My Vacation From Hell -- Part One

Or: Why I Avoid National Parks Like the Plague

It seemed like a good idea at the time. My wife came to me about eight months ago and said, "for vacation this year, why don't we go the the Grand Canyon?" "Well," I countered, "I don't think our son is anywhere near old enough to backpack there yet. The hike into and out of the canyon is horribly strenuous, and I just don't think . . ." She cut me off. "Not a hiking trip, silly. We're going to take the Grand Canyon Railroad out of Williams and stay in a lodge at the canyon rim."

And so began my vacation from hell. First, I should explain why I avoid our wonderful National Park system like I would a root canal with no Novocain. In a word: people. There are too many of them. And in our most popular national parks, during vacation season, there are really too many of them. They all act like tourists, and most of them have no business being in the outdoors, even in a pampered setting like the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. After this trip I have made a solemn vow: I will never again set foot in a National Park, unless it's Yosemite and I immediately head off into the back country, away from the over-weight, sun burnt, fast food-addled yahoos one usually finds in these places.

The trip started out well enough. We headed out last Friday. The drive to Williams was uneventful. We checked in at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel and found the folks helpful and courteous. Our buffet dinner was somewhat bland, but edible. The rooms were not large but they were comfortable. And Williams is a delightful little town with an eclectic main drag largely devoid of the nondescript corporate-owned businesses that are increasingly making every main street in America look the same.

We caught the train to the canyon the next morning, after a fun wild-west shootout at the hotel that the young ones thoroughly enjoyed. The train ride was uneventful, if a bit long, but they served liquor in our first-class section, which made things at least bearable.

The fun started once we disembarked at the canyon rim, at about 11:00 A.M. Check-out time for the previous night's guests was 10:00 A.M., but we were informed that check-in time for us was not until 4:00 P.M. It takes six hours to vacuum a room and put on fresh linens and shelve some clean towels?

It was at that moment we discovered an immutable fact about tourists who stay in the lodges at the Grand Canyon, particularly those who take the train: we were their prisoners. We were trapped, completely at their mercy. They could house us when they wanted too, feed us what they wanted to, force us to walk through their interminable gift shops, and make us leave when they wanted to. At the Grand Canyon, the old saw that "the customer is always right" has been thrown out the window. The hired help was surly almost without exception, the food expensive and below mediocre, and the service was almost uniformly atrocious. And we couldn't do a damn thing about it.

The entire commercial operation at the South Rim is controlled by a company called Xanterra South Rim, L.L.C. This company has taken commercialism to an almost Disney-esque level. Almost every sight-seeing opportunity in the Grand Canyon Village requires one to walk through one of the ubiquitous gift shops along the rim. This trip certainly reinforced for me one of my main complaints about the privatization of our public areas: that doing so emphasizes profits over aesthetics.

(I should probably stop here and say the exception was the wonderful restaurant at the Bright Angel Lodge. I ate there twice, and both times the greeters, servers and busboys were uniformly cheerful, helpful and competent. I can only think that, for whatever reason, every good private employee at the South Rim must have somehow gravitated to the Bright Angel Lodge. Nor will I say anything bad about the park employees and rangers. These public servants are underpaid and overworked yet always seem to do their jobs with aplomb, even in the face of what must be some of the dumbest questions ever asked by human beings.)

And just as I feared, there were people everywhere. One couldn't walk ten feet without having to veer around some group of idiots who decided the best place to stop and reposition juniors hat or apply some sunscreen to little Sally was right in the middle of the trail. Almost everybody I came across was unconcerned about any other human being. It was as if every group of tourists was in its own plastic bubble, completely unaware of how their actions might be affecting the hoards around them.

When we were finally allowed to check onto our rooms at the Kachina Lodge, the first thing we noticed was that the "king sized" beds were smaller that the queen size that sits in our bedroom at home. The second was that the entire room was scarcely larger that a shoe box. Indeed, after fitting in the roll-away bed for my son we couldn't walk around in the room -- we actually had to crawl across the beds to traverse the tiny space.

That evening, I wandered down to the snack bar at the Bright Angel to get my son and his friend hot dogs for dinner, while the adults congregated at the El Tovar Lodge for dinner and drinks. Only the fact I had yet to imbibe much prevented what ensued from becoming an ugly scene.

When we got to the lodge and sat down with our hot dogs, we were informed we couldn't bring food from another establishment into the lodge. "Let me get this straight," I said to the surly waiter. "We have four adults here, ordering drinks and dinner -- we're spending plenty of money here. You don't offer a children's menu. Yet you're not going to let our two kids eat their hot dogs with their parents?"

Yep, I was banished to an outdoor bench with two kids because I had the gall to bring them to the El Tovar with hot dogs.

The next morning, Sunday, I awoke at 5:00 and was finally able to enjoy some peace. I walked along the South Rim Trail from our lodge up to Hermit's Rest. The seasonal monsoon system deprived me of the usual spectacular sunrise, but my early rise allowed me to walk alone -- the entire morning I only met five other people. Upon reaching Hermit's Rest I found only two folks who had taken an early bus shuttle and the operator at the obligatory gift shop. And the helicopters.

Why the National Park Service allows this practice is beyond me. The Grand Canyon, a place that should be among the most peaceful in the world, is shattered every day by the clop-clop-clop of choppers taking people with way too much disposable income over the canyons to sight-see the lazy-man's way. What was my one good day at the canyon was sullied by the constant buzz of helicopter engines.

We boarded the train at 4:00 for our journey back to the sanctity of the hotel back in Williams. Little did I know that this painful vacation was about to get even worse.

Next: Grand Canyon West -- or, The Hualapai Nation is Not Yet Ready For Prime Time.