i feel like i wrapped up my egypt blog rather nicely, and so, to maintain my own self-defined semblance of consistency, im going to keep the "inconus" stories on a separate page. hence...
the story that will break this blog's cherry involves Christmas and the grand canyon. it was a magical time. lets take it chronologically, shall we?
i call sunday Day Zero. we didnt drive or camp or anything so i feel like it cant truly be day one, but we did enough prep work that it can hardly be omitted, so zero it is. for starters, after church sunday i went to whole foods and started getting supplies. i bought a lot of dried food, just add boiling water type stuff, very healthy, light, easy to make, essentially perfect camping food. the only problem was that, as i later found out, i had no idea about the proportions of these items, so i bought like 2 pounds of dried black beans. yeah, 2 pounds, and those were just the black, i got red beans too, plus couscous, hummus, veggie burger mix, and an absurd amount of trail mix stuff, plus lots of banana chips. all in all, i was excited about the food, but it ended up costing me way more than i expected. but no matter.
i finished packing during the remainder of that day, and at about 1730 philip, my partner in adventuring and the father of this whole road trip idea, arrived. philip and i had planned to have a sort of lakeshore reunion upon his arrival, but my mother had other plans for me at least, and when philip arrived she invited him along too. we had already called some lakeshore people, but (we thought) most of them canceled, so we didnt feel pressed for time; we went to look at Christmas lights and had a leisurely dinner with my grandfather. then at about 1900 we got a text from a certain former WO-RC asking if we were at the restaurant... oops. we texted back "yes, of course, where are you?" and prepared to make a hasty escape and possibly save face, but then mom decided i should open my presents since i would be absent over the actual holiday, and thus we arrived at chilis to find alyssa alone at a table, waiting, as she had been for about 40 minutes. a couple of campers trickled in and then we ate a large amount of very unhealthy but delicious chocolate volcano, and then the majority of us walked to kroger for the rest of the food: just bread, cheese, tortillas, and um i think something else but i dont remember.
then back to the house where i dissected philip's pack and threw out all the silly useless clothes and gave him stuff my dad had- cotton is no good, no good at all. we loaded the car and seriously considered leaving that night thinking we probably could have made it to texarcana at least. but then we fell asleep, which solved that problem.
Day 1, officially the first day, began at about 815; we were on the road from 830 until 0200 the next day (this would be monday and tuesday, respectively). altogether it wasnt that interesting of a day, although we did break at a rest stop to cook, which i thought was neat. we finally stopped about 50 miles west of albequerque (i also learned how to spell albequerque on this trip after passing signs for it for hours and hours in both directions). i actually went to bed at about 0400 due to my unusual desire to wander around freezing parking lots and talk on the phone in the wee hours, but thats another story entirely.
we woke up on Day 2, tuesday, at about 10; we werent in a hurry, our permit didnt start until wednesday and so we had no reason to rush the last 5 hours or so of driving. we had been expecting snow, but, to my relief, the ground was clear when we drove out. interestingly enough, philip tried to convince me that when he awoke there had been 4 inches of snow but that a man had since cleared it away with a lawn mower. i then tried to convince him that he was crazy and couldnt tell a dream from real life. then we drove and, upon our approach of arizona, encountered some snow flurries. no big deal, we thought, its hardly even sticking. unfortunately when we arrived in flagstaff, a blizzard accompanied us. it was quite a white-out, and i felt it necessary to don my boots just to pump gas. we made a quick wal-mart run for forgotten spices and then set off for the grand canyon national park, about 70 miles north of flagstaff. we went maybe 20 miles, extremely slowly, on i-40 and then came to a funnel of flares; we were being directed off the interstate. we soon learned that there had been an absurd wreck ahead and that the interstate was totally impassable, and we prepared to spend the night in this particular parking lot which happened to belong to a pilot gas station. we piddled around inside for a while, but soon we were restless and decided to find an alternate route to the park. we went back to flagstaff and took the alternate interstate, which turned out to be a good decision. we got to within 20 miles of the park and then realized with some consternation that it might actually be closed, so we set up camp in a hotel parking lot, cooked, and went to sleep as the snow billowed around us.
the next day, wednesday, Day 3, we drove the rest of the way and set out on our hike, but i will detail that chapter of the story later.
