The Marsden Expedition: Grand Canyon National Park

We leave home in the dark, eleven pm, tucking our excited kids into what will be their beds for the next three weeks, and start the thirteen hour drive to Grand Canyon National Park. Mike takes the first shift driving. After a full day of packing and preparing, having already driven to pick up the rental RV and gotten it packed, I was fading fast. However, sleeping in the back of an (older) moving RV is a bit like trying to sleep while off-roading. Every pot hole sends me bouncing, making sleep elusive. I remind myself of the last leg of my flight home from Rwanda in February, twelve hours from Amsterdam to San Francisco smushed up against an unfamiliar body and unable to lay flat, and I find gratitude to be prone regardless of the jostle.

Around 2am I make my first attempt at driving the thirty foot beast we (okay, I) have (hilariously) nicknamed the Mars(den) Rover. Mike had pulled off into a rest area and I only needed to get back on the straightaway. He sits in the passenger’s seat long enough to be sure I have a handle on things, and then also makes a vain attempt at sleeping in the bounce house in the back. The kids, their beds being closer to the front, sleep like rocks. While I drive I listen to C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. I’ll need to look up who reads this version because he is incredible. Funny and chilling simultaneously.

At the next gas stop Mike takes over driving and I am now exhausted enough that I could have slept anywhere, so I did. I wake shortly after sunrise as we make our way across the southern boundary of the Mojave Desert, about to leave Southern California. The light is clear and puffy radiant clouds spot the endless desert sky.

I find myself wondering about the people who live in such desolate places. People who name things like 29 Horse Team Road, Badger Wash, Blind Hills, and Needles. We pass scattered croppings of mobile homes, backyards piled with rusting equipment, and scrubby Suessical Joshua Trees, and I ruminate on whether these people are as interested in keeping up with the Kardashians as the rest of us tend to be.

We cross the border to Arizona in a freezing downpour. This completely shatters my idyllic visions of Saguaro cacti and burros with Navajo blankets across their backs and red cliffs illuminated by a blazing sun. I make a mental checklist of all the cold weather gear I have packed and hope it’s enough.

Finally, we roll into Grand Canyon National Park around 4pm. A little loopy, but no worse for the wear. I try to stay upbeat when I check my phone to discover it’s 39 degrees outside. I force myself to smile as we walk from our trailer to the bus stop in something between rain and snow (slush?). After a dinner that was equally mediocre as it was expensive, we catch the blue line eastbound bus to the Visitor’s Center.

We Marsdens are not built for cold weather. Even in our thick waterproof snow jackets it is a Herculean effort to drag our kids the quarter mile up the paved, manicured path from the Visitor’s Center to Mather Point. I am determined to get that iconic family vacation picture. As you can see, our children were delighted to indulge their parents who had driven what ended up being nearly fifteen hours to make this happen.

My first glimpse of the vastness of the shear, variegated cliff’s edge makes my head swim. No picture I have ever seen prepared me for reality. The momentary euphoria is quickly replaced with a mixture of terror and anxiety, let’s call it terranxious, of watching my four small—tiny, fragile, beautiful, precious—children peering over the fenced looking area. Some deep maternal instinct that does not take falling from cliffs lightly kicks into overdrive in my brain. The constant 1-2-3-4 headcount that runs on loop in the background of my mind becomes a desperate, primal drive to know my kids are safe. To make them safe.

In (48 hours) hindsight, I’m grateful this happened on the first evening, on the final and only stop of the day. It gave me time to get my head in the game for the full day of death-defying canyon observing on the docket for the day following. Apparently it’s kind of a buzzkill for your family when you’re constantly shouting, “Follow Daddy! Hold hands! Do not touch that! Stay on the path! Slow down! Pay attention! BE CAREFUL!” When I was a kid my siblings and I referred to this parental neuroses as the “fun police.” And I have now joined their ranks.

On a full night of restful, blissfully-motionless sleep, we do all the Canyon-y things. We watch the surprisingly well done documentary in the Visitor’s Center, buy souvenirs (#muglife), ride busses to take in the south rim’s glory from every possible angle.

If you have followed me for more than a month on Instagram, you’ll know I have a thing for sunsets. I have been giddily anticipating watching a Grand Canyon sunset since the moment we pulled the trigger and committed to this crazy cross country cruise. The vista of Hopi Point does not disappoint. I bask in the beauty and take dozens of pictures that will fail to capture more than a fraction of the moment.

I almost forget to be terranxious of my kids being near a mile deep drop to the canyon floor.

We wait in line, freezing, to board a blue line bus that will take us back to the RV Village. Walter falls asleep on the seat while the rest of us laugh at the bus driver who runs his shuttle as if he were a captain on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise.

I climb into bed, still half-frozen and unable to feel my big left toe, overcome with heavy, contented sleep.

I’m hoping to post every few days, so be sure to check back and follow along on our cross country adventure. Also, our dear friend Justin Nunes offered to put together videos of the footage we’re taking. Here’s the AWESOME video of Day One: