The Grand and Not So Grand

By Randy Kemner, Proprietor

After an eight hour drive from Santa Fe, through Albuquerque, Gallup and Flagstaff, we arrived at the commercial center of Tusayan, just a few miles ouside the entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park.  The main highway in Tusayan is lined with hotels, steak houses, pizza joints, an IMAX theater (showing The Hidden Secrets of the Grand Canyon), and a few fast food outlets.  We had made online reservations at The Grand Hotel, because it sounded so—grand—and the pictures made it look nice.

From the outside, it appears to be a comfortable hotel, and on the inside it has a sense of being in the northern Arizona woods with rough-hewn beams, faux trees, a large lobby area, gift shop, espresso and snack bar and a cocktail bar complete with flat screen TV and a pool table. A dull-witted bartender could still keep his patrons entertained.

After settling in, we decided to dine in our hotel’s dining room called Canyon Star Restaurant and Saloon, and to be honest, all I wanted or expected was a sound, basic meal—not the more ambitions dining we had experienced during the past week in Las Vegas and Santa Fe.  The enormous circus tent of a dining room was adorned with beams and lampshades that evoked a great North Woods lodge.  The bandstand looked like it was ready for a 10 piece dance band, but a lone guitar player in a cowboy shirt was singing a combination of folk songs and cowboy tunes to nobody in particular, the exact same person who was paying attention to him. 

When Dale and I entered the expansive space, the cowboy singer was taking a break and an Indian in full regalia was beating a tom-tom on the stage and chanting what could have been Hopi Indian incantations while an eight year old boy, also decked out in Hopi-styled eagle feathers and beaded vestments, was performing a solo Native American ritual dance on the hotel’s dance floor.  (After the show, tourists clamored for pictures alongside the smiling cherubic kid.  He obliged, with a creepy fixed smile that couldn’t have been topped by the creepy smiles of five year old beauty contestants.)  

The kid’s dance was followed by a teenager dancing the famous Hopi hoop dance.  This version was a very artful and acrobatic display juggling what looked like five or six hula hoops.  

Rather than quibble about the fare, which was barely O.K., I’d rather comment on the wine list. 

It was depressing.  It looked like the wine buyer wheeled a shopping cart into the nearest Safeway and made his selection from the cheapest, most boring wines on the shelf. 

Honestly, I don’t expect tourist hotel wine lists to wow me, but the items on this wine list—especially the glass pours—featured low-end, standard supermarket brands like Red Diamond, Blackstone, Kendall-Jackson, Toasted Head and Chateau Ste. Michelle.  In other words, dull.  A New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was a happy exception, crisp anyway.  There was an Argentine Malbec and a Vin de Pays d’Oc Pinot Noir that probably sounded fancy when the liquor salesman suggested it to the hotel’s wine buyer.

We drank the perfunctory Sauvignon Blanc and I ordered a glass of Chateau Ste. Michelle Syrah whose main virtue was that it tasted like red wine.  Just one flight upstairs in our room sat a bottle of Manciat Poncet Macon Bussieres just sitting there, but I didn’t have the heart to ask if there was a corkage policy.

After dinner, Dale and I made our way back to our room and went to bed early.  That night I dreamed Dale was just about to audition to be Lawrence Welk’s new Champagne Lady, complete with an eight-piece audition band.  But I became upset in my dream because Dale can’t sing a note.  So I woke up early.

The next morning we drove to the entrance to the Grand Canyon.  While our car was waiting in line, we saw a sign that read 7 Day Pass $25, Annual Senior Pass $10.

“I wonder if you qualify for that senior discount,” Dale chided.

“I’ll pay the extra fifteen bucks,” I said.  “I don’t ever want to think of myself as a senior.  Once you start thinking that way, you start acting that way.  Screw the AARP.”

As the car rolled up to the window, a lady in a ranger suit leaned over to my window and asked, “Is anybody in there over 62?”

Dale, sitting in the passenger seat,  shot back, “He just turned 62 three days ago.”

“Well then,” the ranger lady announced, “you can have a Senior Pass for $10 and it’s good at any National Park in the country for a whole year!  Can I see some I.D?”

I wrested out my wallet, paid the ten bucks, got my senior pass and drove on.

The scenery was greener than I had imagined, with small forests of scrub pines on either side of the road into the park.  To the left, behind a small thicket of pines we saw several small dome tents gathered around a campsite.

“That’s cool,” Dale said of the campers, “for the wild people.  I’m done with tents.”

We came upon the parking lot to the visitor’s center and the pathway to view the canyon.  The lot was nearly full, but we found a space near the back and huffed it up to a viewing station.  The morning was crystal clear, vivid and the depth of the view more breathtaking than I could even imagine.  We stood there soaking it all up, watching the hawks catching the thermals overhead, both of us unable to say a word.  We took pictures of each other in front of the mighty chasm, but I knew no picture could really capture the scope of what we were seeing.

We walked down the path to get glimpses of the canyon from other perspectives and came upon two water tanks enclosed by a protective chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

“Do you think that’s to keep out terrorists?” I asked Dale.

“I think it’s more to keep out the wild people trying to go for a swim,” she said.

After taking a few more feeble pictures, we backtracked to Mather Point to take in a great view along with about 100 other people.  We could hear foreign languages and Australian accents among those experiencing what we were.

We did the tourist stuff, going to the Visitor’s Center, then walking over to the gift store and buying a jigsaw puzzle of the canyon, a book on gourmet Native American cooking and a book describing all the ways people have died in the Grand Canyon, soon to be a major motion picture.  We thought a moment about buying a DVD of a 1967 true life adventure called Brighty of The Grand Canyon, starring an aging Joseph Cotten as Uncle Jim Owen and Jax as Brighty, the world’s smartest burro, but decided to save our money for our last dinner on our epic road trip.

We lunched on apples, Jana Water and a couple breakfast bagels we’d bought at the hotel earlier and simply relaxed at a shaded picnic table next to the parking lot.  We watched as people of all nationalities, shapes and sizes arrived.  One exceptionally large family (not large as in 16 kids, but large as in super-size-me large) got into their minivan, slung so low I thought it would scrape the asphalt.  I wondered if they’d ever read any of Michael Pollan’s books.  Probably not.

Tonight we had a decision to make.  Should we drive back in the park and have one more expensive night of possibly mediocre, but filling, food at the dining room of the spectacular looking El Tovar hotel, or have we had enough big dinners on this trip and just nibble on a green salad and a bowl of chili here at the Grand Hotel and call it quits early the night before our eight hour drive home tomorrow?

We opted for the latter, and took the elevator to the first floor.  There we went inside the dining room  and both ordered martinis.