“It’s Great, not so much Grand”

The title quote is attributed to my youngest son, Jacob, 7, after arriving at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on the evening of July 15, 2008.  His viewpoint would eventually change. : )

So this first complete summer living outside of the greater michigan (and general family) area is bombarded with trips back to that area.  It seems everytime we move away from there (this being the second, we moved to Denver 1994, then back to MI in 2000) our vacations consist of going back.  This summer my wife’s youngest sister is getting married and my father is getting married, nearly 4 years after my mom’s death.  These of course require separate trips.  In the wake of $4 / gallon, this is a pricey endeavor.  Not wanting to shirk my parental duties, and wanting to give my kids something to remember from the summer of ‘08, enter ….the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is only about 4 hours from home so we decided to make it a 3 day trip, complete with camping and hiking and the requisite souvenier-shopping.

We got off to a great start Monday morning.  930am departure, only a half hour later than I had planned.  A McDonalds breakfast with 2 returns to the restaurant for forgotten items in the bag and a relative breeze thru Hoover Dam security.  The road was fun.  The boys entertained themselves with “Hot Rod” and a dvd of Tom and Jerry cartoons.  Heather and I started our mission to located all 51 license plates. (We got 37, so close)

It was smooth sailing into Tusayan outside of the National Park.  A short lunch stop and into the park we went.  As we drove along the rim road the boys were greeted with a few fleeting glimpes of the canyon eliciting a few oohs and aahs along the way.  The road was packed with parked cars and we all agreed to go to the camp, set up, and head back out for the sunset.

Camp setup was semi-problematic as Heather and I argued about the right location for the tent.  She won, as she usually does….and in hindsight….she was right, as she usually is.  Little did we both know that it wouldnt matter where we had put it.  The kids were introduced to the raven at the campsite.  They flocked around the grounds…18 inch tall birds with 2 foot wing spans….you could hear there wings flap as they flew overhead.  In the meantime, Jacob and I engaged ourselves in a rousing game of camp badmintion resulting in 2 shuttlecocks lodged in the tree, one racquet in the tree, and one very sore shoulder (trying to retrieve said lodged items) for daddy.

During the course of setup, it occurred to us that for some reason we had taken the tent stakes out of the tent bag at some point.  Hmm.  Also, we had left our tarp in the garage.  Hmm, again.  So we loaded up the kids and headed to the General Store.  We bought the items we needed and headed back to camp.  After finishing the setup we decided to check out some stuff as I knew they had a great junior ranger program for the kids. 

We went to the Canyon View Information Plaza, noted where we needed to bring our National Park Passport Stamp books, retrieved the kids Ranger program books and decided to take them to the canyon to give them there first real look at it.

Now you have to understand, 2 of the boys (Conner, 9 and Jacob, 7) have relatively no fear of ledges, edges, heights or anything like that.  Our oldest (Christian, 11) couldn’t be more opposite.  He refused to leave the middle of the platform for a while and had to be coaxed into several pictures. That fear would wane a little as the trip progressed.  The youngest guys had a great time at the point.  Other than the incessant chants of their parents to get back from the edge and “stop climbing on that”, they were great. Off in the distance of the canyon, an omen was brewing.

Sign of things to come.

 The winds were circling a little and it seemed the rain may be headed our way, and this was duly pointed out by Christian.  We decided to head to dinner.

A cafeteria-style dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread, at an exorbitant price no less, we headed back to General Store for some reading material and wood and snacks.

Back to the tent at 750 as the rain began to pick up intensity.  We all clamored into the tent, took our spots and relaxed for a bit.  Christian and Conner read their magazines, as did I.  Heather and Jacob began a game of Yahtzee on the sleeping bags.  Then it began.  It started as a little trickle.  A drip here and  drip there.  We tried to figure out where it was coming from.  We didnt have this problem in Niagara Falls, and we had been in a torrential Midwest thunderstorm.  There seemed to be little pinholes in the rainfly.  Heather went out and tried putting another fly over top of the original fly.  No luck.  The leak was increasing and the rain wasnt stopping.  Everyone in the car.

We all huddled in the car. A 2007 Pontiac Vibe.  Conner in the hatch, Heather and Jake in the backseat and Christian and I in the front seats.  This was not going to work.  I knew they would be fine, but everyone would be complaining in the morning.  So i took one for the team.  I kissed them goodnight and headed to my doom.  It got down to 48 degrees that night, my feet and my left arm were dripped on repeatedly and I kept flipping onto a small rock that seemed to find my back no matter where I went.  All for the family.

I arose early, for good reason.  I checked on everyone, and they were all sound asleep.  I walked around for a while and over the next hour or so everyone slowly trickled out of the car.  We compared notes, had breakfast and headed out for the day.

We started with a nice little walk on the South Rim trail.  The kids were getting more comfortable with the size and scope of the canyon. Christian had discovered one of our old digital cameras the week before and was snapping away. 

We headed into Tusayan for some lunch and the IMAX movie.  Heather and I had been here almost 15 years ago to the day and hoped they had changed the movie.  Alas, they had not.  With all that money flowing in down there would it kill them to update the film?  The 80’s hairstyles on some of the actors dates it a little. The guys liked it though.  It’s all that matters.

Back to the campsite we headed to check on the tent.  On the way we had our first encounter with a family of elk just hanging out.  There were 2 bulls and one female generally disrupting traffic and going about there day.  The kids thought this was great as their mother got out of the car and walked to within 20 feet to snap some dandies.

Just a lazy afternoon

So the tent was drying off, the kids were having fun, so we decided to crank it up a notch.  We headed to Bright Angel trailhead to have a go at some hiking into the canyon.  Constantly aware of how quickly little legs give up, we knew this could be a risky proposition.  The area was pretty packed and we struggled thru some of the favorite viewing areas as we headed to the trailhead.  We hiked about a half a mile in and out and the kids did great.  Very little complaining.  We all attended a talk on the California Condor as sitting thru one of the ranger programs was a requirement of the kids patch and certificate aspirations.  And then the rain came again.

After getting back to the car, I turned to Heather and told her that if it rained again I was totally cool with packing up and heading to a hotel.  She agreed.  I never for a second thought she wouldn’t.  We headed back to the Information Plaza to get our stamps.  I was just as excited for this as I wanted to put a stamp next to the one from here that read “Grand Canyon National Park, July 17 ‘93″..The next one reads “Grand Canyon National Park, July 16, 2008″..So cool.  I know, it’s lame .. but I love it when things line up like that.

It started to rain much harder and the decision was made to bail.  Heather and I discussed driving to Flagstaff (hour and a half away) so that we could possibly make a run at Petrifed Forest or Meteor Crater in the morning.  Back at the campsite, Heather began tearing everything down while Christian and I made a campfire to pop the JiffyPop and make smores, at least making this somewhat of a camping trip.  Cue elk encounter number two.  They just sauntered into the campground right across the road from our site.  The boys were SO over that.  They continued to throw small branches and pine needles into the 5pm fire.

We got the kids their Ranger certificates, patches and badges which they displayed with pride for the next 20 minutes, and then got put in a bag to be forgotten about.  Ahh, childhood.

We headed back to the Rim in hopes of viewing a nice sunset before leaving.  While Jacob said to me at this point, “it is pretty grand daddy”, I was dissappointed with it a little bit.  We had been building it up as the greatest thing ever and the overcast and rain had certainly muted the colors a little.  Still, it is pretty grand.

Sunset July 16th, 2008

 Leaving the Park, all the boys and Heather yelled, “Thank You Grand Canyon!!”…which always one of my favorite parts of trips.  We headed toward Flagstaff and I took what turned out to be one of the most desolate roads we have been on in a long time.  Deeply dark and forest like, this would be elk encounter number 3.  I never got a great glimpse at him, but I could tell he was HUGE.  RIght next to the road, all I saw was his 14 point rack and his gleaming eyes.  I was TERRIFIED.  That adrenaline surge was more than enough to make it to the hotel.  Thankfully, we made it with pool time to spare as we all needed a good soak and swim and it helped the kids relax a little.

The next morning we headed to Meteor Crater.  A nice little stop that Heather and I had made when we came this way in ‘93.  They had made a lot of nice additions to the site and the kids had a great time here as well. 

After a short stay there, we headed home.  It was uneventful.  If you call stopping for car sickness, almost running out of gas and a bathroom break at the guard house at the Hoover Dam security stop uneventful.

Yep, just another 3 day excursion with the Szczepanski clan.  I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

~ by mszczep on July 18, 2008.