Epic Road Trip Extravaganza Winter 2010 Gala Celebration Party Oh-Ten Day 9

Before I get into the day, I'd like to give a shout out to Cameron's Trading Post. If you're ever planning a trip to the Grand Canyon, instead of going straight into it from the South, go into the South Rim from the East via Cameron. The Navajo people run and operate it, and it's a real special place right on the Little Colorado River. I can't say enough good things about it; it's cheap, clean, and the food is good. The best place we've stayed yet (and probably will remain that way seeing as how the only place we have left is Vegas).

So, this morning we hit the Grand Canyon. Psh. What so "grand" about it? I think Mississippi was better. If I were serious, you should put me in one of the mental hospitals there. So, when we got to the park it was foggy and cold (it was warm and sunny down in the valley where we slept last night). Our first glimpse of the Grand Canyon was somewhat of a letdown because we could barely make anything out. It was so foggy that it looked like just a gray mass beyond the guard rails. Luckily, as we got to the village and began walking around the rim, the sun peeked his smiley little head through the clouds and the sky opened up and the fog cleared and eventually we got things like this:

It was still extraordinarily cold and snowy, however, and after about two hours of walking around (and not making a dent in any different views of this truly massive canyon) we called up enough on Kristen's phone and told it to go to hell.

Lunch was a road trip lunch: leftovers, Doritos, some granola bars, and the rest of our Route 11 potato chips (shout out #2!). As we drove on, we realized that we were slowly making our way around the massive aforementioned canyon. It took over three hours driving, to give you an idea of how large it is. Toward the North end of it, we mistook our location for somewhere in Middle Earth. It was truly bizarre, ranging from sunshine to snow to desert to red cliffs.



After climbing back into the mountains and through windy snowy roads, we finally reached Utah on the suggestion of the docent we talked to at Pima Air and Space in Tucson.

It was really quite bizarre, being a whim state and all. After getting lost for the first time, our plan was to go to Springdale and spend the night there before hitting Zion National Park in the morning. While we were driving to this mystical Springdale, we came upon the unmanned entrance for Zion National Park with no other option in the road. So, we went in (for free). We didn't fully realize what we had stumbled upon for at least five minutes, and then the rest of the drive through the park was completely in awe.

It was gorgeous. It could be described as akin to driving through the Grand Canyon if you were at the bottom of it looking up. There were tunnels, cliffs, snowy peaks, and beatimus craggy rock formations. And we caught it right before the dusk came around, so the park was pretty empty and we just whizzed through it. What a great drive that was. In fact, I'd say it was better than the Grand Canyon. Just this little boy's opinion. However, don't write off the Grand Canyon just because I say so. My word is practically the word of God and all, but listen: we did catch it on a cold, foggy morning. If we had had the chance to trek down into it and do some hiking like originally planned my opinion of it may have been slightly different.

We had dinner in Springale (which turns out to be a lodge town for Zion right past the exit for the park) at some historic saloon type joint. The thing that made us happy about it is that the vegetarian options were surprisingly ample for the area. In Texas and New Mexico, our options were steak or Mexican. In Arizona we had Navajo food and Krispy Kreme. Now, we finally had proper vegetarian type options, so we tore it up.

Currently, we sit in Hurricane, Utah. The name of this place makes it seem like it should be a wrestler or something, but it's just a crappy town instead. Kind of disappointing after such a visually amazing day.