the scenic route

If you've known me long you know that straight lines are not really my style. I enjoy the scenic detours. In planning this trip, Shelley decided to take that fact and run with it.

Tuesday night we left DisneyLand and drove through to Las Vegas.

I hate Vegas. It's hot and crowded and tacky and noisy and... ugh. Still, she had never been there, and this trip is partly about seeing the sights of the West, so... detour. It was exactly as I remember it - awful. I hope I never "get" to go back.

However... just about 45 minutes from Las Vegas is the Hoover Dam. THAT was a sight worth seeing. An engineering triumph. A brilliant idea. A testimony to the audacity of mankind. A monument to our need for control (comment I overheard @ a rest stop). Whatever you think of it, it is impressive. For that, I'm glad to have made the detour.

After checking out the Hoover Dam, we drove on to the Grand Canyon. Vegas is about 4 hours from DisneyLand. The Grand Canyon is about 4 hours from Vegas. The original plan had been to get to the Grand Canyon around sunset, Wednesday.

We didn't.

Instead, we got to enjoy a sudden stormburst - complete with warm, pelting rain (northwesterners - NOTHING like home) and lightning. Then, once the skies were clear, God painted a majestic sunset for us (okay, maybe for others, too) over the flatlands.

So... last night we camped at the Grand Canyon. Just because we could. We didn't make it out to see the sunrise. I'm sorry to report that it actually didn't occur to me to set an alarm. We just went out to admire the view when we happened to be up and ready. It was still pretty spectacular! Talk about getting a glimpse at God's timeline. My mind reels as I contemplate how many millenia were the forces of nature at work to shape that amazing view. Wow! And I get to sit on a bench - no hiking... bad shoe story, :( - and admire it for just as long as I want. Just like my beloved ocean, or the GIANT redwoods, that amazing landscape reminded me of exactly how "small" I am.

Today we travelled more-or-less backward. Down "Historic Route 66" to some burg about midway between the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon, where we then headed South, toward Lake Havasu. More beautiful scenery. More interesting people. More bizarre road-side distractions. Really, there were probably several "better" routes to our ultimate destination. We could've skipped Vegas. We could've bypassed the Hoover Dam. We could, in fact have skipped the Grand Canyon entirely, and missed all that glory. Or just pushed on from there and not seen this shocking little oasis in the middle of the desert. But that's not the point. Sometimes the journey IS the adventure.