Day 4 - Grand Canyon!!!

If you don't like Grand Canyon pictures, then you're probably not going to like today's site.

Mile 1475 - Dean claims he lets Travis sleep in until 8:30 a.m. Travis says "no way Jose!" it's still 6:30 a.m. Dean is staying on home Central Daylight Savings time. Travis swaps over to Pacific time like he should. Dean says that Travis will be greatful for this on the way back, but Travis is doubtful. Reluctantly, Travis gets up. The temperature is 37 degrees with a 14 degree wind chill and rain mixed with snow that turned into full snow by the time Travis "gets his lazy butt ready." We eat breakfast in our $28 motel room, and Dean impatiently yells at Travis because Travis is wasting time adjusting the color on the TV set. Dean thinks that Travis should be getting ready and not adjusting color on anyone's TV set since he is colorblind! Travis calls Dean "annoying."

Dean and Travis discuss the convertible top situation. Dean reluctantly agrees to leave the top up since it is still snowing. To think how nice it was yesterday with the top down the entire day and now this! Travis wants to know if Dean is still going to wash the car, but doesn't get a good answer from Dean.

We take off for another grocery store, since we are growing boys after all. It's just that our direction may not be the one we want. It more or less stops snowing now.

Mile 1479 - Filled up with gas on the way out of town. $1.799 / gal. Dean assumes driving responsibilities.

Mile 1483 - Stopped and took pictures of the highest point in Arizona, Mount Humphrey.

Mile 1498 - Dean discovers that he can't find his sunglasses. We believe Dean lost his sunglasses back at Mile 1483 photo opportunity, but we're not sure. If we knew where Dean left his sunglasses, then they wouldn't be lost. Travis offers Dean his extra pair of sunglasses, but Dean is too stubborn and hard-headed to use them. Fine Dean, suffer! Dean claims a Got Lost #8. We missed our turnoff to a scenic spur with Travis navigating again. Is this a coincidence or what?

Mile 1552 - We run into snowflakes heading to the Grand Canyon. Travis thinks that Dean really wants that top down, but sticks to his guns and kept it up.

Mile 1555 - We enter the Grand Canyon National park. It's still snowing.

Mile 1558 - We pay our $20 access fee to the park rangerette, and get some good comments on the car. How could they keep us from seeing a canyon 250 miles long, 10 miles wide and a mile deep? We decide not to find out again today and fork over the money. Dean gets his very first view of the amazing canyon!

Mile 1559 - We stopped at the Watch Tower and take some pics.

Mile 1565 - Stopped at the Moran Point lookout for pics. Four Harleys pull up with French speaking couples on them. They must have flown to L.A. from France and rented them, then driven them here in the snow, now who's on the crazy journey? Dean banns Travis from calling the Grand Canyon a "Big Hole in the Ground." Travis asks if "Monumental Hole in the Ground" would be okay, but doesn't get agreement from Dean.

Mile 1575 - Stop at another lookout point to take pics. We ask a couple from L.A. to take our picture (look for it in our upcoming album). Dean, the country boy who has never met anyone who he couldn't talk to, starts a conversation. We compare gas mileages and prices. They're driving a big decked-out camper and are getting 10 mpg to our 12-13 mpg. It's nice to find something that is getting worse gas mileage than us. They give us some hints for buying gas tomorrow on the way out of town. They also tell us that today is the coldest day at the Grand Canyon this spring. Lucky us!

Mile 1585 - Get 1/2 checked in at our hotel, the historic El Tovar that was built in 1903. This is NOT a $28/night hotel! Parking is tight at the Grand Canyon, and we parked the car for the day. City Boy Travis learns some neat parking tricks from Country Boy Dean.

Since we parked the car for the day, the rest of today has to be reported in time. And the reported time here will be in Travis' real local time (Pacific), not Dean's goofy back home Central Daylight Savings time. (Note from Dean I hope everyone back on CDT reads Travis' comment about your time zone!)

1:15 p.m. - We ate lunch at the El Tovar restaurant after a 1 hour and 15 minute wait. While waiting we talk to some of the locals (Travis wonders if Dean will ever stop talking to strangers) and get some insight into the Canyon. We discover that this is THE busy spring week for the Grand Canyon. Lucky again for us!

2:30 p.m. - Leave the hotel and take tour of entire west rim. Dean wants to find the perfect spot for those sunset vistas, unfortunately it is snowing and very cloudy (Dean reminds Travis that at least it isn't raining) and hopes of taking some good pictures seems doubtful.

3:18 p.m. - Take the park's shuttle bus to Maricopa Point. Major heavy blowing snow. Met up with the Dyck family from Kingburg, CA and exchanged taking pictures for each other. They adopt Travis and he gets in their family portrait.

3:58 p.m. - Next lookout point - Hopi Point. Dean gets excited because you have a good view of the Colorado River. Don't worry mom, I'm not as close as it looks.

We exchange picture taking with another traveler, Connie from Brookfield (Chicago), IL. Connie is on vacation and is doing some backpacking and hiking. Before we met her and took her picture for her, she had no pictures of herself at the Grand Canyon. We tell her all about our crazy adventure, and she seems interested, so we decide to include her in our web site too. Hi Connie!

We hit a couple of other lookout points, but Dean decides that Mohave Point is the right one to get good sunset pics.

6:05 p.m. - Backtrack to Mohave Point to get ready for sunset pics. We have to download digital pictures in the PC to clear room for all of our upcoming sunset pics. We draw some attention to ourselves. Can you just imagine a couple of guys in the middle of the Grand Canyon working on a laptop computer? Definitely not a site you see on a normal day. After much worrying about the weather conditions, the sun does peek out enough for some good shots, hope you enjoy!

We exchanged picture taking with two women who are at the same point (pic directly above was taken by them). Dorlisa is from Long Island, NY and Silke is from Stuttgart, Germany. Dorlisa is a dorm director, and Silke is on a 2-year worldwide tour and rode her mountainbike from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon (80 miles!) and will make a giant loop on to Phoenix and who knows where else. Now who's on the crazy trip? We tell them what we're doing, and they seem interested as well, so we ask them if they want to be on our web site. Hi ladies! (Will Dean ever leave strangers alone?)

7:05 p.m. - Sunset. As you can see, Dean's fascination with the river continues to the very end.

7:10 p.m. - Head back to the Hotel. We catch the shuttle bus while walking back.

7:30 p.m. - Arrive back at hotel and start unloading our stuff. We are quite the attention getter again, when Dean carries his green Army surplus duffle bag and our cooler through the El Tovar lobby. Something that is probably not done on a regular basis here.

8:00 p.m. - Check our e-mail and eat sandwiches. We start discussing our route for tomorrow. We may try and hit the rest of old Route 66 from Flagstaff to the California state line. We're still negotiating. Check with us tomorrow, and we may have some more Route 66 stuff. We've decided that we have a LONG journey back, so we won't be able to stop as much (so expect more pics taken from the car), so our adventures up to this point are probably as good as they're going to get, but you never know.

Thanks for all of the e-mail that you've sent us. It really makes our day when we read it after our days out on the road. We hope that we've made your day too. Don't forget to check us out tomorrow.