Vicki and I got up early this travel morning in order to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. We got up quickly and dressed in the chilly pre-dawn at 5:15 to get to the overlook nearest us before the 5:40 sunrise. Several dozen people had already gathered at the overlook we chose, and we were both struck by the religious quality of the quiet that pervaded the gathering of people from many different nations who had come to watch the dawning of a new day. The moment the sun ignited the canyon rim to the east of us, everyone voiced an involuntary “ahh!” that transcended all of our language differences.
We felt we did not miss worship this day – and Vicki texted Ruthann, who would be preaching at Skyline soon, three hours ahead of us in the east, to assure her of our prayers and to tell her about the worship we had been involved in before the sunrise, as strangers assisted each other taking photographs of families and couples, accompanied with expressions of gratitude in many languages. We walked thoughtfully back to the van and drove back to coffee, breakfast and packing up to go.
After letting the kids sleep in a little, we pulled away from site J-66 at 9:45, driving south 50 miles to I-40, where we turned east for the final week-long leg that will take us home. We have much enjoyed the fantastic sights this trip, but we will be grateful to return home to friends and familiar places and patterns of our lives. By the end of the day, we will have traveled 3800 miles, not including another 1100 miles while sightseeing. And we will have another 2000 miles to go.
Today’s trip is a bit longer because of the lack of AC as we cross the desert in 95 degree heat. On the bright side, we are driving much of the old historic Route 66, and we play oldies above the roar of the wind with the windows rolled down in order to get into the spirit of America’s Highway. When we pulled off of I-40 at Holbrook, AZ, to make a side trip through the Petrified Forest National Park, we passed the Wigwam Motel (with rooms in the shape of teepees) and went nuts laughing and trying to get a picture.
The Petrified Forest was fascinating, if hot. Joy looked after Skye while we strolled through 200 million year old trees that had been gsathered by an ancient river and turned to quartz when they were covered with sediment and volcanic ash, and then broke apart and exposed in the uplifting of the Colorado Plateau beginning 60 million years ago. We also stopped to see 1200 year old petroglyphs in an area dubbed “newspaper rock” because there were so many of them. Then we drove through the painted desert before resuming our trip east on long, flat I-40.
We arrived at our campsite outside of Santa Fe just before the office closed, and set up in a record 15 minutes in order to get to an area restaurant called Harry’s Road House that served up some wonderful Mexican food. We watched the moon rise on the short drive to our new home for the next 36 hours, and made some online updates for the first time since Moab, thanks to the WiFi at the campsite.
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