The Grand Canyon
Summer is getting ready to come out in full force, and with summer airfare prices climbing steadily higher, families across the nation are planning vacations that are easy on the pocketbooks while being entertaining enough to keep parents from (seriously) contemplating filicide. According to Bing's summer travel forecast domestic air ticket prices have risen to just over $300 per ticket, a 29 percent increase from 2009. With airfare unfeasible for most, it's time to go back to the golden age of yesterday, loading down (station)wagons and driving gallantly into the great unknown. America, however, is a land of wonder, with great destinations in all fifty states, just waiting to be driven to and stared at.
Every adult, it seems, can dredge up memories of a childhood summer being spent on the road in interminably long car rides, only to be pulled out to gaze in awe at such roadside attractions as "World's Largest Thermometer" or "Biggest Ball of String (West of the Mississippi)". These memories bring with them the scent of hot asphalt, the heat of the car against short-clad legs, and the aching boredom children spent with their faces pressed up against the car window, longing to see anything besides the road and those horrid signs saying "Only 15,000 inches until World's B..." (That's about where the interest always runs out). The western states seem to be more prone to this activity than those on the eastern seaboard, perhaps because the east coast has plenty of "real" stuff to visit, while the west is mostly open land.
Being in California, the options will be a bit limited. You have the high dollar draws of Disneyland and Seawold, and the almost less-expensive allure of Knott's Berry Farm and Legoland. But those places are full of lines, and ten dollar churros, and absolutely lacking in ability to instill proper trauma in a child's psyche. Forego the ticketed mayhem, and hark back to your own younger days. Take the children on a road trip. And not just anywhere. Load them up in the station wagon or minivan of your choice (for best effect, this author recommends one that will not contain the parents of said children), and drive through the desert.
Perhaps because the desert is so vast and achingly lifeless, it is filled with cities and attractions unheard of in other, more life-friendly areas. Baker, California, offers the world's tallest thermometer, letting you see from miles away the exact temperature that is causing your blood to literally boil. Las Vegas, Nevada offers neon glitz and plastic allure to call to any adult, trapping the unwary for years in a lotus-eaters-esque with its flashing lights and nasal drone of "Cocktails? Cocktails?".
But you have children. Children whom you would rather not see exposed to the solely sequined backsides (and frontsides) of Vegas showgirls, and not learn the phrase, "You can't hug Mommy now, you'll break her streak". There is, however, a wonderful destination just south of Las Vegas, beckoning in the arid heat with all the promise and welcome of a cool grave on a blistering summer day. And in a way, that is what this destination is - a grave. One massive grave for the unwary.
That's right - the Grand Canyon, located in Arizona, which houses two of the seven wonders of the United States, and is now being boycotted by much of the rest of the nation because of immigration laws. The small benefit here of breaking that boycott is this - tourist traps will be so desperate to see visitors that they will sell you everything at rock bottom prices. Small roadside stands of Indian jewelry will flagrantly push their illegal fireworks as a bonus purchase. Just imagine it - an M80 with every turquoise bracelet you buy. Beef jerky and firewater, coexisting like the last survivors of a nuclear blast that has brought not winter, but a summer so hellish even Lucifer is whimpering for the air conditioning.
Through heat that will threaten to melt the rubber of your tires to the road, continue on, to the northwest...ish corner of the state. The Grand Canyon has multiple entrances - or exis, if you are particularly hopeful and wise. Make a quick stop before you enter the park, and load the kids up with greasy frybread, ice cream, and anything else they are demanding. Once within the park, travel along winding roads that whip you back and forth like a British nanny with a particularly naughty child. If this doesn't induce carsickness, the frequent bloated corpses of roadkill left to rot along the highway will surely delight and inspire your children to new levels of nausea. You cannot immediately stop to view the Grand Canyon, but once you reach a turnoff, take it. It doesn't matter what turnoff, it doesn't matter what entrance you use. All of these turnoffs will take you to see the same thing.
A giant hole in the ground.
No, that's not a joke. That's what the Grand Canyon is. A giant hole in the ground. Some behemoth puppy got too excited in the world, and dug a hole. You'd hate to see the size of the newspaper they smack him with when he's been naughty.
Granted, this hole is an impressive hole, for sheer size, and at the proper times (mostly when your brain isn't slowly simmering in its own juices) it can be almost scenic. But if this is the argument one will use to justify looking at certain things, then make your next stop Cawker, Kansas, so you can next stare at the World's Biggeset Ball of Twine. After all, it's big, and when seen through a haze of pharmaceutically induced glaucoma smoke, it can be scenic - or at least intriguing. The natural forces which carved the Grand Canyon are no more impressive or overwhelming than those that cause toast to land butter side down, cats to land feet first, and buttered toast tied to a cat to be used as evidence in an animal cruelty case.
But please - train your children in the same manner your parents trained you. Take them to the Grand Canyon. Depending on how obnoxious they were during the drive, and exactly how much nausea was induced by the fry bread and winding roads, let them rough house there. Give them peanuts to feed to the attack squirrels, who will happily bite off a man's finger if he has been unwise enough to leave the scent of a Funyun upon it. Take your children to the very edge, and teach them to appreciate Darwin by showing them a fun new game - which stupid tourist will scramble desperately to recover a $70 digital camera that is rapidly disappearing into the canyon's maw? It's a family favorite right up there with the Different States License Plate game, with marginally less cursing and far more exciting unplanned acrobatics.
Stand upon the edge with your family, staring across to the other lip - a minimum of four miles away - and think of the drive back. Then remind yourself there are too many witnesses for you to contemplate filicide today, and walk away. But hell, toss a shiny quarter over the edge - thin the dumb ones out of your herd now.
