Having stayed up with Jillian, Ricky and Liam the night before giggling like maniacs attempting to play Monopoly on the iPad and understand Inception, all while making our neighboring cabin dwellers hate us. I found it hard to fall asleep, as I was both excited for and concerned about the 2nd day of our adventure. You see me and my harasser of a husband hadn’t been on the same page about whether or not we should have our own vehicle with seat belts for us or should jump into “Falkor” with Jill and Ricky. Falkor won and I was scared about being in the back with nothing protectively keeping me strapped in. I finally fell asleep around 4am and woke up beyond tired and still concerned. Although I was excited and eager to see the Antelope Valley Slot Canyons…despite our mode of transport there.
I wasn’t the only “eager beaver” in Bright Angel Lodge this morning as our waiter Klein was out of control and the eagerest beaver of all! He was a “STRANGE” (All capitals to emphasize his strangeness necessary). We all got the same meal, which for some reason got Klein in a huff and our meal was accentuated with Klein’s aggressive waiter stylings.
Full of food and ready to go we all got into Falkor. I more tentatively then the others, with Ricky in the drivers seat, his lady riding shotgun and Liam and I sitting on the floor in the back.I was not only scared but tired and a little cranky from my lack of sleep. Ricky took off onto the road and didn’t attempt to aid in curbing my fears. Throwing Liam and I around like hockey pucks on ice. I tried to focus on my trusty teen romance novel via my blackberry for kindle app and started to relax. Relaxing so much I felt even more sleepy. Now here in lies my next issue…There is a bed but frankly I was thinking the floor was a much safer launching pad then the bed, which provided the additional danger of being thrown out of it easily on the windy Arizona mountain roads BUT I was tired so up I climbed. After a few near death fall moments, I found a good location and position in the center of the bed and settled in…next time I woke up we were in Page, Arizona, pulling into a McDonalds for Lunch.
This McDonalds may have been in the middle of nowhere BUT it was fancy schmancy, with a cafe design scheme and super clean bathrooms. The restaurant was having electricity issues and so our orders took longer then usual, giving us the opportunity to look around and observe how truly frightening the other patrons were…minus the All-American family that somehow had toddlers that were happily eating salad while Jill taunted them with a happy meal a few tables over. After quickly eating our meal and getting out of weirdo dodge we got back on the road to our tour guides headquarter.
We were early and up until 5 minutes before Jeep load in it seemed like we would be a small group…then the tour bus of Chinese tourist arrives. SCORE! They were just as excited as we were and loaded right onto the back of the waiting truck. Wasting no time. BUT where was the couple we saw a second ago, the one with the wife who was wearing high heel boots? The tour guide didn’t want to leave them, despite my loud pronouncements that we should. 15 minutes later we finally found them and loaded up. They will be called “The worst couple in the world” from here on out.
We arrived to the Antelope Slot Canyon late but the tour guide didn’t seem too concerned, he just launched right into the history of the canyon…which I guess is really old and stuff and was formed possibly by an earthquake and was carved out by water and wind…details be damned he didn’t seem to know much about all of the scientific specifics BUT he did know about it’s social history of being a hangout for delinquents pre 1997 takeover by the Navajo nation. Supposedly teens used to go there to all types of partying and the sparkle in his eye told me he was one of them. This was further substantiated once he started describing all the Native American symbolism of the formations in the canyon. There was the “Hand of God”, A Raven…then there was “George Washington”, “Batman”, “Baby Elephant”…I mean WHAAAAATTTT…there aren’t baby elephants and celebrated pale faces in Native American culture. I mean I could see everything he pointed out but clearly his discovery had a lot to do with his “partying days”
The tour was peaceful and calm until “The worst couple in the worlds” heeled hyena of a wife decided to step on Jill! Nobody steps on Jill. I tried to chase her around a dark corner and push her into a wall but she was a quick sneaky one and got away. Despite that run in we made it out safely and back to the guide headquarters. We loaded into Falcor and worst couple in the world climbed up into their rented Hummer H2. We watched as the wife drove into the sunset with her husband blowing kisses to her, yuck.
A couple of hours later we made it back to our Grand Canyon abode and got prettified for our fancy meal at El Tovar. We knew we would be a little early BUT there was another reservation for some other McMahon’s 15 minutes before our reservation…maybe we could just slide into their spot. Alas we didn’t need to be sneaky because the other McMahon’s had cancelled so the New York McMahon party slid right on in! Ricky and I ordered the Pork Chops and Jill and Liam ordered the Pasta. Ricky decided to make all types of requests with his meal then once it arrived…seeing mine requested the reversal of all his earlier requests. Our waiter seemed very confused. We survived dinner and were dead tired so we all headed back to go to bed, at a whopping 8:30pm. Party animals!
-Kanya
Next Stop: Sedona, AZ