True Love at the Grand Canyon
Funny thing really, nostalgia. It makes you want to drag the present all the way to the past, and once you get there, you want to know what the future looks like. If you want to experience and see the beauty of a family trip captured through the eyes of a child, then True love at the Grand Canyon is the perfect read for you.
Memoirs can get mushy. They can get fuzzy. They can get mashed up. They can get meandering and rambling and veering. Most importantly, they can get boring. True Love does none of that. It is wit, sarcasm, innocence and memory rolled into one really fun read. And it is honest, a quality that is so lacking in travel blog posts today. No misleading grandeur and a forced mystical aura, or surrounding hoopla that falsely heightens the anticipation of a new place. This is a trip to the Canyon captured through the curious and concise eyes of a child. And what you see is what you get. No flying unicorns or discount deals here.
A quick perusal takes you down a dusty desert road, suddenly crossed by impudent swirling hay dervishes, while a dog bays on the horizon somewhere, and a sleepy pair of eyes though bored, watch through a moving window and try to take in every frame of the slowly changing colors of an evening Arizona sky. “Full bladders and empty stomachs” -single out a person who has not experienced the exact feeling on long road trips and I will say…bravo?! Or would you rather have a cookie instead? True Love at the Grand Canyon is chockfull of such witty observations that are cleverly put into words.
Reviews don’t get better than this. Get views on Cameron Trading Post, East Rim Drive, and Desert View Tower straight from the mouth of babes.
Perfunctory family photographs in front of viewpoints and monuments, two hour detours for fitting in that attraction that was missed the last time, endless stops and those keeping eyes-peeled-for-a-restroom moments, deep dives into the car’s trunk for woolens to ward off wanton chilly weather, realizations that there was an easier way out here, crashing at the hotel after a long road trip, the mad rush to finish everything on the itinerary before the day draws close, getting too close to the edge…in more ways than one, and the sense of accomplishment on completing the to-do list, and the inevitable blankness that follows compelling you to start planning the next trip – it’s all in here and are emotions all of us have been privileged to experience at some point in our lives.
True Love at the Grand Canyon reminds us that family trips are what they are …chaotic with a lot of crazy, with the occasional cool swooping in to surprise. And yet, we take one each year, religiously, almost zealously with one basic element keeping it all together – “true love”.
