Big Canyon, Small World: A National Park Odyssey Day 12

Grand Canyon National Park

Want to listen to our podcast about this park? Click here!

 

View from the south rim near El Tovar

Josh and I woke up in time for sunrise while the kids slept in.  We walked just outside El Tovar to the overlook and gazed at the rays of sun peeking over the canyon.  A handful of other people had crawled out of bed to witness the beauty of the morning, but it was far less crowded than I expected.  We enjoyed some quiet time together, and then we woke the kids up to eat breakfast with us along the south rim trail.  We sat on a bench eating and drinking and watched the colors change on the canyon below as the light began to hit the rocks.

 

Breakfast on the trail near the rim

My pathetic photography skills don't do the majestic canyon justice.

Along the paved trail which goes all the way from the Bright Angel Trail past El Tovar to the visitors’ center, Knox was interested in the geologic timeline markers and placards that told the story of the carving of the canyon.  When we got to the marker that represented 2000 years ago, we all took note that there was a giant crack.  The pavement wasn’t cracked anywhere else, just here, at about the time that the veil would have been torn in two after the crucifixion of Christ.  It was a meaningful symbol to us of the Creator who was there to watch the carving of this canyon with a front row seat.

 

This crack was probably just happenstance, but it bore meaning to us.

As we got nearer to the visitors’ center, the trail grew more and more crowded with people who had apparently been dropped off by tour buses.  90% of tourists never get beyond this trail, and we started looking forward to the relatively sparse crowds that we assumed we’d see the next day on our way to the bottom of the canyon.  While we walked, Knox grew increasingly annoyed at the amount of trash on the trail and decided that, as a Junior Ranger, he should be doing something about it.

 

The crowds continued to grow as we got near to the visitors' center.

Knox picks up trash as a part of his (mostly self-imposed) Junior Ranger duties.

Days 13 and 14 were to be spent riding mules down into and out of the canyon with an overnight at Phantom Ranch, the park’s nearly-impossible-to-book cabins on the bottom of the canyon.  But before we could mount up the next day, we were required to check in and go through orientation at the Bright Angel Lodge down the trail from El Tovar.  We had to weigh in (yes, really), affirm that we all had come prepared with appropriate footwear, long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and wide brimmed hats with chin straps.  Our camera had to be on a neck strap, and we weren’t allowed to carry any bags on our person.  Everything we wanted to take with us had to be placed in a clear plastic bag (the size of a 10 pound bag of ice).

 

Here are two of our bags of gear and water canteens that were provided by Xanterra, the concessionaire who runs the mule ride to Phantom Ranch.

As we waited to be weighed, I thought Josh was going to have another anxiety attack.  He had weighed 177 when we left home, but he was worried he would be over the strict 200 pound limit with his gear on.  He needn’t have worried.  He was 186.  I didn’t have the courage to look at my own reading as the attendant quietly recorded it on a paper that I assume was passed on to the mule wranglers to help them decide how much extra weight in gear my mule could carry since none of the mules carry more than 200 pounds total.

In addition to our plastic bags, we were handed a yellow rain slicker each and a leather and plastic water bottle on a string that looked kind of like my Sunday school teachers always described a wineskin.  We were to bring all of this back the next morning to the corral by 5:55 am.

After orientation and check in, we looked around the gift shop at Bright Angel (learning in the process that the rooms in this lodge were not air conditioned as ours at El Tovar were).  Knox assumed his normal gift-shop position in the children’s book section while the rest of us browsed.

 

Knox has read a lot of books this summer by sitting on the floor of the gift shops!

To end our day, we attended a nightly non-denominational worship service at an area set aside just past the Bright Angel Trailhead.  Every night during the high season, a group of college-student volunteers from around the country lead a time of worship at the rim for all who wish to come.  The students work with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks (ACMNP) which has representatives in 25 parks across the country leading worship services for travelers.  Grand Canyon’s program is different in that the services aren’t just on Sundays; they have a services every single night of the summer.  We loved the singing and were moved by the thoughts of the ACMNP member who shared her personal testimony.  The setting was awe-inspiring and certainly directed our thoughts to the master sculptor of this planet.

 

The sign leading the way to the worship site

We sang some new worship songs and an old hymn or two as well.

At the end of the service, Kinley gestured toward one of the ACMNP team members and said, “I know her.”  I was stunned.  How could Kinley possibly know some college student in the Grand Canyon?  She told me that she was pretty sure the girl was a McCutcheon graduate who had been in the musical Beauty and the Beast with Kinley.  It took a lot of encouragement, but I finally convinced her to approach the girl and strike up a conversation.  Sure enough, Kinley as right.  Kayla had just finished her freshman year at Taylor University and was excited to be a part of this mission team. 

Our family with Kayla, a McCutcheon grad from Lafayette

At a place where the canyon is mind-bogglingly huge and the geologic time table seems impossibly long, we were reminded that it’s really a tiny little planet after all.

Passport to America: A Family Journey of 23 National Parks in 47 Days

Want to listen to our podcast about the beginning of our journey?  Click here!

Packed and ready to begin our crazy 47-day adventure

As a child, my family and I visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park many times.  But my parents weren’t hikers.  They grew up in the era of Route 66, so they were motorists.  We drove through the Great Smoky Mountains year after year, occasionally stopping at a roadside creek or for a quick picnic on the grass beside the road.  We took the obligatory family picture at the park entrance sign and then headed back to the motel pool.

When we took our only family vacation that involved an airplane, we flew to visit Yellowstone National Park.  We drove straight through it, from the south entrance to the north entrance.  We stopped along the way to photograph wildlife by the road, and we walked the concrete path around Old Faithful.  We watched it erupt.  Once.  Then we got back in the car and continued our quest northward.

So it wasn’t until I visited the Smokies with my husband’s family years later that I realized there was more to do in a national park than drive through it.  Visitors’ centers!  Trails!  Ranger-led activities!  All of these were wonders that I’d never experienced from the back seat of our family’s blue Oldsmobile.

Once my eyes were opened to all that America’s National Parks have to offer, I couldn’t help but share it with my students.  With the help of a grant from the PublicSchools Foundation of Tippecanoe County in 2004, I wrote a unit that allows my 4^th and 5^th graders to research and share about a national park of their choice.  The unit is a weeks-long study of the chosen park’s history, flora, fauna, available activities, and distinguishing characteristics.  I guide my students through the research process, but they have to extrapolate based on the facts they find.  I make suggestions about which feature of the park should be featured in a student-made diorama as a part of the project, but for parks I’ve never visited, it is difficult to decide what feature is the most important or the most impressive.

When my students come to me for help and ask, “Should I create the Trail Ridge Road, the Coyote Valley Trail, or the Continental Divide for my diorama?” I want to be able to give an informed suggestion.  When my students ask, “What is there to do in the Grand Canyon?” I want to be able to give them answers based on my own first-hand experiences. 

On this trip, we will visit twenty-three national parks in forty-seven days, and afterward I will have more background information to help my students as they research their chosen parks.  In addition to that, I want Kinley and Knox to have a national parks experience that I never had as a child.  I want to help them earn a Junior Ranger badge in each of the parks we visit so that they don’t have to wait until they’re married to learn all that our country’s parks have to offer.

Since "my traveling shoes are high heels," saying that I’m not much of a camper is a gross understatement.  Thus our family will stay in national parks lodges when they are available so that we can immerse ourselves in the parks.  Many of these lodges such as Chisos Mountain Lodge at Big Bend, El Tovar and Phantom Ranch at the GrandCanyon, and Zion National Park Lodge are pieces of history themselves.  Reservations at those must be made up to 15 months in advance, so Josh and I have already made our reservations at nine lodges along our route.

On June 1, 2016, Kinley and I set our alarms to wake up at 7:30 to make our reservation for El Tovar at the Grand Canyon.  I logged on to the lodge's website 20 minutes before the reservations were supposed to go "live" at 8:00.  Josh had spoken to someone in reservations over the phone the night before to check on procedures so that we'd be ready to go and armed with a plan the next morning.  He learned that when reservations for May 2017 went "live" on May 1, 2016, the hotel had received one million calls in three hours.  He told Josh that calling in would be like trying to win a radio contest - we'd get a busy signal over and over, but we should just keep hitting redial.

Reservations for El Tovar can actually be made online, but reservations for Phantom Ranch, the park lodge at the bottom of the canyon, could only be made over the phone.  My plan was to call but to try simultaneously to make the El Tovar reservations online.  So when I logged on at 7:40, I was just checking to be sure I knew the website and the type of room I wanted to book.  I clicked around for 5 minutes or so checking, and then I hit refresh.  At 7:45, the El Tovar reservations site was live!  Fifteen minutes early!

My heart raced as I frantically clicked on the room type that we wanted (and could afford), and three minutes later we had our reservation, more than a year in advance.  Since the website was open early, I thought that maybe the phone reservations would be, too.  Kinley and I started calling, me on both our land line and my cell phone, and Kinley on her own phone.  Three lines.  We called that way for an hour - dial, listen to the busy signal, hang up, hit redial - and then Knox woke up and joined us, taking over my cell phone.  For another half an our we continued the pattern - dial, listen, hang up, redial.  Our movements became so mechanized that we all worried that if we actually managed to get through and  heard the ringing sound, we wouldn't even recognize it in time to prevent ourselves from hanging up!  And if by some miracle we did get through without hanging up, would there even be any spots left at Phantom Ranch for the June dates we wanted?  Was it already sold out?

And then, after more than an hour and a half of calling on three lines, I heard Knox say, softly at first but with growing intensity, "Mom, Mom, MOM, MOM!!!!"   With wide eyes he thrust the phone toward me, bouncing excitedly.  The phone was ringing.  When the person on the other end of the line answered, we learned that we weren't too late.  We were gong to get to stay at Phantom Ranch!

As I finished up on the phone and celebrated with the kids, I thought about how different this experience was from the trip I took with my parents. We had made mo hotel reservations in advance.  None.  And when we got out to see Old Faithful, we learned about the Old Faithful Inn.  We naively asked if there was any vacancy for that night.  Of course, they were fully booked.

We were so completely clueless!  I'm sure the hotel's guests had made reservations a year earlier, just the way I have now done for our trip this summer.  So our little family bustled back into our blue Oldsmobile to continue on our route, hoping for a roadside motel with a vacancy.

Speaking of routes, here's ours.  And, obviously, we have reserved places to stay for every night of the trip.  I hope you'll follow along with us this summer!

Route                                                                                                        National Park Lodge (if applicable)

6/12  Lafayette-Memphis                                            

6/13  Memphis-Hot Springs NP                 

6/14  Texarkana-Midland, TX (stay 2 nights)

6/16  Midland-Big Bend NP, TX (stay 2 nights)                                     Chisos Mountains Lodge

6/18  Big Bend NP-Carlsbad Caverns NP 242        

6/19  CCNP-Guadalupe Mtns. NP—Saguaro NP (stay 2 nights)

6/21  Saguaro NP-Petrified Forest NP                    

6/22  PFNP-Grand Canyon NP (stay 2 nights)                                       El Tovar Lodge

6/24  Mules to bottom of Grand Canyon NP                                        Phantom Ranch

6/25  GCNP-Kingman, AZ                                             

6/26  Kingman, AZ-Joshua Tree NP—Disneyland (stay 3 nights)

6/29  Disneyland-Pinnacles NP                  

6/30  Pinnacles NP-Sequoia NP/Kings Canyon NP (stay 3 nights) John Muir Lodge

7/3  Kings Canyon NP—Yosemite NP (stay 3 nights)                         Half Dome Village           

7/6  Yosemite NP—Durham (stay 3 nights)

7/9  Durham—Lake Tahoe                          

7/10  Lake Tahoe—Baker, NV (stay 2 nights)       

7/12  Great Basin NP-Zion NP (stay 2 nights)                                        Zion NP Lodge

7/14  Zion NP-Bryce Canyon NP (stay 2 nights)                                    The Lodge at Bryce Canyon        

7/16  BCNP-Capitol Reef NP/Arches NP/Canyonlands NP (stay 3 nights)

7/19  Canyonlands NP-Monument Valley             

7/20  MV-Mesa Verde NP                                                                            Far View Lodge

7/21  MVNP-Black Can. of the Gunnison NP        

7/22  BCGNP-Great Sand Dunes NP (2 nights)                                     Great Sand Dunes Lodge 

7/24  GSDNP-Rocky Mtn. NP (2 nights)                  

7/26  RMNP-Topeka, KS                                               

7/27  Topeka, KS-*Cahokia Mounds, IL  

7/28  Cahokia Mounds, IL-Lafayette                       

Total national parks: 23

New national parks for Josh:  13

New national parks for Gina:  18

New national parks for the kids:  21
Total days traveling: 47