80 Days in America

This morning the alarm clock woke me up again about an hour before sunrise. For some kind of reason I couldn’t find the sleep last night, so I was happy to start a new day. It was still dark outside, but I knew that would soon change. When I opened my bedroom door, what is actually my car door of course, two Japanese guys walked in my direction and asked where the best view was. I told them where to go and that I would be there soon too. I climbed on the same rocks as last night which gave me a beautiful view of the Canyons again.

It looks like the sunrise endures much longer in this area, because it takes quite some time for the sun to rise up from behind all the rocks. My mom emailed me last week and said that I would probably use my favorite line again when I reached the Grand Canyon. Indeed: this is again one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I spend about two hours with the Japanese guy, watching the beautiful sunrise, taking pictures and climbing some rocks. It was good that my friend Dawn wasn’t here with me, because she would definitely have stopped me from doing the things I did this morning. I have to admit that it was quite adventurous to climb the rocks, but also extremely beautiful. Another nice thing of the canyons is the echo. You scream loud and hear your echo multiple times. My record was five echo’s! 🙂 In difference of last night it was really quite at the view this morning, there were almost no other people and it was really peaceful.

After two hours of enjoying the view and climbing the rocks I said goodbye to the Japanese guy and headed in the direction of Grand Canyon Village to see if I could get some money. I tried my creditcard again, but without luck. Then I tried my worldwide bankcard and guess what? I suddenly heard the cashmachine counting billets and a couple of seconds later I had $$ again! 🙂 Although I wasn’t really worrying about the money anymore, I was quite happy to have some again. With a big smile on my face I walked into the supermarket to buy some breakfast. The rest of the morning I spend in the Grand Canyon National Park. I met a lot of international people these days: American of course, but also Japanese, Italian and German people and more. That’s what I like the most of traveling alone: it’s really easy to meet new people.

In the afternoon I drove up north to the other side of the Grand Canyon. At a certain moment I wondered why I was already tired, but then I realized again that I woke up around six this morning. So I did everything relaxed the rest of the day. It was a beautiful ride again through wide valleys and red rocks. On the north side of the canyon there were more trees and the landscape started to change real quickly. Just before sunset I reached the north side of the Grand Canyon, but I found it far less impressive than the south side. The view was not as wide and beautiful as on the other side. So after about half an hour I started driving again to get out of the park before dark. When I left the visitor centre one of the rangers warned me for deers and that was not for nothing: I’ve never seen so many deer next to the road. I really had to watch out, but fortunately there was another car driving in front of me, so that made it a lot easier. I turned on a classical radio station and there just happened to be concert broadcasted from the Dutch Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, that was a nice surprise! So the last hour of today I enjoyed a nice concert from one of my favorite places of Amsterdam. Not to late in the evening I arrived at a small restaurant with a big parking place where I stayed for the night.