the main visitor centre in these parts.

Picked up my visitors pass for the National Park and grabbed a ticket to the IMAX movie too. The movie was around 45 mins long and jumped around a bit between different time periods. Photography was pretty amazing, especially during the scenes involving rapids.

Nothing I saw in the movie prepared me for the enormity of the Canyon once I actually got out there. It’s a breathtaking sight, taking up your whole field of vision going on for miles in every direction. I was far more impressed than I expected to be. I think I got some pretty good photos but it’s hard to convey the scope in them.

Got back to the hotel and my room was ready. Hotel is pretty nifty, there’s a sports bar downstairs with an arcade and bowling alley next to it. There are also two restaurants upstairs, which seem pretty decent, although the sports bar is more my style. There’s also a coin operated laundry down the hall, which I’ll put to good use tomorrow. My room is pretty big, lot’s of space to spread out.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the other viewing points around the Canyon. I’m especially interested to check out Desert View which is home to an old watchtower.