CNN iReport

Mike and I went arranged a trip to the Grand Canyon in late March, 2009. It was a long weekend - four days, so we planned to fly to Flagstaff from Los Angeles and then drive up to the Canyon for two nights, then head over to Monument Valley for two nights before heading home.

At the last minute, our flight from LAX to Flagstaff was cancelled, so we drove.  We arrived at 2:30am and met our Grand Canyon mules at the top of the Bright Angel Trail at 6:00 am the same morning.  Aside from sleep deprivation followed by eight hours on the back of a mule, there was a bright side to this turn of events.  First, we managed to get a cabin at Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Canyon, 6 hours before we arrived. It usually takes a year.  We also drove by Amboy Crater at dusk, and the town of Amboy, California after dark, south if I-40, west of Needles and north of the TwentyNine Palms Marine base.  We didn't stop in Amboy, the town, but we are sure the Twilight Zone, or maybe mass murdering sociopaths live there. It's that place you see in scary movies alone in the desert with a motel, a gas station and a restaurant.

Onward Ho! ...  Mule trip: amazing.  I got heat stroke and couldn't walk, but it was a great trip. The view of the Grand Canyon from the top is amazing, but traveling down into canyon after canyon within canyons is remarkable.  There's just so much much more than the view from the top.  Back at the top of the Canyon I looked down with new perspective.  A pair of California Condors soared overhead.

We departed Grand Canyon Village for Desert View, and then headed east to the brand new "View Motel" in Monument Valley, located in the quiet southeast corner of Utah, and the scene of many westerns with rocky spires and jutting mesa's rising from a rocky rolling landscape.  It was a great sunny warm day in the 70s, as our Navajo guide showed us the sites.  Then a sandstorm came in the afternoon. That evening we looked across the landscape and imagined how it might look in the snow... then it snowed.

What more could you ask of Monument Valley?

We headed home after a side-trip through the Navajo town of Tuba City and onward to the Three Hopi Mesas and the oldest continously inhabited town on the continent. We looked for "The Truth" amongst the Hopi.  But I'm out of time to say more, this was just a four day trip.