Grand Tetons/Arches/Grand Canyon National Park
My first time ever seeing the Grand Canyon was the most beautiful I have ever seen it, and that happened completely by chance. The summer after graduating high school, my best friend, Jared Kreuzberger, and I did the classic American road trip around the western United States. Over 14 days we managed to cover close to 5,000 miles at a pretty ferocious pace. One of our last destinations was Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, but how we finally made it there was itself a bit of an adventure in and of itself.
The morning prior to arriving at the Grand Canyon started at 5am in Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming. We were hoping to wake up before the sun and snap some photos of the sunrise before leaving for Utah. It was foggy that morning, the sort of fog that isn’t very dense, but rests on the forest floor like a silk sheet. We felt like the first ones up in all the park, it seemed as though the birds had even been asleep. We had been driving for maybe 10 minutes when out of a clearing, an elk decided to cross the road. This elk, however, was the biggest elk I had ever seen in my entire life, think mythical proportions. He was a massive bull, absolutely dwarfing the young pine trees that surrounded us. I stopped the car and Jared and I were completely silent. It crossed the road completely stoic and regal, as if to tell us that he reigns king here and we’re in his land now. After crossing, the king of the Tetons disappeared back into the fog, and we didn’t speak a word for quite some time after that. Our brains couldn’t fully process what we saw. To this day I think back and wonder in disbelief how big that elk really was. Still processing I suppose.
Sunrise turned out to be a bust so we decided not to hang around and try to high tail it towards Arches National Park before it got dark. We managed to make it right around 5 and jump into the park for a few hours before it closed after sunset for construction. We were rewarded with some pretty epic scenery and after getting chewed out by the ranger for staying waaaay past when we were allowed to, she kicked us out and we had to find a place to sleep for the night.
Because of the park closure, all of the campgrounds outside the park were full and we had to return to our old tactic of sleeping in truck stops on the side of highways. We tried sleeping inside the car, but my Mini Cooper was so stuffed with supplies for our two-week journey that the seats wouldn’t recline more than a few inches. After setting up our sleeping bags and sleeping mats tucked behind my car to avoid getting spotted by police that would force us to leave, we realized something about of humble roadside campground: there were cockroaches everywhere. And I mean everywhere. But they seemed to stay away from us for the most part and we were so tired that we decided to give it a shot. That lasted about 30 minutes.
Once we had cockroaches nearly climbing over our faces multiple times we decided to say fuck it and just drive from Arches National Park in Moab, UT to Paige, AZ through the night. After some McDonalds meals, countless cups of shitty gas station coffee, and too many hours in a car seat we made it to our destination.
When we finally made it to Paige with a grand total of zero sleep, it was 5:30am. We drove into a little pullout on the side of the road and, in a daze, set up our sleeping bags and managed to snag a couple hours of sleep. At 8am we woke up and drove directly to the nearest coffee shop to force our bodies to feel awake again. Once we were properly caffeinated, Antelope Canyon was next up on our list. Antelope Canyon is a pretty well-known slot canyon that was formed by flash floods slicing through the earth and sculpting beautifully smoothed walls that vary in color all the way from deep purple to bright orange.
As it turned out, our little night mission paid off and we ended up getting to the canyon at the perfect time for the sun light to gleam down into the tight canyon like spires of light through stain glass in a cathedral. The formations in the rock were like nothing I’d ever seen, and the colors created were something I could have never seen coming.
After our minds were properly blown by the slot canyon, our next stop was Horseshoe Bend. This massive bend in the Colorado river has created near 3000ft cliffs that drop vertically to the waterline. We sat at the edge for a while, tested our luck at points, and cheated death one or two times. I lost my lens cap there, much to my dismay, but I’d say it was well worth the experience.
From there we finally made our way to the only place that we felt was right to finish our American road trip on, the Grand Canyon. And as if the canyon knew it too, she gifted us with the most beautiful sunset over the Grand Canyon I’ve seen to date. A foggy haze began to spill into the canyon from the plateau tops as the sun began to get low and soon enough it illuminated it all. We were left in a high of excitement and didn’t leave until it was completely dark. A fitting end to a pretty incredible road trip characterized by too much canned chili, random perfect timing, and endless stories to be told.
This road trip genuinely changed the course of both my life and Jared’s life. Those 14 days are what has led me to pursue photography as a career, sell my car and buy a rusty old vanagon, and eventual create this website. For Jared, he came home more determined than ever to pursue music under the name Jamie Vaughn, and he’s done a damn good job at it. So, if you’ve read this far, and taken anything away from this, just do yourself a favor and get in your car and get out of dodge, I guarantee you’ll come back a different person than when you left.
