Adventures in Arizona, Part III
I realized today that I didn’t completely finish the post on my day at the Grand Canyon. While on my way there, I passed a sign that said something like “Historic Route 66 District” with an arrow pointing the opposite way from where I was turning. It was getting around lunchtime for me, so I figured I’d grab something quick in the little tourist trap “town” right before the entrance to Grand Canyon park. I grabbed a burger there, then proceeded into the park to pay my $25 for a seven-day pass (completely worth it, even though I was only there for a few hours–the seven-day single-park pass is the cheapest pass they offer for Grand Canyon Park if one is traveling by car). Then I drove around, took a ton of pictures (some of which were in my previous post), then decided to start heading home.
On the way home, it was getting to be about dinner time, and I was nearing the point where I had turned away from the sign mentioned above. I decided I’d take a trip into the town to see what was there. That was a good decision. There were a ton of neat little shops there, and it looked like all of the original buildings had plaques describing what they were during the town’s heyday. I stopped at a busy diner for dinner. While there, this crazy brass band showed up and started playing outside. Then they left, and a guy I dubbed “The Tom Breiding of Arizona” started to play. It was fun. The food was good. It was on the expensive side. I dripped a bit of chili on my shirt. It was a fun time.
It turned out that this town was the terminus for the Grand Canyon Railway, a neat passenger excursion line that runs every day (except Christmas and Christmas Eve, I believe) from this town to the Grand Canyon. During the summer, the vintage 1960’s diesel engines are assisted by even more vintage steam engines. I had considered this option for my trip to the Canyon, but decided against it due to scheduling issues. While I was getting dinner, the diesels had apparently been turned around to ready them for the next day, and they were sitting on the tracks idling. I tried to get a few pictures, but the sun was going down in a bad spot, and the dark-painted locomotives vanished into the dark pictures. Oh well. It was neat to see, anyway. I noticed that the steam engine(s) were absent from the scene. It may be that they were taken to a different area for maintenance and shutdown for the evening, or maybe they weren’t running–I’m not sure, but I was hoping that I’d get to see them. For a bit of fun trivia, all of the steam engines operating at the Grand Canyon Railway were built in Pennsylvania. Three of the four were built in Pittsburgh by Alco. So there. We rule.
There were some informal sessions after class yesterday. By the time I was finished with them, I barely had enough time to call my pretty wife and tell her goodnight before she hit the sack. It was quickly getting later here in AZ, too, so I decided to just order a pizza. Therefore, there are no interesting updates for yesterday.
Today was a completely different matter, however. Class went well, and there were no after-class sessions scheduled, so I decided that I’d try to take-off for an interesting destination. During a break in class, I looked-up some of the other local national parks, and was sad to see that they all closed at 5PM. Since class would run until 5PM, there was no way that could happen. I instead found some of the Phoenix parks, which include mountain parks fairly close to where I was. They have lots of trails and facilities, which is nice. One of them is Lookout Mountain or Lookout Point, which is something like 600 feet of climb in about a half mile of trail. I decided that this was what I was going to do today. It was great fun. Class ended at 5PM. I ran my laptop up to my room, grabbed my camera and trademark hat, and hit the road.
The climb was not too bad, and the views were awesome. It was a good time. I had two Mexican restaurants recommended to me the previous day during class, so I decided to head to one of those for dinner. Holy cow. It was awesome, AND I spent less than $15 (including tip) for these huge portions that I couldn’t possibly finish. I love finding local places.
