Thanks to the episode of the Brady Bunch where America's favorite blended family headed out to the Grand Canyon State, part of me felt like we should be driving in a station wagon instead of our Cadillac.
Heads up. When you make a journey, however, epic, with a small child, know this: they will be more dazzled by the hotel swimming pool than they are by the grandest of views. Five-year-old Alex was delighted by the indoor saltwater pool at The Grand Canyon Railway Hotel in Williams and by the two lovely pools at The Wigwam, a swanky resort outside of Phoenix.
Thanks to a handsome tax return and the magic of online hotel bargaining, we stayed in luxurious accommodations the likes of which we would not usually have considered. Suddenly, I feel entitled to be ensconced in opulence as opposed to embedded at the local Cloud 9.
Of course, if you have a small child and an 8-month-old baby to boot, pretty soon your swanky hotel room looks like your own messy house. We're talking toys strewn every which way but loose and an overflowing trash can. How is it that when you've packed light for a three-day journey, you can manage to have so many clothes overflowing your suitcases and finding their way onto the floor. Maybe that's just messy people problems, but we had to undertake a significant clean-up job before we left the 'Wam, and I made sure to leave a decent tip for the beleaguered housekeeping staff.
We left the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel on Saturday afternoon and got to the Grand Canyon just before sunset. The enormous gorge—that geological layer cake, that symphony of reds and browns and pinks—was lit up as if from within. Unfortunately, I didn't snap a single scenic picture of my family gathered on the world's most famous precipice. (The above photo comes courtesy of the Grand Canyon National Park Service.)
I did, however, come back from Arizona with some cool souvenirs and an interesting story, all hailing from a little town called Quartzsite. I'd never been there or even heard of the place but, given the name, I correctly deduced that the town is "The Rock Capital of the World" and chose it as our lunch stop on the I-10.
I believe in The Secret, at least some of the time. If you haven't seen the motivational film by the same name, here's the upshot: your thoughts become things. I've watched it often in order to try to brainwash myself to overcome my miles-wide pessimistic streak.
My tentative belief in the Law of Attraction was further reinforced when I manifested the bookstore of my dreams in Quartzsite. Sort of.
I said to my significant other, Brian, "This is the kind of place that has a fantastic bookstore, something with a name like 'The Reader's Magic Garden." Just as I said that, I encountered a large sign advertising a book-nook that I'll call 'The Refuge' in order to avoid libel.
As we pulled up to the place, I was excited, as only a die-hard book-lover can be.
There was even a large display of free books outside that you could rifle through, given that you were up to spending any time outdoors in heat that was, quite literally, hovering at 108 degree Fahrenheit.
Brian remained in the air conditioned car with the baby and Alex and I walked into the place, hand-in-hand. It was, indeed, full of books, books that I'm sure were trying to call my name, but as it turned out, there was no air conditioning, just a small portable swamp cooler plugged in in one corner that was dissolutely blowing out warm air.
I moved us further into the bookstore, in search of children's books. Suddenly, a rangy man, with long gray hair and desert-brown skin appeared. He was wearing nothing but what appeared to be an aboriginal sling about the very lowest part of his nether regions. He somehow looked more naked than he would have had he not been wearing a thong that he surely purchased from a catalog called "Sensual Outback Adventures." He greeted us and then headed up some stairs, possibly looking for his pants.
I'm a bit of a prude, something I'm always trying to fight against. For a moment, I said to myself, keep browsing, everyone has different fashion choices. But the combination of the furnace-like heat and the feeling that we had walked into someone's bedroom as opposed to their business sealed the deal. "Let's go," I said to Alex and we got back to the car. "Should we have stayed even though that guy wasn't wearing much clothes?" I asked Alex later. "No, we should have left," he replied with certainty.
At another exit in Quartzsite, where we hit a Carl's Jr., I was almost as excited to head to a huge emporium of stones as I had been for the bookstore. The prices were great, there were stones and pebbles and boulders and crystals and jewelry of every ilk. There also happened to be these giant, rock-like formations of glass in various hues. Desert glass? Beach glass? What process made them? I don't know, and if I hadn't been sitting on this blog like a bird on an egg, I would probably look it up.
Seeing the large glass rocks, I had an idea. I've promised my mom I will make her a Wizard of Oz garden in one portion of our yard. There were green rocks, luminescent and looking like nothing so much as like the rubble from the Emerald City. They looked like this. . .
Pretty cool, huh? So I bought about nine of them as a starter. I currently have them piled on a copper tray atop a plant stand in the Oz garden. I'm not sure if I'll keep them there for inspiration or try to do something more elaborate. Perhaps I'll return to Quartzite for more and actually try to craft an emerald tower or something like it--the kind of thing that MacGyver-like DIY artists post on Pinterest.
And who knows, maybe I'll venture back into that bookstore. Because despite the heat and the near-naked proprietor, I suspect that "The Refuge" has the most amazing cache of books--profound books, clever books, funny books, life changing books--in all of La Paz County, Arizona.
--Sarah Torribio
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