Over The Edge, Death In Grand Canyon is the title of the book I’m reading since Henry, the kids and I set off for the Grand Canyon via train this morning.
Maybe if we take the mule ride tour we’ll be safe.
Mules don’t topple over the edge and fall 350-feet.
Well, maybe we’ll be staying in a fabulous, authentic lodge where we can roast marshmallows and sing native Sinaguan rain songs.
Oh. Henry didn’t book us in the El Tovar where Theodore Roosevelt and Albert Einstein stayed. We’re at the Maswik Lodge that has a cafeteria and rooms with a toilet. Snooki might have stayed here.
Okay, so we won’t be in our room much for the next two days.
I consult the Grand Canyon Things To Do flyer. Here’s what it offers:
- Get Oriented. (put your luggage in your room and have lunch?)
- Enjoy the view (stand at the rim and look at the Grand Canyon)
- See the River (stand at the rim and look at the Grand Canyon where the river is)
- Explore on Foot (walk along the rim looking down at the Grand Canyon)
- Discover Wildlife (walk along the rim and point out a hawk hovering over the Grand Canyon)
- Explore Geology (walk along the rim and try to determine which types of rock make up the Grand Canyon. Which you are looking at from along the rim)
- Relax on the North Rim (drive 150 miles to walk around the rim of the Grand Canyon down on the other end of the Grand Canyon)
Hmm. Well, we could hike the Bright Angel Trail that has no railings and a 350-foot vertical drop from which – on August 2, 2007 – Matthew A. Dikeson fell to his death.
Or I could just have wine with lunch and look at the Grand Canyon from the guardrail at the rim. It looks different each hour of the day!
We could meditate while looking into the Grand Canyon.
The girls form of meditation includes singing “I like big butts and I cannot lie …” Henry eats ice cream. But I do manage a semi-euphoric state of meditation, which leads my Eagle Spirit to give the members of my family their Hopi Indian names.
- Bridget is: Hair Like A Cat’s Pelt
- Clare is: Cheeks That Jiggle When She Crawls
- Henry is: He Who Curses Over Lost Keys
- I am: Princess Screaming Colon.
I suspect tomorrow we will do more of what we did today.
Which is look at The Grand Canyon from inside a hyperbaric chamber, sealed inside a submarine, welded to the asphalt 50 feet from the rim. While wearing parachutes. Just in case.
10 thoughts on “Over The Edge, Death In Grand Canyon!”
LOL….so it’s not like the Brady Bunch episode?
The Grand Canyon Railway is the best. My dad got lost in the snow. We went looking for him after he was gone an hour. He was brought home by an Indian (Native American) park ranger an hour after that. He was satisfied to have been lost and then found and had good stories. We were just terrified, then glad, then annoyed at his happiness and his non-concern-for-our-worry for his adventure.
Thanks to a healthy fear of heights and an ennnnnndlesssss trip to the Grand Canyon as a teenager with my grandfather the geologist, I am both full of useless knowledge about the canyon and entirely immune to its charms.
Also, one of my parents’ final fights before the divorce took place there — my sporty mom talked Dad into taking the hike down and he had, as she tells it, a big old tantrum on the way back up. Because I guess it didn’t occur to him that the second half of the hike would be more difficult.
So it’s not exactly on my travel list.
I have hiked the White Mountains with Henry – and he is no slacker. At least when it comes to train rides.
These signs used to fascinate me while driving to the upper Kern River, where we would sit on inflated truck inner tubes and let the current do what it would to our young, soft, vulnerable, intoxicated bodies:
http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/MES2398.php
Oh how I miss a good river fliat with cute boys and a can of beers (you just took me back!)
No bungee jumping, I take it?
I like the Grand Canyon, think it’s beautiful, and I also clung to the rails like a feline avoiding the bathtub….
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