The Grand Canyon

Our time in Arizona was not without its misfortunes. It began with a forgotten bag, left behind in Flagstaff, which we had to drive back to collect. Next came the loss of our car seat adapters for the pram (which enable us to use the car seat as a pram top, eliminating one extra thing that you need to carry around), which were left behind in our rental car when we dropped it off in Phoenix. Since the car seat doesn't fit on the pram base without them, the pram was utterly useless to us for the rest of the trip. Then we had to reschedule our plans for Utah on the basis that the ancient RV was way too slow to cover the mileage needed to get there. Then I drove the wrong way down a one way street in the aforementioned RV...

Personal misadventures aside, nature also had a few challenges to throw at us. Back in February, the road just south of Page (which is the closest major town to the Grand Canyon North Rim) decided to shift it's position a little, and ended up looking like this:

As part of our route, we had planned to stay a night in Page, before heading on to the Grand Canyon the next day, but the landslide was in danger of scuppering our plans. Although the landslide is tantalisingly close to Page, out here in no man's land there aren't a huge number of alternative roads. In fact, the route to Page now involves a 45-mile diversion through the Navajo Indian Reservation - not good news for us, our tight schedule and our trundling vehicle. What's worse: I had booked a night in Page as an ideal stop-off before continuing on to the Grand Canyon, but thanks to the landslide, the direct route from Page to the Canyon was also now a no-go. Cue another 45-mile diversion north of Page to access the Grand Canyon National Park.

Although this meant that we spent two long days in the RV and covered a lot of unintended extra miles (with a mileage charge of $0.34 for every mile covered....!), our stop-off in Page did allow us to see Horseshoe Bend, something that the landslide will have prevented a lot of tourists from reaching. This horseshoe-shaped kink in the Colorado river must be one of the most photographed images of this part of the state.

Without a wide-angled lens, our camera didn't really do it justice: if you want to see just how spectacular it can look, this guy has done a pretty amazing job.

From Page, we set off for the big hole in the ground that they call the Grand Canyon. When we were planning the trip, someone said to us 'visit the North Rim, it's much less touristy', so without consulting any maps or actually checking the logistics, we booked two nights in the North Rim campground. Not only is it far less touristy, it's also around 10 degrees cooler, and the terrain is much more varied than that of the South Rim. What we hadn't realised, however, is that although the South and North Rims are just 10 miles apart as the crow flies, there are 215 miles of driving between the two - and that's without the two 45-mile detours that we incurred en route. Happily, it was worth the trouble. We arrived to find our spot in the quiet, secluded woodland campground, with chipmunks scurrying by and birds tweeting all around us. Harvey the RV felt quite at home.

We set off to explore straight away (after clearing up what can only be described as Alec's most explosive nappy to date, a truly extraordinary present to celebrate our arrival) and within minutes we were at the Canyon's edge, looking out at this:

It sounds silly, but I didn't know what to expect from the Grand Canyon. I purposefully hadn't looked at pictures in advance, and in my head I think I expected to see a great big chasm, and a lot of nothingness. I hadn't appreciated how many ups and downs there would be, how many tributaries and offshoots the Canyon has, and how varied and interesting the landscape would be. It is so vast that in places you can barely see the other side, and we certainly couldn't see the bottom from any of the vantage points we found. On the second day we were fortunate (?) enough to get caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, and although we got fairly soaked before we reached cover, we were able to sit at the big picture window in the North Rim restaurant and watch as the lightning and thunder rolled around the rocky landscape. On the final evening, Andy also raced off across the campground just in time to watch this spectacular sunset:

Our two days there were undoubtedly the most memorable of our whole trip. We spent the days wandering around the rocky trails and the evenings toasting marshmallows around our campfire. As for Alec, things got a lot better after The Great Grand Canyon Surprise Poo and he just adored looking at the trees and charming the passers-by on our walks.

Of course, our good luck had to come to an end sometime. And as we rolled out of the campground on the final morning, to begin the long 400-mile journey back to Phoenix, we called in at the gas station to get some air put into a rather low looking tyre... Well, what do you know, it turned out to be flat.