The Happy Event

Here we are at long last - the ghosts of Heather past, present and future gathered together to eat, drink and celebrate. For the absent friends who missed out, come see what you missed.


First, check out the frock!


Heather Hukins dressed by George Gross and Christopher Shaw - the best shopping pal a girl ever had. Half the staff of the Sydney CBD David Jones think I should have married him.

There were guests from the family and people who have been friends so long that they're like family. Below from left to right: my brother Chris, family friends Hank and Chris, my mother Vickie, grandmother Enid and sister-in-law Stacie.


Below: Gary, Patricia, the Daddy Boss, Viv, Christo and Wendy.



Below: Nat, Blake, Tiff, Yuki, Eric and Marcus.


Below: Darrell, Caroline, James, Matt and Rachel.


Public service convention clockwise from top left: Edmund, Anita, Steve, Marcus (token non-government employee), me and Christopher.


For those of you who have been keeping count, Christopher is indeed the fourth Chris-variant on the guest list. I have decided that I need to either rationalise my Chris collection or insist that most of them change their names.


Something about weddings always makes people want to pose in pairs.


My dear old friend Blake poses above with his girlfriend Tiff (who took the photos at my farewell party much earlier in the history of this blog).


Matt and Rachel, who works with Marcus, are pictured above early in the night. This is before the Sambuca shots.

Yuki (chief photographer) and Eric came from San Francisco for the happy event. Some people really will go a long way for a party.


While technically not "a couple," the Daddy Boss did get up close and personal with the Clown. They do look strangely comfortable together.


Above: the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I seated Anita and Edmund together, confident that they would hit it off almost at once. Based on this photo, I was right.


Above: the middle of a beautiful friendship. My dear friends Anita and Christopher keep me more or less sane all week so that I can properly enjoy the odd mad party.


Above: a rather strange stage in an otherwise perfectly sensible friendship.


Above: the beginning of the end. It was all downhill from here.


Spot the Sambuca drinker in this happy family ...

New Year's Resolutions

Okay, okay, I know it's been a month since I last posted anything on this journal, and that the blog now lags not only half a continent, but half a world behind my actual location. To regular readers I apologise for this unforgivably long fast in my already rather bulimic writing pattern.

There's just been so much going on! I kept travelling to the very last hours of my time in the USA, looping back around the southern half of the country, then cruising to the Bahamas and even flying to Panama for a few days. Then once I managed to get back to Fresno, I squeezed in quick trips to Las Vegas and San Francisco in the week before I headed back to Sydney. I also managed to squeeze in a cracking good farewell party (big hugs to everyone who came).

For the last seven days I've been back in Sydney, trying to assemble my life before I go back to work in just a few more, despite suffering from the curiously symmetrical sibling flu to the one that afflicted me when I first arrived in Fresno. Marcus and I were both flattened by it in San Francisco and have been collapsed under its considerable weight ever since.

Now that I can almost breathe through my nose again I have had time to reflect on the past year. It's been quite an adventure, and difficult enough to live through, let alone catalogue faithfully. Nevertheless, do not fear that you will not have the opportunity to "share" my adventure through the world wide whinge. I kept a small paper journal with me throughout my travels and noted many and varied blogworthy stories for your interest and amusement. It is still my intention to chronicle the entire epic saga, even if only so that I might look back over it for the occasional nostalgic stroll down amnesia lane. Bear with me just a little longer, I promise to pick up the road trip trail right where I left off.

Death in the Family

Regular readers will have noticed that despite the frenetic pace of my adventure, there has been a sag in my blogging activity. Consequently the blog is now rather behind and I will be striving to catch up with myself again over the next week or so.

There has, however, been a recent event that I feel the need to report from outside the lagging chronological sequence of the blog. A very dear family friend died unexpectedly at home one night when his big, kind heart suddenly failed. But don't try to fit this post into the blog sequence, and don't be confused when his ghost arises as a living presence in upcoming posts.

Don Morgan was a kind, generous and gentle man, and a longtime friend of Patricia and her family. He was the kind of friend who helps rearrange the furniture, picks you up at the airport, lends you his car on a moment's notice or insists on sleeping on the couch while house guests take his bed.

The last time I saw Don he told me he was feeling better than he had in ten years. He was happy and relaxed, trying new adventures like canoeing and photography and thinking about buying a motorcycle. It seemed like so many things were just beginning for him that it's easier to believe in the promise of his plans than the reality of his death.

Don is survived by his beloved son Brendon, of whom he was immensely proud, and by the many friends who miss him very much.

Grand Canyon - East

After the trauma of the frozen mule ride, I changed into dry clothes in a public toilet and gingerly drove off, still shivering, with the puff pouring out heat onto my socks. It was still grey and drizzling, but strangely quiet and beautiful. The puff felt like a submarine, like a private bubble filled with the swirling rush of hot air. Outside the armour of the puff the world stood cool and brooding.

One way to gain an appreciation of the enormity of the Grand Canyon is to drive from the North Rim, around to the east and back down to Flagstaff, south of the Grand Canyon. It's a very, very, very long drive. It's such a long drive that I drove into entirely new weather, dry, bright and hot. I slowly thawed out as I marvelled at the scenery by the side of the road.

In most places, this kind of scenery would be a destination in itself. Here it is just what you have to drive past to get to the good stuff.

Grand Canyon - Mule Ride

Despite the overcast day, I was looking forward to my mule ride adventure with Canyon Trail Rides.

We stood around in an icy little huddle. Hunched and shuffling, we did the kind of stupid things you do when your brain is half frozen and half asleep, like trying to blow on your hands even though you're wearing gloves. The wranglers bustled around us, businesslike in the misty chill, cinching girths and fitting bridles. One of the wranglers sorted us onto mules based on our amount of riding experience.

"Have you ridden before?"
"Mules? Never. Horses? A lot."
"A lot?"
"Yes, a lot. At least one, maybe two or three lots."

The wrangler didn't even smile. If my fingers were still responding to messages from my brain they would have crossed in the hope that this woman wasn't going to be our guide.

My mule was a particularly splendid animal, tall and slim framed and evenly coloured, with lovely long furry ears. His name is Mike, and he's a very good mule.

Despite my inability to cross my fingers, my wish came true and the unamused lady wrangler was not our guide. Instead we had the charming, and delightfully humorous guidance of Swanny, a genuine cowboy. He was terrific company and full of little jokes. When I sneezed he asked if I was allergic to mules. When I denied any such allergy Swanny said: "What about cowboys?"

He also shared interesting little tidbits of mule lore. Mules are excellent animals for steep, narrow trails of this sort because they tend to have stronger shoulders than horses. Swanny described mules as having 1.25 horsepower. I knew that a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, but Swanny gave more details. A mule is the result of breeding a male donkey with a female horse. Mules can come in as many shapes and sizes as the horses they're bred from. In our group we had mules bred from narrow shouldered thoroughbred mares, solid chested quarter horse mares, and Fred below, bred from a stocky draught horse mare.

I asked Swanny if mules were generally bred by artificial insemination. He said that they're usually bred by mating the two animals. I was surprised. "How do you mate a mule with a draught horse?" I asked. "With a stepladder?"

Swanny glanced at the young Australian girl and was suddenly bashful. "Mules are ... can I say ... blessed? That's never a problem."

The mules carried us steadily down into the canyon. The best views came just after we dropped below the tree line. The distinctively coloured rock strata are clearly visible from steep, narrow trail. Swanny turned out to be an amateur geologist as well as a professional mulologist and told us about each new layer as we passed through it.

Swanny stopped us after a while and walked back up the path, tightening our girths. He stumbled, squeezing past on the narrow trail. "Cowboys aren't known for good walking skills."

I laughed. "Pretty well known for good drinking skills though."

Swanny laughed even harder. "Maybe those two are related."

As we rode further into the canyon, the weather became gradually nastier. A light mist of drizzle hardened into a cold, steady rain. Ponchos had been forbidden because of the risk they would frighten the mules. So our jeans gradually soaked us to the skin and chilled us to the bone. By the time we were two thirds of the way to the end of the ride I was shivering uncontrollably. I have seldom been so rain soaked and never been so cold for so long.

We reached our stopping point and prised ourselves painfully off our mules. We'd all stiffened up horribly with the combination of unfamiliar activity and the excruciating cold. We staggered on numb legs up a short trail to huddle in the slight shelter outside the pit toilets. Swanny produced a sack lunch for each of us, with a sandwich, a small bag of chips, a drink and a single serve packet of two mini oreos. Despite the unfortunate atmosphere and my uncontrollable shivering, I ate every crumb.

The rain had thoroughly settled in and I was now truly soaked, even under my waterproof layer. My shirt had wicked up water from my drenched jeans and was almost as wet as my socks, which were filled with water. I had taken off my gloves to eat, and couldn't have pulled them back on even if I could bear the thought of their cold, wet pressure on my skin.

Swanny tossed us all back up onto our mules where we clung miserably as they climbed steadfastly back out of the canyon. Visibility had dropped to almost nothing and we rode up the narrow path through a dense cloud.

As cold and unhappy as we were, it was an interesting view of the canyon that comparatively few people ever get to see. The rock walls flowed with sudden waterfalls. Sometimes the path was cut into the rock face like a tunnel with the outside wall missing. Water ran down on the outside and our mules clip clopped patiently through this cave behind a wall of water.

I had been soaked and chilled to the bone for hours, was shivering violently, couldn't feel my extremities and had a nightmarish headache, but my sense of humour was still intact.

Swanny tried to keep our spirits up with jokes. "I expect to see you all walking normal when you get off."

I could still raise a sort of strangled chuckle. "We'll be walking as well as real cowboys."

When we finally made it back up to the trail head Swanny hauled us bodily off the mules and solemnly presented us with certificates.

We were also allowed to keep our branded water bladders.

They are two of my hardest won and most valued souvenirs.

Grand Canyon - North Rim

Another pre-dawn awakening. The obnoxious hour was so that I could make it from a town in south western Utah to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona before 7 am.

I reluctantly abandoned warm sheets to brave the chilly air and loaded the puff in the strange hush of around 4am. There is something rather nice about a solitary drive in the wee hours. The world looks different when everyone else is wrapped up in their dreams. So I drove through the silent, empty streets in the early morning darkness. The road was wet from overnight rain and the clouds still low enough to reflect the streetlights.

There is no sunrise on a heavily overcast morning. The night just gradually blends into day. So it was this morning. Night blearily found its way into day and the series of small towns were lost in the vast wilderness. On this side of the Grand Canyon the foliage is different. I drove through several miles of heavily wooded National Park before getting anywhere near the canyon itself. Deer grazed in the shadows by the sides of the road and an intermittent drizzle softened the view through the windshield.

The closest available parking spot in the lodge carpark was a long way from the entrance. It was a bitterly cold trot through the half light, although at least the rain seemed to have stopped. I was here in this lonely place at this lonely time for a Mule Ride down into the canyon. The weather did not seem favourable and neither did my first encounter with the woman on reception. A couple of other people booked on my trip had already bailed out because of the rain and the ride would not go ahead with too few participants. I said I was game to ride in the rain and signed a document accepting full responsibility for the possibility that I might die or freeze or get get hurt or scared or rabies or Ebola or whatever. I promised not to wear a poncho or carry anything except my camera and a short rainproof jacket.

I sat by the fire in the lodge and waited. It was warm and quiet, the leather seat was soft and I was very low on sleep. I would like to be one of the those trusting people who can just doze off in a strange chair in a strange room, but I am not. So I sat, wide awake and dead tired in a cozy chair, waiting for other tourists who are more afraid of missing out on the trip than they are of hypothermia.

An older couple wandered up and signed on for the all day ride. Then a girl of about 13 and her father, both Aussies, arrived. I felt suddenly homesick when he responded to warnings about the cold by tucking in his Wallabies jersey and saying "She'll be right, mate."

Five people was, apparently, the magic number. The trip was on. We rattled off in a dusty old van under the somber, heavy sky.

Zion National Park - Riverside Walk

One of the star attractions of Zion National Park is the Riverside Walk.

The park's promo materials give the walk a well deserved rave review: "Beautiful, shaded walk meanders through forested glens, following the path of the Virgin River into a high-walled canyon. Easy, 2 miles/1.5 miles round trip."

That certainly sounds like an obvious stop for a single day visit. The walk is cool and peaceful. On the right, a tall canyon wall sprouts vegetation from the trickle of damp seep springs.

On the left, the Virgin River flows cold and clear over rounded river rocks.

The vegetation even supports a mini freshwater swamp right here in the middle of a desert canyon.

The Riverside Walk ends with a small sandy beach at the bottom of the deep canyon. The walls are so close together that the river fills the entire width of the channel. This is the beginning of The Narrows, a 16 mile mostly wading route, where the Riverside Walk becomes the River In walk.

I was willing, but ill prepared. The water was intensely cold and I had only one pair of shoes about my person. I considered returning to the Cream Puff for backup footwear and a change of trousers, but knew that returning via the park shuttle would take hours off my adventure. Instead, I rolled up my cuffs, tied my shoelaces around my neck and decided to wade on until hypothermia kicked in.

Unfortunately, that didn't take very long. My teetering steps with numb feet on slick river rocks were exhausting work and made me very nervous about the $2500 camera hanging over my shoulder. It can't have been much more than a mile before I gave up and turned back. It was a wise choice. The last few chilly steps back to the Riverside Walk were absolutely the last of which I was capable until I'd thawed out my feet on a sunny rock. It must have been a fairly alarming performance because a passer-by offered to help me balance with a foot on the rock. I declined his kind offer out of sheer humiliation, a humiliation that increased several hours later when we met again and he said to his wife "Look, it's the hopping lady."

My feet screamed vilification at me for the remainder of the day, but I maintain that the view was totally worth it. I was hugely jealous of my better prepared companions who forged on ahead in river shoes, wetsuit stockings or, in the case of an inventive group of German tourists, tall garbage bags fastened around their legs and feet under their shoes.

If you ever go to Zion National Park, and you really must, be prepared; wear waders. You don't have to do the whole 16 miles to get amazing views ... just around the next bend.

Zion National Park - Utah

Following the road into Zion National Park, I was thrumming with anticipation. I've been in so many amazing national parks lately that I have become rather jaded, but I had been eagerly looking forward to my visit to Zion. So many people had suggested it or mentioned it, that I had classified it as a compulsory stop on my journey.

The park was named for the Hebrew word meaning "refuge." It's easy to see why, with most of the park devoted to the passage of the Virgin River through the deep desert canyons it has carved into the rock. There is much to see here, and one day was not nearly enough to do it justice.

At first glance, water seems like the last thing you'd expect to find in the midst of all this dry, red, desert sandstone. A closer look at the swirling erosion patterns is more suggestive. This area is prone to flash flooding when the snows melt and the water level rises massively, scouring away the soft, porous rock.

The influence of water is everywhere. Here at the weeping wall, a short, but steep walk from the Weeping Rock shuttle stop, water drips continuously from above. Standing behind the curtain of water, the visitor can look back out into the park, through the steady trickle that continues to reshape the rock.

Amateur stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, is hard to avoid in Zion, where the strata are laid bare for all the world to see. Pale Navajo Sandstone rises above the distinctive red Springdale Sandstone of the lower formations.

The crumbly, scrub covered lower rock ledge is part of the Kayenta Formation. Kayenta mudstone commonly features dinosaur tracks and testifies to the age of these formations.

The grandiose, reverent language of Zion National Park extends to the names of the landmarks. The shuttle stops include Temple of Sinewava, Angels Landing, and Court of the Patriarchs. The surrounding mountains include The West Temple, Altar of Sacrifice, The East Temple, The Great White Throne and Mountain of Mystery. More than once I caught myself speaking in hushed, confessional tones and shying away from the loud, sacrilegious voices of some of the other visitors. There's something about overwhelming natural beauty that brings out a pompous junior librarian in some people. I was thus afflicted in Zion National Park.

Utah - Virgin

The road to Zion National Park runs along the Virgin River, through the small town of Virgin, Utah. Wikipedia reports a population of just 400 people at the last census, so don't blink as you pass through or you'll miss it altogether. Here is a typical Virgin residence.

You'll notice the marked absence of neighbours, as well as the moon, still visible at 10:30am.

The Virgin general store features a petting zoo and a model frontier town. I secretly wanted to go in and look around, but was too shy to pay the fee without a kid to hide behind. Instead, I bought a thoroughly grown-up CD of Native American flute music. I also admired some unusual plush toys made by Wishpets. I'd never seen such a cute, fluffy, yet surprisingly lifelike tarantula or scorpion before. I really wanted one of them too.

The model town boasts a very prominent jail (gaol) right in the main street. Knowing a little bit about Virgin, Utah from Michael Moore's 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, I wasn't surprised. This tiny town was mentioned in the film for the singular distinction of having passed a law in May 2000 which requires every homeowner to own and maintain a gun in the residence.

I didn't pause here long. I don't think I'm really a Virgin kind of girl.

Las Vegas Regained

I had planned to head directly from Grand Canyon West to my bed in Utah. However, I finished at the Canyon ahead of schedule, because there was nothing to do there. Instead of making an early start for my motel, I called Marcus and invited myself to his dinner with Walter in Las Vegas.

Walter turned out to be charming company, as well as an excellent source of free concert tickets. I was delighted to meet him, as well as to discover that he has pokies (slot machines) in his living room. Wow, a real live Las Vegas resident!

An otherwise perfectly enjoyable and normal dinner was made blogworthy by the involvement of Waitress Ratched. Our experience with her started out in more or less the usual way. She introduced herself as "Mrs Condescension," which is not her real name, but should have been. She has one of those annoyingly fake, sweet little girl voices that some people use to hide the fact that they're incredibly bossy and obnoxious. As the meal went on, it became apparent that she wasn't so much "taking care of us tonight" as "supervising the riff raff."

I don't know what caused this attitude. We were dressed reasonably well, and we could afford to pay. I don't think we looked like we were there to steal the silverware. We certainly weren't threatening to eat with our fingers, or belch loudly, or defecate at the table, or do any of the other things that she plainly feared. Perhaps she was concerned that we would cause harm to ourselves or others with the sharp implements because she took it upon herself to direct us to the proper method for doing almost everything. I have eaten out a lot, but never before has any waitress explained to me how to use the butter, or when to eat the bread, or just what vegetable I ought to be ordering.

Somehow we made it to the end of the meal without injuring ourselves (or her) with the salt shaker. By this stage we were collectively engaged in focused hatred of this officious bitch. I couldn't think of a way to complain about her because she hadn't been rude to us, hadn't openly insulted us and hadn't spilled anything on us. She was just a horrible person who looked at us like something she'd scraped off her shoe.

Then something miraculous happened. It was something so wonderful that the water in my glass magically transformed into nectar, ranneth over and washed me of all my pain. Proving that, even in a random universe, sometimes people get exactly what they deserve, Mrs Condescension screwed up. All my good deeds were rewarded, and hers punished, in the moment when she brought our bill (check) when we'd already asked someone for a dessert menu and waited ages for it. One of the sweetest moments of my life was the second after I politely requested that she take her filthy itemised invoice away and bring me a dessert menu at once, because I had already waited far too long. I used much more civilised language, of course, but I think my meaning was clear.

Mrs Condescension started channeling her slightly less evil twin Mrs Obsequious and I drove out of Las Vegas in a warm, triumphant fog of smugness. Alas, the forces of justice had not yet finished their work. To punish me for my joy at Mrs Condescension's suffering, they arranged for Marcus and Walter to have an utterly brilliant time seeing Penn and Teller perform live while I drove for hours to a second rate motel in southern Utah. Next time I will insist that Marcus complain about lousy service instead of doing it myself.

Big ditch, big dreams

After I'd rattled the dust puff back along the endless dirt road away from Grand Canyon West, being back on a sealed surface felt like flying as I headed back towards civilisation. I had slowed to the requisite crawl to pass through the small town of Dolan Springs when I saw something rather odd: a man wearing a brightly coloured shirt and a large black and white jester's hat was cavorting by the side of the road, jumping up and down and waving his arms. What could this be about?

I decided that he was probably harmless. It would be an unusual axe murderer who made such a blatant display. So I pulled over to investigate.

It turns out he's a lovely fellow who was trying to draw attention to the grand opening of his new store. I was their first customer.

It's a funky little place, run by two friendly fellow travellers who have decided to settle here and open a store. Why not?

I bought two things. The first was an orange handbag for my Ant Candy, who loves everything orange. I explained to my new friends that my awesome and outrageous Ant Candy was really the first benefactor of their store and that I would deliver her purchase when I eventually pass through Denton, Texas again.

The second was a beanie that looks like a cactus. Sometime when winter arrives I am confident that someone will take a picture of me wearing this ridiculous item and I will post it on the blog for everyone to enjoy.

If you're ever heading for Grand Canyon West, try to stop here. The store is on the left just after you turn off the main road into Dolan Springs. It used to be an auto shop, so although it's been repainted, it's still a small rectangular building. Say hi for me!

Grand Canyon West - Indian Village

An additional attraction at Grand Canyon West is the Indian Village, a collection of recreated traditional Native American dwellings from various tribes and periods.

The wikiup is a Hualapai dwelling made of juniper timber, brush and earth. The walls and floors were lined with animal skins. The dwellings were often constructed on a large scale for whole family groups. Sweat lodges were used for healing and as clubhouses by the men of the tribe.

The tipi of the Plains Indians is well suited to the nomadic lifestyle. Buffalo hide lining on the inside provides warmth in winter. The conical shape is intended to reflect nature's perfect form. Fires were built in the centre and smoke escaped through the hole in the top.

The Navajo Tribe built Hogans like this one. It is traditionally built of wood and mud, spiritual materials because they are part of the earth. The wood must not come from trees that have been struck by lightning because objects struck by lightning are said to have lost their spirit. The entrance always faces east because goodness and prosperity are associated with the dawn of a new day. The male Hogan is pointy with a hole in the top, like the one above. The symbolism is more apparent when you see the female Hogan.

The female Hogan is rounded, like big breasts.

The houses of the Hopi are more substantial. The stone and mortar is plastered and whitewashed, with clay used to connect the structural elements. This form of construction readily allowed the Hopi to dismantle or extend on structures. It's nice to think that the Hopi invented Lego.

Grand Canyon West

Whenever I told anyone about my last visit to the Grand Canyon, without fail someone asked me if I went on the Skywalk. I patiently explained that I had visited the South Rim and the Skywalk was in another part of the canyon. Gradually, as this conversation was repeated over and over, I started to feel like I had missed something important by missing this Skywalk thingy. Perhaps I’d somehow failed to have the essential Grand Canyon experience.

Thus it was that the Cream Puff came to be rattling along 11 miles of an unsealed, corrugated, dusty “road” to Grand Canyon West, which is part of the lands of the Hualapai Nation.

Despite the vigorous wind, the dust of the drive still managed to cling to the car, which I temporarily renamed Dust Puff . The headache I developed on the drive also stuck with me for the rest of the day. I was now very tired, after three days of entertaining guests in Fresno, then the farewell party, the long day in Death Valley and the long night in Las Vegas. I didn’t realise how exhausted I really was until I found myself trying to pay the entrance fee to Grand Canyon West with my NRMA membership card. While I waited in the sun for the shuttle bus to the various attractions, I resolved not to get too close to the edge of the canyon in case I had some kind of narcoleptic episode and fell to my death.

The first shuttle stop was at the Skywalk that I’ve been feeling so inadequate about. There’s a lot of construction going on up there at the moment, so at first glance it doesn’t look particularly inspiring. In fact, even at second glance it doesn't. It probably won't look much better when they've finished building the resort they're working on.

Actually getting onto the Skywalk is quite an ordeal. First you have to lock everything you own, including your camera, in a locker. No cameras are allowed on the Skywalk. The stated reason is to avoid the risk of dropped items scratching the glass. Really? I can put it on a strap around my neck. If my neck hits your floor you have bigger problems than scratched glass. I suspect the real reason is so that tourists can't take any uncontrolled photos. You can, of course, purchase "professional" photographs of yourself on the Skywalk, which feels rather exploitative, especially when you've just paid $80 and driven for hours just to get there.

The Skywalk is also disappointingly small. You look at the statistics and see that it's a glass walkway extending 20 m out from the cliff and you think "Wow, that's impressive." Then you stand on it and think, "Wow, did they start measuring from the car park?"

Visitors are issued with little shoe coverings to prevent scratches to the glass and prevent slipping. No other tourists were on the Skywalk when I approached it. I smiled at each of the security guards I passed, put on my little booties and shuffled out onto the Skywalk.

It didn't feel like walking on air, or flying. It felt like walking on a very solid and secure transparent surface. There was one cool moment when I looked straight down, from the very outer part of the Skywalk. For a second I felt vertigo and thought "Okay, that's a long way down." Then I looked back up and realised that I'd just done the whole Skywalk in about 5 seconds.

Feeling a bit ripped off, having just paid $80 for this thrill, I shuffled back around the Skywalk in the other direction. I might as well get a whole minute's entertainment out of it. I hung around at the outermost point for a little while and admired the canyon until I tired of communing with the view while security watched over me like an Eagle Rock.

This is not the best angle from which to identify the eagle. The best angle is visible only from the dusty windows of the shuttle bus, or from closer to the verboten cliff edge. With a bit of imagination you can see the main part of its body in the centre of the shot, the span of its wing to the right and part of the wing to the left.

The coolest sight in Grand Canyon West is actually this abandoned guano mining equipment. Guano (bat manure) deposited in caves in the face of the cliff on the other side of the canyon was extracted, then winched across to this station. Guano is useful in the production of fertiliser and gunpowder. I advise you never to allow an open flame near a bat, just in case. When the guano mine was closed down, the cables remained stretched across from the canyon until a military pilot did a quick run through the canyon for kicks and tangled his aircraft up in the bat poo lines. The cables were then dropped down into the canyon, where they remain.