grand canyon

dear diary,

when trying to wash down the dust of the road each evening, we made a few comparative observation in alcohology. look at them as additions to georgia moral, according to which god does not want You to drink on sunday.

so here's two new concepts we learned on the road. the first is that of a “dry town,” where no alcohol is sold. like weatherford, texas. on day one of our trip, we had to drive one town down the road to get a six-pack. when i asked about directions to the liquor store , several older ladies in the gas station looked at me as if i was satan himself. the second concept is the state-regulated alcohol content of beer. in utah, the government says 5% alcohol is too much in beer, so they re-set it to 3,2%. while our horizon has definitely become wider in understanding different habits related to drinking, we still fail to understand how any of this is supposed to keep anyone from boozing.

so this morning we were on our way to the north rim of the grand canyon. after reading that the north rim gets ten times less visitors that the south side, our decision was made a lot easier. after arrival, we quickly realized that we made the right choice. although there was no shortage of visitors, the atmosphere was friendly, and you didn’t have to throw twenty of them over the railing before catching the sight from the observation points.


eszter is much less afraid of heights than i am, so she was more willing to climb out on the edges of crazy rocks with only a few thousand feet below her feet. it was very funny seeing many of them hugging the rails, and walk with the legs spread to get a more stable position. it didn’t take very long for me to realize that i am doing the exact same thing.

the canyon views from the north rim are absolutely amazing. you can see the different layers in the rock like layers in a slice of cake. the base of the grand canyon rocks are grey-yellow, followed by red and finally a whitish level. each of these consist of two parts: the lower looks like ordinary rugged cliffs and the upper as thin layers broken apart.

we had to conduct a close observation of scenery, so we descended into a side canyon. little did we know. it turned out that there are organized mule trips on the same route, which resulted in the entire trail covered with, well, there’s no way of saying this nicer… large pools of mule pee and shit. thousands of flies liked this setup; we did not. but we kept going and after passing the first post, i convinced eszter to keep going. she was not very happy about it, but agreed.





the temperature was climbing higher continuously, and by the time we got to a small wooden bridge connection two canyon walls, it was pretty close to unbearable. nonetheless, there was people emerging from the bottom of the valley. we talked to a couple who started from the south rim the previous night, battled the 18 miles/28 km long trip with 5200 feet/1600m elevation with 120F/48C temperature. when i asked how they will get back to their car after the hike they said they’ll improvise. worst case scenario, they’ll walk back. yes, my friends, that’s determination. i thought they were plain crazy.



after our hike we drove across the stunningly beautiful north-western part of arizona, crossed the marble canyon on the spectacular navajo bridge and arrived to page, arizona. we secured a room in a hostel the previous night over the phone, and after arrival we saw why it is so cheap, but still decided to give it a try: since there was no locks on the doors yet, the owner gave us $10 discount. however, when we realized that the water in the shower smelled like rotten eggs, we had to leave. i asked for my money back at the counter, and a guy my age told me that his half crazy uncle opened up the place several months before the ‘remotely acceptable’ stage. the half crazy uncle, in our opinion, was entirely crazy. i should have taken photos on site…