Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

January 8, 2015September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 21 Comments

Ah, the Grand Canyon. The Big One. The feature that has launched a thousand roadtrips and crowned a thousand bucket lists.

You usually imagine this, right?

Vast rocky cliffs and gorges stretching into the desert farther than you can see.

The Grand Canyon itself lives up to that expectation… and exceeds it, for that matter. It was the drive through the outskirts of the national park and up to the main attraction that really surprised me.

After exploring the amazing Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, Amity and I spent the night in the tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Kanab, Utah, just a couple of miles from the Arizona border. It was another one of those incredible wake-up calls where we’d arrived at our destination in pitch darkness and woken up the next morning surrounded by towering red rock cliffs (plateaus? mesas? I really need to brush up on my geology lingo).

We set off south on the 80-mile drive to the Grand Canyon, most of which is rugged wilderness that’s part of the larger Grand Canyon National Park. This is what I mean when I said that it surprised me:

This is just not what I picture when I imagine Arizona. First of all, it was freezing! The wind was cold and snow was flurrying on and off – but it was still bright and sunny and a very pretty drive.

The closer we got to the Canyon, the more I kept expecting the snow to stop, the pine trees to fade away, and the desert to appear… but the landscape looked like that right up until we pulled into the parking lot at Point Imperial and caught a glimpse of this through the trees.

The rock spire in the foreground of that photo is Mount Hayden, one of the most unique features at Point Imperial and apparently a popular spot for free climbers (no thanks).

We had Point Imperial completely to ourselves. There wasn’t another soul in sight, which was frankly magical. As if I haven’t said it enough already, I will forever be singing the praises of late fall/early winter as the best time to visit national parks.

Point Imperial is the northernmost overlook on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, so you can really see everything. The view puts every Pinterest photo and IMAX movie you’ve ever seen to shame. I’d been a little apprehensive that the GC was going to be one of those iconic sights that is so overhyped that it ends up being a little underwhelming when you finally see it for yourself. That, my friends, was not the case.

One of my good friends from London takes empty bench photos. I loved that creative photography theme and I’ve started texting these to her whenever I find a seat in a great location. It somehow makes it easier to imagine yourself back in that spot, and it’s sort of special to think about all the people who may have sat there in the past. It’s a good example of travel broadening your horizons and making you more aware of your surroundings.

We left Point Imperial and drove a little further into the park, heading towards the North Rim Visitor Center. The building itself was closed for the winter by this time, but it still boasts some incredible lookout spots. The trees were still so thick here that we only gradually started getting glances of the canyon as we walked from our van to the edge.

I hadn’t really been aware that there was such a difference between the North Rim and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon before our visit. The South Rim cuts through the dry, hot, and amazingly flat Arizona desert, while the North Rim drops away unexpectedly in the midst of acres of dense pine forests and wild hills. The South Rim is over a thousand feet lower in elevation than the North Rim, the temperature is generally warmer (meaning it almost never has seasonal or weather closures), and it’s more easily accessible (an hour or two outside of Flagstaff, a major city). All these factors combine to make the South Rim the much more frequently visited side of the Grand Canyon.

However, even though the North Rim and South Rim Visitor Centers are only about ten miles apart… those ten miles are across the canyon (I know, I’m dropping major knowledge on you here, folks). Amity and I were coming from the north and didn’t want to spend the time and mileage driving allllll the way around the canyon, so North Rim it was for us.

My mom and brother visited the South Rim a few years ago, so I just had my brother’s photos of horse trekking across the flat sandy desert to the canyon’s edge in my head. Even though both sides seem to offer a unique and surprisingly different experience, I was glad we visited the more secluded North Rim.

I think my reasoning is self-explanatory:

Another thing I was (perhaps naively) surprised about was how little it looked like the single huge canyon I had pictured in my mind’s eye. The deep, prominent gash you see in some of these photos is actually Bright Angel Canyon, which is carved by Bright Angel Creek and runs perpendicular to the main canyon and the Colorado River. Bright Angel and Roaring Springs (seen in the photo directly above with that crazy cool tree) are only two of the massive network of gorges of all different sizes that make up the entire Grand Canyon National Park system.

I found another empty bench, and one that just looked too lonely to leave empty any longer.

Amity and I braved the treacherous pathway out to Bright Angel Point (only tiny stone borders between you and a pretty scary drop-off).

…before heading back along the path in the other direction to take in the view from every angle.

The bright midday sun coupled with the thick clouds rolling past threw parts of the landscape into deep shadows while others were lit up golden, and the colors seemed to change almost constantly.

We were also extremely lucky with visibility – there was a sign saying that sometimes it gets so hazy that you can’t see the far side of the canyon.

About this time, we had a kindly stranger offer to take our photo for us, which we gladly accepted… but he immediately began coaching us into a dramatic side-by-side pose in which we both looked wistfully over the canyon, “taking in the majesty.” It was a very sweet gesture to be sure, but just resulted in a series of photos in which we’re looking slightly confused and/or trying not to laugh, and the Grand Canyon itself doesn’t even quite make it into the frame.

Good for a laugh and another story for the roadtrip bank, anyway! And we got a nice one later on.

Having filled our eyeballs and adventurous hearts pretty near saturation, we saddled back up in Kokapelli and ventured on to our next destination. I would love to visit the South Rim and check out the desert someday, but for now, I’m totally #TeamNorthRim. Who’s with me?

THE DETAILS: $25 entry fee per vehicle | North Rim open mid-May through Oct/Nov (variable); South Rim open year-round | Website HERE

Roadtrip Route: Intended vs. Actual

November 28, 2014September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 10 Comments

Where to even begin with this trip? I guess with the big picture.

Here’s what our original route plan was. We used Roadtrippers.com to roughly sketch out a route and find/add more points of interest along the way.

Jaunty Julie&Amity | My new trip on Roadtrippers.com!

So after months of planning, we set off on our adventure and Murphy’s Law quickly took over. Here’s what actually ended up happening:

As you can see, it sort of looks like the top peak of our route caved in.

The red pins are things we did or saw (not every single thing is included here, but most are). The blue pins are places we spent the night. Our trip was originally three weeks and ended up being extended by just a few days. In my mind, it also separates pretty neatly into three phases, although they don’t correspond exactly to seven-day periods.

If you look at the map, Phase 1 is the “right wing”: from Vegas into the southwest, then up through Colorado and into South Dakota. Phase 2 is what we’ll call “technical difficulties,” and can be mostly represented by that mad dash in the middle from South Dakota, through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, to San Francisco. You may notice there aren’t many pins in that part. Phase 3 is our grand finale, the “left wing,” from San Francisco up through the middle of California, then looping around through Oregon and all the way back down the coast to San Diego.

Oy. It makes me tired just looking at it now.

So why did it all go down like this? I shall tell you a story in pictures.

Amity and I had a third musketeer on this trip in the form of our campervan. His name was Kokapelli (yes, we know it’s spelled wrong, but his name was down in the books long before we met him).

Beautiful, isn’t he? Here’s what the other side looked like:

I told you he’d give Hip Hop Yellow a run for its money.

Anyway, Kokapelli was a retrofitted Chevy Astro that was our transport, home, and everything in between for the trip. Though you certainly sacrifice some comforts, campervans are awesome for roadtripping. Bed in the back, kitchen in the way back, the works. It’s like being a turtle. As soon as you decide to stop driving, you’re already in your house. As Buckaroo Banzai would say, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Kokapelli carried us faithfully through all of Phase 1.

And then this happened:

The balmy –27 degrees F temperatures in Rapid City, South Dakota were too much for him, and he blew a coolant hose and fried the starter at exactly the same time. So after a lost day in a mechanic’s waiting room, we soldiered on from South Dakota into its equally frigid neighbor, Wyoming.

And then this happened:

You can see he’s maintaining his cheerful attitude despite the setbacks.

The script I’ve memorized from listening to the mechanic is: “The rear differential is shot. Yeah, the housing’s bad. The bearings were spinning, if you can imagine.” So I don’t know what that means in technical terms, but in layman’s terms it means we couldn’t drive him anymore. Womp womp.

So then we got this flashy little speed demon:

The van rental company was absolutely unbelievable when it came to customer service. They didn’t try and put any liability on us, didn’t make us feel bad for calling roadside assistance at all hours, and paid for the mechanical repairs on the spot. Basically unheard of. However, when Kokapelli bit the bullet for good in Wyoming, we had a dilemma: abandon the roadtrip barely halfway through, or reroute completely? The latter, of course.

So we hightailed it to California in that little rental – hence Phase 2. We drove from Gillette to San Francisco (about 1200 miles) in less than 48 hours, where we were greeted by this behemoth. His name is Woodpecker.

(He’s behind the tree. I know the camouflage is very convincing.)

He did the job alright but never quite weaseled his way into our hearts the way Kokapelli had done.

Anyway, this whole switcheroo meant that we unfortunately had to abandon most of the northern stretch of our intended route, through Montana and Idaho and over into Oregon. Based on our time and energy (all this craziness wiped us out a bit), we tried to cobble together a plan to still hit most of our west coast destinations. So instead of getting into Oregon from the east and then going down through California from the north, we just did a big up-and-down loop.

In the end, I think it worked out pretty well. It definitely put us to the test in terms of thinking on our feet and staying positive… but when I think about how many things and places I’ve seen that I hadn’t a month ago, all the things I got to do and wonderful people I encountered… it was worth it 100%.

Thus begins the saga of our own Roadtrip: USA. Now that you know the background, I suppose I’d better begin uploading my photos so I can post the real stories soon!

Checking in From the Road!

November 14, 2014September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 8 Comments

Hello from Casper, Wyoming! We’re about halfway through our three-week roadtrip around the western US and we’ve already had enough adventure for a lifetime. We’ve been through seven national parks in as many states and seen all sorts of weather (-11 degrees F was super fun). We’ve seen canyons and deserts and mountains and lakes and all sorts of crazy wildlife.

(Zion National Park, Utah)

However, as any traveler will tell you, things don’t always go according to plan. We’ve had our fair share of wrenches thrown in the works already but are rerouting about as fast as things can mess themselves up. I’ll have plenty of roadtrip stories and pictures coming up on the blog in the future but for now, a few photos are going up in realtime on Instagram and Facebook because it’s about all I can keep up with before I crash into bed (slash van) at the end of every day.

(Antelope Canyon, Arizona)

I’ve always said that a roadtrip’s too easy if you don’t go through at least three vehicles. Okay, I haven’t. But I definitely say that now.