If You're Afraid of Heights You'll Hate the Grand Canyon

I'm not afraid of heights. The kid is not afraid of heights, as you well know. I'll leave it to your brilliant minds, then, to dial down to who among us had a medium-ish panic attack on the rim of the Grand Canyon in the middle of nowhere, scared the absolute snot out of the rest of us, and will never be visiting the Grand Canyon again if I, at least, have anything to do with it. 

Anyway, that mystery, unnamed, soon to traumatize themselves and us individual was still sound asleep early on this morning when I pulled a sweatshirt over my pajamas, stepped barefoot into my sneakers, walked out the door of my cabin, turned right, and found myself on the edge of the Grand Canyon just before sunrise:

In this pre-dawn hour, the fire at the North Rim was very visible:

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and after a couple of texts back and forth, the kid also padded out in her pajamas to join me and a few other early-morning souls for sunrise over the Grand Canyon:

I for sure almost missed it behind that ledge to the right. I scooted over a few feet just in time!

The smoke in the canyon was still visible on this morning, but it didn't look like it was filling the entire canyon like it had the day before--at least not yet:

After the sun was fully up, the kid and I sneaked back into our cabin to silently change into our proper clothes and pack everything up--funny how we can make that much of a mess in one night!--and then we brought our peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and cans of coffee outside to have breakfast with this beautiful fellow:

Has anyone ever eaten a peanut butter sandwich in a more beautiful spot?

If you look, you'll be able to see the North Rim wildfire in every photo I take of the Grand Canyon. Here was the fire forecast for the day we visited. There were also several local news teams whose base camp seemed to be the Bright Angel Lodge parking lot, who seemed to be constantly busy filming various reports every time we walked past. The night before, I'd even snarked on a random guy sitting on the wall of the canyon rim, working on his laptop instead of taking in the beautiful view. Why would you go to the trouble of going to the Grand Canyon just to sit in front of it and work, I bitched to my family. Answer: if you're part of the Arizona Channel 5 Storm Team and you've got a report to file!

After breakfast, the kid and I figured out the shuttle system, then took the scenic route via shuttle to the visitor center. I was underwhelmed by the displays, which were good for what you got but I just thought there would be more of them--

--but you know how I feel about a national park passport stamp! This is my first for Arizona!

By the time the kid and I had finished the museum and watched the film, my partner was up and about, and he loaded the car, checked out of Bright Angel Lodge, and took his own scenic shuttle trip to meet up with us so we could continue our shuttle tour of the South Rim.

The trail visible in the photo below is as far as you could travel Bright Angel Trail on this day. The bottom of the canyon was closed to everyone but river rafting groups, and the South Kaibab Trail was closed entirely:

Y'all, I have the gnarliest tan lines on my forehead, because I spent all summer outside with my hat on like this where it did essentially no good at all. Although I guess the top of my head and the back of my neck stayed nice and sun-free?

The Grand Canyon is the best national park for transportation, because all you have to do is park in one of their big parking lots, and shuttles will take you to every single beautiful viewpoint along the South Rim. 

There are also a couple of extra museums to visit along the route. 

The Yavapai Geology Museum is small but very good.

Way back in 2010, I took this picture of my four- and six-year-olds:

Here's me and that once upon a time six-year-old, now two days from her 21st birthday, at the same spot:

It's not close to the edge at all. It's one of my favorite photo spots at the Grand Canyon because it just LOOKS like it's close to the edge!

Another photo of a little girl long ago:

And here she is today:

The kid and I had a lot of fun trying to pick out the Colorado River from our various viewing spots:

I had to use my zoom lens on this one so it's pretty grainy, but how cool is it that you can see this footbridge across the Colorado all the way from the top of the canyon?

The kid and I were freaking out with excitement over this bird that was riding the wind all around over the canyon at this stop. We'd just been to the San Diego Zoo the previous month and had our environmentalist spirits re-radicalized over the story of the California condor, and we were CONVINCED that this was one of them:

I'm sorry to say, though, that this is definitely a turkey vulture. It's evident in the y-shape of the wings and when I overexpose the photo, you can see the turkey vulture's wing coloration.

Oh, well. Wildlife is wildlife!

Here we are confidently and excitedly observing our California condor:

Again, we're not even close to the actual rim. I took my reading of Death in Grand Canyon very seriously!

We'll skip past any and all panic attacks and/or apocalyptic nosebleeds suffered by anyone in our party on this adventure, and frankly I wouldn't mind having them deleted out of my mind entirely because Jesus Christ that freaked me the fuck out--I was half-convinced I was actually dealing with a heart attack, but I didn't have cell service to Google if an apocalyptic nosebleed is a heart attack symptom--and skip straight on down to the last stop on the South Rim shuttle, Hermit's Rest:

The big claim to fame for Hermit's Rest is that there's a small gift shop and cafe there where you can buy popsicles:

Another nice thing about the shuttle is that although it makes a billion stops at scenic sites on the way out to Hermit's Rest, on the way back it only makes a couple, so it's a very convenient way to get back to one's car. 

Back at the car, we cleaned up, made some more peanut butter sandwiches, and hit the road back to Las Vegas. Four hours later, we were checking into the Venetian, with a room that, in my opinion, has the best view on the Strip:

The next three days will be filled with spectacle and delicious food and poolside lounge chairs and all the ridiculousness that Vegas has to offer!

Here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Omega Mart and Driving to the Grand Canyon
• Day 2: Grand Canyon National Park
• Day 3: Vegas Strip, The Sphere, and the Lake of Dreams
• Day 4: Wynn Buffet, Caesar's Palace, Bellagio Fountains, and Cirque du Soleil
• Day 5: Walking Tour of the Strip and a Red-Eye Home!

P.S. Want to know more about my adventures in life, and my looming mid-life crisis? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Omega Mart is the Best Thing in Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon is on Fire

I'd already suspected the part about Omega Mart, but it's good to have it confirmed!

The older kid and I have been planning her 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas since long before she was 21. We like spectacle, and oddities, and immersive experiences of all sorts. We like buffets and novelty doughnuts. Resort swimming pools. Wandering around and looking at stuff. 

And it wasn't exactly high culture, but Las Vegas had all of that, more than enough to keep us completely entertained for the four days we spent there. 

But technically, the second thing we did upon arriving in Las Vegas was leave it to drive to the Grand Canyon for 24 hours.

The first thing we did was go to Omega Mart!

The kid and I have been to Otherworld, an immersive experience in Columbus, Ohio, so we sort of knew what we were getting ourselves into. 

Except we didn't, because Omega Mart is beyond anything we've done before. The space is set up as a real-ish grocery store, with both fakey products for display and fakey products that you can really buy.

Such as the spray horse!

You wander around and browse Omega Mart, until perhaps you discover a portal to another dimension. You pass through--

--and you're in another world!

Apparently, these slides used to be functional, but they had to be partially dismantled because they were super dangerous. 

The kid thought that this genuine pay phone was particularly exotic, and she had to be instructed on the steps to use it:

There is a lot of lore involved, including an inexpensive swipe card that you can purchase to get deeper into the backstory, but we were plenty busy (and overstimulated!) this first time just by sightseeing and looky-looing. You can still get pretty far into the lore without the extra steps, anyway:

I swear, though, that I have never been so overstimulated in my life. I was flat-out longing for some Loops, and if they sold them in the Omega Mart I bet they'd make bank!

Can you have an immersive art installation without an infinity mirror? Experience tells me no.

After a couple of hours, hopefully you can find out how to portal yourself back into Omega Mart, and then you'll find that somehow you still haven't seen all the things there are to see there!

Eventually, we bravely made our way back into the furnace that was Las Vegas in mid-July, discovering that the city is nearly as weird outside as it is inside Omega Mart--

So much space alien theming in Las Vegas! I'd sort of wanted to go to a specific spot I'd heard about where you can park and see the JANET flights take off and land at the Las Vegas airport, but we didn't have time.

I am unabashedly looking forward to the Sphere THE MOST!!! It's so giant and stupid!

--and after hitting up the grocery store for water, sunscreen, peanut butter, bread, and tampons--you know, all the essentials!--it's off to the Grand Canyon...

...with a pit stop at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area Visitor Center:

Back in tropical weather, just a month after our last palm tree sighting!

I LOVE myself a giant topographic map. You can see right where we are!

And where we are is right here!

I'd wanted to detour over to the Hoover Dam, and I'm not gonna lie, it's because I wanted to buy a "This is My Dam T-Shirt" from the gift shop, but I ALSO wanted to see the sun set over the Grand Canyon. Natural wonders won over the wonder of human engineering, so off we drove:

One of my favorite things about traveling is renting a car with a nice, big screen for the GPS and a Bluetooth for my Spotify. We listened to so many podcasts on this drive!

Also: new-to-us road trip snacks! This one was gross, but the kid got a Monster slushie that apparently hit.

We were staying overnight at a cabin in Bright Angel Lodge, just steps from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, so our first stop wasn't even a glorious natural wonder, but instead the lobby of the lodge. As my partner was checking us in, the kid and I wandered into the gift shop next door, and look at who I found!

There is a whole series of these books and I'm obsessed with them all, but Death in Yellowstone is my favorite.

You'll be pleased to know that everywhere we went on the next day, I recapped who had died there and how. Did you know that the greatest risk factor in dying in the Grand Canyon is being male? And that a surprising number of those men die from picking up a rattlesnake with their bare hands?

Anyway, this whole time I was REVVED UP to get my first sight of the Grand Canyon, and even more so to see the look on the kid's face when SHE got her first sight of the Grand Canyon. I took her there when she was six, but she doesn't remember it (even though her sister, who was four years old at the time, still does!). So imagine the look on MY face when I look up from browsing Grand Canyon hoodies (I both constantly do not need and constantly desperately want a new hoodie from every tourist attraction I visit) to see that 1) this gift shop has a giant wall that's just a window looking out onto the Grand Canyon, and 2) beyond that window is just... orange-brown nothingness:

Because right. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is currently experiencing a terrible wildfire. I'd been following it on the news, but just because I'm interested in the Grand Canyon, and not because I thought it would affect my visit--the North Rim is a really long way from the South Rim!

But not as far if you're smoke, I guess...

Just... I don't want to be one of those tourists that doesn't give a fuck about the real-world conditions of the place I'm visiting, and the fire is so terrible and destroying a lot of beautiful natural and human-made wonders and the firefighters are risking their lives to try to contain it and everything... but oh, my god, we rented a car and drove for hours and the whole purpose of the Grand Canyon is the view and then we get there and THIS is what we see?!?

Oh, well. A smoky day at the Grand Canyon is better than a clear-sky day sitting at home on my couch!

And the sunset was spectacular:

Tomorrow, we're going to spend the day (hopefully) seeing the sites along the South Rim, then drive back into Las Vegas in the evening.

Here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Omega Mart and Driving to the Grand Canyon
• Day 2: Grand Canyon National Park
• Day 3: Vegas Strip, The Sphere, and the Lake of Dreams
• Day 4: Wynn Buffet, Caesar's Palace, Bellagio Fountains, and Cirque du Soleil
• Day 5: Walking Tour of the Strip and a Red-Eye Home!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!