The train journey from New Orleans to Flagstaff, Arizona, proved to be one of the most interesting times of my US trip. The journey took three days via LA and was mainly interesting because my normally lacklustre love life came back from the dead in the form of a Taiwanese lady called Ya-Hui. It all began innocently enough when she shared a box of goldfish crackers and I offered to share my blanket, which is now forever known as ‘Blanky the lucky blanket’. She changed all her travel plans and we went to the Grand Canyon and LA. I include this mainly to explain the change from I to we in the writing.
The train trip would have been dull otherwise, passing through the huge emptiness of Texas, if it had not been for the snogging sessions and a little kid called Robert. Robert was two and his vocabulary was greater by one if you didn’t count strange noises. Despite knowing more than one word, if I hadn’t sat next to Robert for the best part of two days I would have thought that he could only say mama. A typical conversation with his mother would carry out like so: – Mama…mama…mama…
– What?
– Mama…mama…mama…
– What?
– Mama…
– What?
– Mama…
– WHAT!?
– Mama…
– What do you want, Robert?
– Mama…
This carried on for most of his waking hours till his mother looked more dead than alive. On the morning after the second night on the train a man came up to Robert and said “If you say mama one more time I’m going to tie your tongue in a knot.”
We arrived in Flagstaff at six in the morning with it cold enough to see your breath. The advantage of travelling with someone else is the private room option at hostels which makes the stay much more comfortable. Flagstaff is part college town, part hippy oasis. It’s a centre for the alternative people trying to drop out and get back to nature while still being able to buy a good pizza. There is not much of interest culturally but most people come to Flagstaff because it’s the closest big town to the Grand Canyon, which was our ultimate destination.
The bus up to the canyon was besieged by road works which added about two hours onto the journey. The road travels through scrubby desert country until you get within range of the canyon when suddenly the most crap looking hotels and themed restaurants spring up, the lowlight being the Fred Flintstone Campground. Thankfully the Americans get all the bad taste out of their system before the canyon itself which has a little village on the south rim but has been left remarkably obstruction free. In fact, there is such a lack of fencing that they get an average of 14 deaths there per year, six having occurred at the time of our visit. ‘It’s hard to prepare for the canyon. Unlike mountains which are easily spotted from miles away, you have to be right in front of the Grand Canyon to get the proper effect. It is everything you imagine it to be and more. The vastness of the scale is almost too difficult to fit inside your head. If you do good deeds in this life I firmly believe that you get reincarnated as an eagle at the Grand Canyon hunting squirrels all day. It was a good place to share with someone.
Dave out.
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