The best way to deal with shuttle bus crowds is to remember these other saps are on vacation. You can indulge their impatience.
There are three ways to get to Hermit's Rest, and the stops in-between:
- your feet
- your bike
- a shuttle bus
There are no private cars allowed on the Rim Road, unless you have a permit. Buses get very full, and are usually SRO. When a storm hits the rim, people want to get on the bus. It's logical. Dispatch scrambles and redirects and suspends traffic heading out to the end. There is no shelter until you get all the way to Hermit's Rest, so the emphasis is on getting people off the high and exposed rim trail.
We intended to do a short stretch of trail we haven't covered yet. It's only 1.7 miles, but it turned so hot today we bailed and did a teeny weeny trail.
This will be a hard place to leave. The tourists, those poor saps, they won't be so hard to leave. Really, everyone is well-mannered. They're well-mannered in more languages than I've ever heard in one place. Including Cornell.
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| If they saw it from this postion first, would they still go out there? |
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| I doubt it. |
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| "Man" on left is spoofing a dive. I'm so amused I vomit. |
I'm not feeling like myself today. I blame Facebook. What a weird dinner party it would be if Facebook were in real time. And, we all say things Face-to-Book that we wouldn't ever bring up face-to-face. I'm thinking of a FB holiday. You're all invited.
I woke up thinking about irony. When we were both employed full-time, we could never afford to spend two weeks at the South Rim, and then sashay up to the North Rim. Or spend a month in Sedona. Or three months in Flagstaff.
I'm reading Red: passion and patience in the desert, by Terry Tempest Williams. Her partner asks her "What if we are living half-lives? What if there's more?" They decide they want more. They want less. It finally occurs to me how literally that can happen.
