Flagstaff to Arizona (Hollywood in between)

After my last day at the Canyon I had a full day before I needed to catch my train to Anaheim. I caught the shuttle out of Williams bag to Flagstaff at 11 30, arriving at 12; a full 9 hours before my train. Fantastic. I took a 50 minute walk to the grocery store where I bought a variety of food to subsidize my depleting trail mix stash. When exiting the store some man wanted me to give him money because he loved Jesus. I did not comply.
I then purchased socks before walking back to the train station. I essentially spent the next 6 hours stealing wi-fi from various places (the train station, downtown, this cafe) before boarding the 12 hour train to Los Angeles. I sat next to Dave, an older man from Australia who I met a few days before on the shuttle. He was fantastic and helped with the increasing need for some social connections.

California is beautiful. It really is just a nice place. We arrived in LA at 8 AM.

I immediately went to Hollywood, where I found Hollywood Boulevard. I could catch the second leg of my journey at any time. Hollywood was decent but I question some of the people who get their stars there. I mean, Judge Judy? Come on now

Bugs Bunny isn't even a person …

John Garfield? No, his name is John Arbuckle and the Cat is Garfield. Come on Hollywood, get a friggen grip.

Frustrated, I bought some breakfast and sat down for a bit. As it got late, more and more costumes showed up on the street. Spiderman, the Hulk, Shrek, heck, even Woody from Toy Story showed up for a bit.

Before leaving the restaurant I thought that maybe I should check where my hotel was.
I don't think I am ever going to search with Google for hotels again. There were 40 some hotels between the train station and mine, but no, of course it won't suggest that one, instead it puts me a 50 minute walk away from the train station, and a 53 minute walk away from the Arena. For the sake of exercise I decided to walk there once I got off the train. It was a nice hotel, I'll give them that much.

On the way to the game, I thought it would be best to grab the city bus, I didn't want to be spotted alone in the streets with my Nashville Jersey. It was good Friday though, so of course a coherent bus schedule was out of the question. But within an hour and a half of the estimated arrival time of the bus, one showed up.

The way back from the game was worse. Thank goodness that Anaheimonians hate public transportation. The bus stop outside the Honda center, that is adjacent to the Angels stadium, where there was also a game, had 4 people waiting for a bus – all from Vancouver. We had a good chat up until the bus driver blew us off. He was polite enough to wave but not to stop. The next one was coming an hour later. Since we were all heading the same way we walked it off, adding a bit more exercise to my day.

Grand Canyon Day 2

Day two at the Canyon started with a lot of bad luck. Well no, it wasn't luck, it was my shuttle driver down right lying to me about the departure times of the shuttle and the train. I apparently had missed both and was to be snookered for my canyon visit for the day. The plan was to just head home to Flagstaff. But for no apparent reason they were running two trains to the Canyon, and I got there five minutes before boarding. What luck! I got tickets and headed onwards.

The train ride there provides some on ride "entertainment" including a crap guitarist, a crap fiddler, a crap mock train robbery and some crappy facts about random stuff around us. We saw deer though, that was okay.

The train only lets you stay four hours at the canyon because you have to make your connection back. Instead of heading down I decided to seek out the views across. I embarked on a 13 KM hike across the Rim.

This (the light brown running diagonally in the middle of the shot) is the path I walked down yesterday, from a different angle.

Some more scenic shots

It was at this point that some fat woman who had just stepped off a tour bus exclaimed "Wow look at those morons over there". I had no Idea what she was talking about, but I made it my mission to accomplish it. After a 2K walk I realized she was referring to a rock that stretched out over the canyon that people were climbing out on. Game time.

This is me at the point where people were being a moron, but not quite yet being a moron,

Here's a shot I took after of what the point looked like.

And here is what it looked like during

A little closer

Ah there!

And to top it off, one final shot of the whole adventure.

It was awesome, thoroughly enjoyed it, here are some final pics to top off the day. I head to Anaheim tomorrow night for game five of the Preds/Ducks series.

Grand Canyon Day 1 (all pictures at end of text)

I landed in Phoenix at 11 15, and spent the night at a shady hotel near the airport. After four hours of sleep I was up and thieving all I could from the continental breakfast before catching the shuttle to Flagstaff Arizona, 2 hours away. First and foremost, before we sink our teeth into the first Grand Canyon trip I need to say something: I saw a cactus. I real one. Not some artificial thing, a real, growing on the side of the highway, cactus. It was awesome. There were a lot of them, I didn't get a picture because my camera in my bag in the back of the car, I thought I would see more but I didn't. Anyway, I was pumped.

So after a shuttle to Flagstaff, a wait in an internet Cafe and another 2 hour shuttle, I had arrived at the America's "grandest" natural wonder. One thing that makes the grand Canyon so spectacular is that there is zero build up. Basically you just drive, stop and then bam, you are staring 7000 feet into the abyss.

I only had 4 hours on the first day before I had to catch the shuttle home, so I decided to tackle what they call Angels trail or something. It is basically a full day hike down the canyon's side to the Colorado river. People aren't allowed to do the whole thing, there and back, in one day due to the looming death that ensues. Luckily there is a rest point at the bottom (or what I thought was the bottom) where you can camp the night.
Anyway, I of course did not do any of that because of the whole only having three hours thing. I began trecking down this path that criss crossed down the side of the canyon. I was motoring. Making excellent time, no worries at all. The people coming up however, they were looking like they had more difficulties. It wasn't until I saw a man in his late 20's sporting a "US Rowing Team" shirt, sweating through his shirt that I realized I might be in for a meal.
It was difficult to time it. I couldn't go too far, I would miss the shuttle and be forced to spend the night nestled in one of the bus stops, combating the cold night of the Canyon. But I didn't want to be back up with 40 minutes to spare either.

I turned around about 20 minutes after the first rest hut, fifty minutes of walking - Fresh as a Daisy. It didn't stay that way for long. The hike back up was pain staking at the best of times. You could walk for 20 minutes and no progress was apparent. I did make it back in time, but good god was I beat. I retired for the night in Williams, an hour and a half away from the Canyon, in one of the few hotels available on such short notice. It wasn't far from being a dump.

On the drive home we saw six Elk just hanging out by the road. I snapped a picture through the van's tinted windows with my 40 dollar camera but ...

Predators game

Preds Game.

I'm not going to lie, I was literally bricking my pants pretty much all day in Nashville, but that might have been more due to the abundance of trail mix than the excitement for the upcoming game. I wore my Nashville Predators jersey on the 30 minute walk from the Hostel. I got a couple of shouts but people were generally oblivious to my support, but it was early yet. As the day went on preds jerseys flocked the downtown. They had a cute little set up outside the rink with live music, a jumbo tron, a big blow up slide and stick hockey for the kids, but my personal favorite was the Whack a Duck they set up.

I entered the stadium as soon as the doors open and got to my seats to wait patiently for some action. Fans slowly trickled in as the pre game warm ups were set to begin.

And of course this idiot had to show up.

I have set up a poll on the blog for you to have a guess at who the most popular Nashville player is, what name do you think is on the most jerseys. I'll reveal the answer after the ducks game. Finally the players hit the ice for a bit of a taste to the action. Amongst the fans and the Nashville players, the mood was festive.

They had their opening let's rock the playoffs video after the warm up which was quite weak to be honest. Nonetheless, seeing the mascot GNash swing down from the ceiling was a pretty good time. I tried to take a few action shots (at the end) but spent most of the time watching the thrilling game. 4-3 with back and forth action, it was amazing. They announced a sold out arena, and it certainly sounded like one, but some seats were evidently empty. Next to me was a very apathetic hockey enthusiast. Didn't really care much for the game, just sat through it. However next to him was actually the assistant coach for the Nashville Predators. She knew exactly when the players should “Get him”, “Shoot the Damn Puck”, “Play Harder”, and “Take it away from him” and she yelled the commands all through the game. Like actually, start to friggen finish. The only piece of mind was when she left towards the end of the second to get some food or something, however in her absent, without her necessary coaching, the predators dropped two goals to Selanee in this time frame. So I guess she was an asset. Here are the good pictures I took. Best wishes.

Woah how did this get in here, some pervert must have stolen my camera.