Keeping Up With This Jones: arizona

Friday, May 15, 2015

St. Louis or Bust: Road Trip Day 2

Day 2 (April 27) of this road trip!

We wake up in Williams in our “bedroom” at the Grand Canyon Hotel. We walk out to find ice on the windshield. Oh boy….is it going to be another cold day in which we find ourselves overly underdressed? Wait- I forgot to mention in Day 1's post that we were waaaaaaay underdressed for the weather. We had packed and shipped all of our clothes that we were not wearing in CA. We had no long sleeves. Both of us dug through our duffel bags and found ONE each. Did it go with what we were wearing? Nope! We busted in Bearizona warm but ugly. We traded in those sandals for our boots and closed toe shoes. We should have gotten a photo of our get-up.

We stop in at the Grand Canyon Coffee and Cafe to have breakfast and write postcards before heading to Bedrock City and the Grand Canyon, the two big ticket items for the day. Look, you could even get "oriental" food here too!

I drove us to Bedrock City which was about 45 minutes away. This is the only time you will see “I drove” because my dear man drove the ENTIRE trip. Bedrock City was a BLAST – I went so far back to my childhood. As I suspected, we had the park to ourselves until right before we left (perfect for grabbing a pic of both of us in 1 shot!). This attraction is old but so awesome if you are from my generation. The Flintstones and the Rubbles dominated my TV screen time. I most loved the dinosaur slide! We took some fun slo-mo videos.

Check out my slo-mo video:

It was going to be really hard to top this nostalgic experience.

En route to the Grand Canyon, I started to wonder if maybe I should have booked a helicopter ride over the canyon when I glanced at it online……maybe it’s not that expensive? Maybe they have room for us? We made a spontaneous decision to pull into the airport and just check on pricing and availability. Cost was pretty minimal considering the experience for a 25-30 minute best view of both rims. They had seats open 30 minutes later. Done. Booked. Paid. Twenty five bathroom breaks due to nerves and anxiety. Helicopters do not seem sturdy to me. Oh well, YOLO right? I may never be back (and won’t be any time soon).

We boarded the helicopter and I got to ride shot gun. My fingers were raw from crossing them so hard for so long. All that double hand finger crossing paid off. The view of just the trees was spectacular. But…when we reached the edge of the canyon and initially flew over, tears came to my eyes. It was absolutely breathtaking. I was reminded of Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

You could see everything near and far as we rode through the canyon. At the same time, there was audio in our headphones that gave some history on the Grand Canyon. Totally worth the stop.

We then decided after getting back that the helicopter views were too hard to top so we opted out of driving into the park. Since we weren’t going to be spending hours or hiking, we felt we had seen all that one could possibly see, from the best view.

We headed toward Holbrook. I had booked the Wigwam Motel. This was one of the parts of the trip that I was most excited about.

On the way to Holbrook, I realized, is Winslow Arizona. What are you now singing to yourself? That’s right! “Take it Easy” by the Eagles mentions standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona. There’s actually a park called “Standing on a Corner Park.” Yes, there’s also a flatbed Ford.

We made it to Holbrook and checked in to our wigwam. We laid around and headed out to dinner at Mesa. Options are slim in this town, but the food was actually good. From the outside, one is not sure. When one walks in the door, one is really not sure. I’m still getting used to seeing all-white-people-filling-the-spaces again. All of one race, of any race, makes me nervous. We enjoyed some people watching in this “locals” restaurant, especially when ~32 Vietnamese tourists came in and filled up every last seat in the restaurant. Oh the looks! You had one black/white interracial date night and then a load of Asian tourists. The staff and servers were very friendly and accommodating although it was chaotic with them being seated at different tables and one running around translating.