A very Grand Canyon

Karen and I were in Arizona last week, at Sedona and the Grand Canyon. It was our first time since our marriage in early December to take some time off together. We called it our “practice honeymoon.” A real honeymoon is planned for, not taken just because I was off during spring break. We are thinking about Vancouver for our real honeymoon.

We wanted to be alone, mostly, while we were gone, but it was difficult. The Grand Canyon and Sedona both were aswarm with tourists. The words “Oooo,” and “Ahhhh” are universal, but instructions to pose, stop, turn around, come, and go, and go, crisscrossed the viewpoints in an international torrent. The Grand Canyon is so easy to get to in the 21st century. Buy a tour package, hop a plane in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Delhi or Sao Paulo, transfer to a tour bus in Los Angeles, and you’re there.

It was also spring break all over the globe. Young people at dawn complaining about the hour, and the cold (you could tell by the tone) in all the languages.

But the canyon commanded. In two days, Karen took 300 photos and I took five. And it was cold, at dawn and sunset, and very windy sometimes. We saw the canyon from Hermit’s Rest to the Desert View Tower, zipping back and forth in Karen’s convertible with the top down and sweatshirt hoods up. At our last sunset at Mather Point, we got some good light and a photo of our shadows close together on a white rock face, personal petroglyph evidence of our presence at the ancient place.

Thanks to Karen’s attention to detail, and my age, I became the possessor of a lifetime Golden Age Passport that will get me, her, and our family, into any National Park free of charge for the rest of my life.

We spent three days at Sedona, meant to be a retreat at a lovely bed and breakfast right on Oak Creek, but again it was difficult. I wish we could have visited Sedona before the jet age and the arrival of elbow claustrophobia. You can’t get into the great outdoors anymore, or into a Sedona café for dinner, without a reservation. But just as at the canyon, the beauty of the place commanded. We are already laying a plan to go back to Sedona next January, just after New Year’s, when maybe we can see more and hear less.