Adventures in Grand Canyon, part 2

So what do you do when you are on something a “once in a lifetime” vacation and suddenly find yourself with a pipe that’s supposed to be connected to the engine is sticking into the dirt instead, it’s afternoon on a Saturday in late fall and you are a long way from anything like a repair place? You tie it up and keep looking at the scenery! There’s just one problem, no rope. We usually keep several bungee cords in car, there weren’t there. Sometimes we have rope, but not that day. We considered our cell-phone charging cable, but figured it wouldn’t hold. Maya checked her cell phone. Guess what. We got no bars at Grand Canyon. No signal at all. Not that there would have been anyone to call anyway. Matt looked into a nearby pile of wood to see if whomever stacked it but left some rope behind. No luck. All the while people are passing. At least it was somewhat comforting to know that we weren’t alone in the middle of nowhere. Eventually we hit upon a temporary solution. The Subway sandwich sack from the day before was still in the car. Matt got under the car and tied up the pipe so that it was at least off the ground. There isn’t much under a car to tie something to but there was a small bolt hole of some sort that served as a very make-shift “repair.” At least with it tired up we could drive without dragging.
Expecting the plastic bag to rip at any moment we kept on to the next turnout with our flashers on going slow, slow, slow. He got honked at and brights flashed at us, but what are you gonna do? At Grandview Point (7,399 feet) we were slightly more than halfway between the east entrance and the west exit. It was already after 15:00 at that point. There wasn’t much more daylight to be had, it was getting colder and we were sure a bag wouldn’t hold until we got back to Flagstaff. Our plan was some kind of vague vision of getting real road from a camp store once we make it to the west gate and the Grand Canyon Village. The views from Grandview Point were impressive. The Canyon is especially wide and there are whole mesas down on its floor. There used to be a copper mine out on Horseshoe Mesa. A mule train that brought supplies to the mine used to leave from Grandview. The trail is still popular with those really outdoorsy types who like to hike into and across the Canyon. “Hiking…,” Matt thinks, “I’m wearing hiking boots! Boots with strong boot laces! Strong enough to tie up that pipe (at least as long as the bolt hole holds). Why didn’t I think of that before?!” So Matt got under the car again and changed the plastic bag, which had already started to stretch, out for boot laces. He put on his tennis shoes (could have used those laces too, if we’d thought of them). And we continued on.

The muffler falling off produced mixed feelings. There was not a small amount of relief to know what the problem had been. There was nothing wrong with the engine: no thrown pistons, no slipping transmission. It was “just” the muffler. Now the car was loud. Embarrassingly loud. Matt wouldn’t turn the car on if anyone happened to standing nearby. Maya read in the car’s manual that if you suspect an exhaust leak (let alone know there’s an exhaust leak) you are supposed to put your windows down. Now, driving around with the windows down when it’s turning from a lower 50s day into an upper 20s night is no fun, but at least you aren’t stranded! That being said, we were having trouble enjoying ourselves. The vistas weren’t quite as appealing with thoughts of a cold car ride looming ahead. Of course, with our being outside for most of the day and the temperature dropping along with the westerning sun the vistas were hard to enjoy just from the cold. It’s one thing to look at the forecast from Phoenix (where it’s still routinely 80) and see that it’s going to be in the forties most of the day and quite another thing to be in forties for most of the day without gloves and hat because you didn’t think you’d need them. It seems that between Florida, California and Arizona we’ve forgotten all about how to deal with colder weather.


At last we made it the “main” area of the South Rim. There is a bunch of stuff in Grand Canyon Village. There are hotels, campgrounds, shuttle buses, dozens of trail heads and more than one information center. We found the main visitor center to be a little lack-luster. I guess when you have the Grand Canyon just outside there is little point to indoor displays about it. Just go look at it. Matt collects smashed pennies and he had hoped for one in the gift shop. No luck there. We looked out over the Canyon one last time at Mather Point. It is the lowest point on the South Rim that we stopped at. It’s 7,120 above sea level, about a mile above the river and something like 14 miles from the North Rim, one of the widest points of Grand Canyon. We didn’t stay long because it was really getting cold but it’s had to leave a place that seems to epic, so grand. Pictures can’t capture the feeling of being that high up on a promontory of rock. Looking that far down gives one just a little bit of vertigo. It’s a landscape a down. The horizon line always wants to be at the top of your vision and your camera so you can focus on the cascading downs. Row after row of cascading downs.
A little south of the Park on SR 64 is the town of Tusayan. There we stopped and got real rope from a real General Store, just to make sure that the pipe slung under the car wasn’t going to go anywhere as we drove. We tied it to our seats inside and ran it all the way under the bottom of the car. If the laces broke, this rope would catch it. After getting under the car for the third time that day we were ready to go. The sun was setting, but we had to keep the windows down. From the map it looked like this was that main route up to the park form Flagstaff, but there was nothing past Tusayan. There was a tiny wide-spot in the road where we turned off onto US 180, but that was it. After that, there was only featureless woodland. No lights but the stars, hardly any other drivers. The woods closed in a somewhat creepy fashion. In the dark it seemed to be a road lost in all time a space. A road from nowhere, through nothing to noplace. And it was cold! We had our jackets and the heat was on full blast but there was no way to get warm with a 60 MPH wind in your face when it somewhere in the low 30s. Burrrr! And the noise! Not only the rushing wind, but the unmuffled sounds of internal combustion. As we approached Flagstaff we had to skirt the San Francisco Peaks. We reached the highest point of the day when we crested the hills on the south side of the mountains at 8,046 feet above sea level. It’s too bad it was so dark, from a terrain map of the area, it looks like an amazing landscape of endless volcanic cones.

And that was our adventure in Grand Canyon. We made it back to the hotel safe and sound. We had no signs of carbon monoxide poisoning that we could tell. We had planned to go out to a fancy restaurant but we were so grumpy, headachy, tired and cold that we just crossed the parking lot to the Del Taco (a not-at-all-as-good version of Taco Bell) and ate in our room. We drank chardonnay and watched TruTV’s forensic science shows for hours. Not a glorious end, but it was, despite the issues with the car, a glorious day.

Also, today is 7 December: remember Pearl Harbor.