Our stop, Williams, Junction, was a very, very remote location. We stepped off onto the platform in the middle of a pine woods with one light and a dirt road. The Grand Canyon Hotel Shuttle was parked there waiting for us. There was a family that was waiting on the platform to board the train. Since people only get on in Williams to see the Grand Canyon, I asked the mom, "How was it?" "Unbelievable." She replied. I wondered if this same exchange takes place everyday as the train pulls in and departs. The people probably say the same word that doesn't even come close to describing the Grand Canyon.
Now at this point, I was starting to have those old "taxi" feelings. Here we were getting into a mini bus with a strange man in the middle of nowhere. Since the bus was marked with the hotel logo, and I didn't have much fight left in me at this late hour, I hopped into the bus and sat in the front seat. Google showed that the junction was close to the hotel and could be walked. Google was wrong. We drove several miles before we even came to a paved road. It was something like 10 miles back into town. Not walkable. For me, anyway.
The nice taxi man tried to chat as we drove back to the hotel, but quite frankly after 42 hours on the train, we just couldn't be very good conversationalists. We were beat. We finally got to the hotel at about 1:00 AM our time. Natalie was feeling very rough as she had begun to have cold symptoms. She had fallen asleep on the train then was awakened by loud noisy college boys. However, she said she wasn't too bad off and didn't show any kind of signs of fever.
The hotel had a very cozy Great Lodge look. We were so busy while we were staying there that we never got the chance to lounge around in the lobby, but it looked great! There were deep leather chairs, huge fireplace, and many Frederick Remington sculptures. We checked in, picked up our train tickets for the next day, barely managing to believe that we were going to physically manage to make it awake ever again! We lugged our luggage (hadn't we packed light????) to our room on the opposite side of the huge hotel. It was so far that I thought we might have crossed the state line back into New Mexico! Mike left me to battle the kids through showers and organizing the mess, while he hoofed it back outside to determine where our McDonald's breakfast would be located and find the place we needed to be at 9:00 AM. (Arizona time, thankfully!) We anticipated not having enough time to search it out in the morning as we would be very sleepy tonight. Since the Grand Canyon train tickets were $350.00 we didn't want to mess up and miss it!The hotel rooms at the Grand Canyon Hotel were just mediocre, but the beds were freshly made and were pretty comfortable. We really didn't have big expectations for the hotel room. I had researched it online and knew it was just a medium good hotel. There really was no where else to stay and be able to take the train without renting a car. We all slept without waking for 7 good hours. Big day tomorrow morning!
Follow us to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.........
http://janelleyelton.blogspot.com/2012/02/at-grand-canyon.html
No comments:
Post a Comment