#041: How long is too long to spend looking at a big hole?

So I awoke on Christmas Eve in the shadow of Superstition Mountain, surrounded by 14ft tall cactus, on the very edge of the enormous sprawl of Phoenix, Arizona. I had one more drive to undertake before Christmas; north, and upwards, into the mountains and the town of Williams, which sits on the famous old route 66.
The drive was as breath-taking as the rest of Arizona; through deserts filled with impressive cactus forests, gaining elevation until they thinned and disappeared completely, onto a huge plateau with amazing views of the valley below, and then through different kinds of forests until they became alpine and the road was lined with firs.
I chose to treat myself to a motel for the few nights of Christmas, so stocked up on treats and settled in. Christmas morning brought an early rise. Arizona is 7 hours behind the UK and I had conspired with my sister to surprise the folks with a video call at 4pm their time. We managed five or ten minutes before the motel wifi gave up, so switched to Skype. Still, I got to show off my homemade Christmas cracker hat, repleat with three-tone (I only have blue, black and red pens) Christmas tree and snowmen.
Apart from sitting on Route 66, Williams has the added bonus of being just an hours drive from the Grand Canyon, so that is how I spent my Christmas day. Along with everyone else in northern Arizona. It is a very impressive hole-in-the-ground, it has to be said. But I'd wager it is even more impressive from the bottom. As it stands, I'd rate Badlands (which I saw in South Dakota) as the better of the two, though perhaps my choice is swayed by the fact I got to walk through and clamber over the canyons in Badlands.
After a couple of hours wander along the canyon rim, and looking at progressively older and older pieces of rock, I headed back to Williams and a rendezvous with a very cheap bottle of champagne and three different HBO channels. My Christmas night was completed by the discovery that they don't shirk with their Christmas film programming on this side of the Atlantic: Forrest Gump, Spider-man, War of the Worlds (Spielberg), Inception, (Peter Jackson's) King Kong, What A Girl Wants and, of course, Independence Day. Welcome to Earth!
Boxing Day has tended to be a 'visit the relatives' affair down the years and, despite being thousands of miles from mine, I did get to spend some time with a family. This one was a family of mechanics. The van had been making a noise the past week or so, and emails with the rental company revealed they were friendly with a garage in Williams. So I spent the day wandering around the quiet town while the mechanic family ordered in parts and fixed up the Nimbus, ready for the next leg of the journey.
I'm going to embark on a trip around the 'Grand Circle' - a well-worn roadtrip stopping off at all the great canyons in southern Utah and northern Arizona. Before I get to that, though, I decide to detour east slightly, and check out Meteor Crater - a 50,000 year old hole-in-the-ground measuring three-quarters of a mile across.
On our way around the rim our tour guide asks everyone where they have come from. He is noticably disappointed at the family who have travelled just six miles to be there, but relishes telling everyone he had some visitors from Austria a few days back - even further away than the London I offer him, he points out. Ah, I say, but did the Austrians drive over 10,000 miles across 32 States to get there? No? Ha! My oneupmanship is better than your oneupmanship.

I've got a lot of photo catching up to do...here's everything from DC to the Grand Canyon (I hope).