On Sunday, April, 13, we traveled to Grand Canyon West. Our first stop was Joshua Tree Forest in Arizona, just past Dolan Springs, AZ. I’m familiar with the Joshua Tree only because that’s the name of the immensely popular U2 album that solidified their chart-topping success my senior year of high school. I’d never really looked at a Joshua Tree. They’re not a particularly pretty tree, in my honest opinion. They look like they are stooped over on nubby knees with flailing arms. Yet they’re a superstar in the desert. Isn’t anything green in a sea of connected browns?
We visited Grand Canyon West, on the reservation of the Hualapai Tribe. Unfortunately, most of our time at the first stop (Eagle Point), was spent waiting in line for the SkyWalk because we wanted photos. And you weren’t allowed to take your own. The Hualapai make money by taking pictures of you in cheesy poses. If you buy the package of ten poses, you also get their pics of the area in the package. I don’t begrudge them making money at all — I’m just not a fan of posed photography on vacation, whether on a cruise or otherwise. I hate feeling fake and forced. End of complaint, lol!
We had a total of three hours at Grand Canyon West, I believe, for two points separated by a ten-minute bus ride, plus a ten-minute bus ride to and from the main hub. We spent over half of that waiting in line between two British families. But Russ and I enjoyed talking to each other. Talking about the trip. How pretty it looked outside the windows where we waited. Communication is good, and there’s no one I’d rather wait in line with than him. So, then we went out on the SkyWalk and had the pictures taken and walked around trying not to be in anyone else’s pictures. We hung around for a few minutes outside the main buildings taking pics on our own, then proceeded to our second stop, Guano Point.
Guano Point was an adventurer’s paradise. You could hike down a little trail and climb atop a rock fixture for a 360° view of the canyon and the Colorado River below. Seeing as how I am neither a hiker, nor a climber of anything (especially rocks), I took pics from lower points, no precipices. It was still beautiful, even if not 360° of awesomeness. I wasn’t afraid I was going to die at any point in my picture-taking, and that was important to me, lol.
On the way back, we stopped at the Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge at the Hoover Dam. We didn’t walk up to the bridge because we only had fifteen minutes, and my hips were killing me. I took pics of the dam from the road, watched a video, and read the signage. It’s mind-blowing that it was built how it was built, when it was built (in the 1930s – from 1931-1936) and still works today. It’s located in Boulder City, NV.
As was our final stop, Hemenway Park, a local park frequented by Bighorn Sheep. It was really cool to see them grazing so close and watch them for a few minutes. Not as endearing as my beloved Highland Cows in Scotland, but in that same vein, the Bighorn Sheep were an inspiration. (Also cool to see in that part of the country are the Migration Bridges built above the roads for animals to cross, so they don’t become road kill. That made a big impression on me, especially after seeing the Bighorn Sheep.)
Then it was back on the bus to Treasure Island. It was a long day. I’m glad we did it, but I wish we’d not been in line so long for the SkyWalk. There was just so much to see and not much time to get it done. For the cost and ease of getting there and back, though, it was a nice experience.
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