States visited: 4. Time zones covered: 2.
The stars were so bright last night. We stood outside our hotel, staring up at them in awe. The Milky Way was stretching in a giant arc, from horizon to horizon. I have never seen it looking so bright. In these parts, it's known as the "river in the sky." It's so prevalent that it has a name! Just before turning in for the night, I saw a shooting star. It finished the day off rather spectacularly...
We got up at 5am this morning so that we could watch the sun rising over the Grand Canyon. It was a deeply magical experience. We'd chosen our spot last night, some way away from the over-crowded viewing platforms where we'd jostled to watch the sunset last night.
It was still dark when we arrived at the canyon rim, but within a few minutes, an orange light had started glowing in the East. I feel rather smug to announce that for the entire two hours we spent in our special little spot, we weren't disturbed by anyone. It literally felt like the place was ours.
As the sun appeared over the rim of the canyon, both Nathan and Sam cried. It's places like this that you get such a clear sense of the power and absolute beauty of nature. I always feel like a sunrise is nature giving us all another chance. Less than 24 hours ago, we'd been in the plastic shimmer of Las Vegas, which pales into deep insignificance by comparison. We watched as the sun started to catch the columns of rock on the north side of the canyon. Two deer casually strode past. A blue jay hopped about. A rock squirrel appeared and ate a nutter butter biscuit out of my hand before posing with it for a series of photographs.
A group of girls sat and watched the sun rising from a perilously thin ledge jutting out over the canyon with a mile's drop underneath them. One of them looked a bit like a dolphin. At one stage she started dangling her legs off the edge. My testicles ascended. It slightly spoilt my enjoyment of the moment, and I spent some time wondering how many foolhardy, yet clumsy tourists fall to their deaths each year. What a way to go, eh?
We stopped off at various points along the rim of the Grand Canyon throughout the morning. Each viewing platform's vista is subtly different from the last. It's such an enormous land mark - nearly 280 miles long and with an average width of ten miles - that you can drive for ages and find yourselves back on the rim with a whole new backdrop. Helicopters from Las Vegas fly at speed over head, no doubt giving their passengers the ultimate Grand Canyon Experience.
Our last stop at the Grand Canyon was at the Desert Point Watch Tower, a somewhat curious, ancient-looking building, designed in the 1930s by Mary Colter. The tower, which is four-storeys high, is filled with wall paintings inspired by Native American symbols and has commanding views over the canyon. It's also close to the spot where, on June 30th, 1956, two passenger airplanes collided mid-air and crashed into the canyon killing all on board. The area where the planes fell has been designated a National Historic Landmark to protect any artefacts from the crash which remain on the ground. To this day, keys, cigarette lighters and other personal effects are being discovered.
A pair of Native American crafters had a stall within the tower which sold jewellery. Nathan bought a ring which was covered in Native American symbols (to match the tattoos on his arm) and Matt bought a charming wooden bracelet.
Tiny little stalls selling Native American produce - dream catchers, delicate necklaces made of seeds, and lengths of fabric - line the roads which lead away from the canyon. Some are sold from shacks, some are nothing but trestle tables underneath tatty umbrellas for shade. Flags flutter in the wind to lure the passers by.
We passed through an area of land where the hills were literally every conceivable colour. Reds, pinks, yellows, creams, browns, blacks - all in stripes. Eat your heart out Alum Bay! Moments later, the ground turned bright red and we started to see stacks of flat boulders of ever-growing size by the side of the road. It was like we were in some sort of brick yard. Dust everywhere. A true desert.
We stopped off at a place called Dinosaur Tracks, where a Navaho Indian lad called Tyler showed us what he claimed to be the footprints, eggs and fossils of dinosaurs, mostly belonging to dilophosauruses. He walked around with bottle, squirting water onto the outlines of the footprints so that we could see them more clearly in the rock hard red mud. I wasn't sure I entirely believed what I was being shown, or told. Tyler was keen to point out that he did it for tips only, but proceeded to name an amount he felt appropriate for the tour! He was highly engaging, however, and, even if the whole thing is a tourist scam, if that's how he makes his money, all power to him!
Later down the road we came upon the flashing lights of four police cars which had pulled up by the side of the road and were gingerly approaching a car on its roof in the scrubland by the side of the road. One hopes it wasn't a recent crash, and that the driver of the car managed to get out alive.
We arrived in a town called Kayenta in the mid afternoon and realised we'd been in an Indian reservation since leaving the Grand Canyon some three hours earlier. The town was plainly dirt poor. Feral dogs. Corrugated tin roofs. Caravans. The works. Almost everyone living there appeared either to be utterly obese or totally under-nourished! The streets didn't have pavements or even pedestrian crossings. Everything seemed completely run down. Churches of every denomination lined the roads. Baptist. Jehovahs Witness. Seventh Day Adventist. The Living Word Assembly of God. Lamb of God Church. You can't make this shit up! I wasn't really surprised. This is America, after all, and abject poverty often goes hand-in-hand with religion.
We decided to get some food. The woman in the hotel couldn't think of anywhere to recommend, so we went to the cafe across the road, which Sam and Matt instantly vetoed! It certainly looked like it would have offered us an experience, but we may not have left with our guts intact!
We ate instead in a pizza place opposite a dialysis centre, whilst outside, a man, wearing a Stetson hat, cleaned cars with a jet spray.
Kayenta is the home of Monument Valley, which has been top of my bucket list for many, many years. It's the place I've most been looking forward to seeing on this trip. It also turns out that it's the least well-signposted major attraction in the US! The only sign for it in Kenyenta has been torn in half!
Drivers, when they finally find the place, spend some time skirting around the edge of the site, before a badly-signposted right hand turn takes them into the park itself. This one belongs to the Navajo people, so if you buy a pass for all the US National Parks, this one won't be included. That said, it's only $5 dollars per person, and it turns out to be the best fiver I've ever spent.
Forget The Grand Canyon. Monument Valley is king of American parks. It sits on the border of Arizona and Utah and I suspect I shall never forget that bright orange earth glowing like Tizer in the early evening light. You'd think the entire park was a film set made of fibre glass and lit with heavy-duty, old-school studio lamps.
Cars are permitted to travel along a dusty single-track road, which weaves its way through all the "monuments," which are essentially huge rocks sticking out of the desert in the most extreme shapes. The first looks like a cloche hat. The next is a Manhattan sky line. Then there's a hand, flipping a bird. Then Stone Henge. Then an Egyptian mausoleum. A Disney Castle. An elephant... They all have names, of course. The ones which look like hands are imaginatively called East and West Mitten. Many of the rocks are said to have deep significance for the Navajo people, but the names are plainly too modern to have been named by them. One is called The Three Sisters, which is a load of old Catholic crud, and many are named after film stars.
The names don't matter. The joy is their shape and their colour and the hugely mystical nature of the experience of seeing them one by one. Cars on the road throw up huge spumes of dust which are back lit magically by the sun. The orange, orange earth glows against the bluest, bluest sky. Today was my turn to get highly emotional. I genuinely felt at one with nature.
My abiding memory will be standing, staring at a rock formation called Merrick, whilst a Navajo tour guide sang traditional songs to a group of the luckiest people in the world. As the sun sets, the monuments turn into pieces of molten lava which look like islands rising out of the plains. Oh. My. God.
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