Leaving the Grand Canyon (home again home again, jiggety jig)

One of our last views of the Grand Canyon from near the Hopi House.   

At 3 P.M. on Monday afternoon, we boarded the Grand Canyon train to head back to Williams for one more night.  Everyone was pretty quiet on the ride back.  Some folks had only been there since 9 A.M. that morning, some two days like us, and some probably had been there longer.  You can get different packages.  Anyhow, after strolling around the canyon all day, getting on and off the shuttles, we were pretty tired.  

One of the robbers

At one point the "marshall" boarded the train and warned that train robbers were in the area.  A few minutes later we noticed some shady characters outside our window, galloping their horses alongside the train.  Before you know it, we were being robbed.  We had been told that if we wanted to be robbed (ha!) to put money on our person where the robbers could grab it easily; the money goes to the upkeep and preservation of the Grand Canyon.  After it was all over, the lady in charge of keeping us entertained on our coach asked us if we enjoyed our robbery.  "I've had better," I told her.  

At the big hotel in Williams, we went to our room to find our two suitcases weren't there, as they were supposed to be.  The lady at the front desk told us to go ahead and eat dinner, and when we returned it probably would be there.  She figured the crew just hadn't had time to unload it.  Those of you who have followed this whole saga know that we haven't seen our luggage since.    

I really expected the luggage to arrive yesterday by UPS, but no luck.  The hotel's insurance guy had already been in contact with us, so I called him.  He said we should give it until Friday afternoon (tomorrow, as I write this entry), then contact him again and we'd get the ball rolling.  I'll start working on a list of stuff that was in the suitcases.

We had to be up at 2:30 the next morning to wait for the van that would take us to meet the train at Williams Junction.  I hadn't slept a lot due to concern about our loss, and although I had told the lady at the desk we'd need a wakeup call, it wasn't necessary.  I was awake already when the call came.  There was a family of three waiting in the lobby with us.  None of us had much to say at that time of morning.  

At first I thought the idea of no clean clothes to wear and our lost luggage in general would ruin our Amtrak trip back to Kansas City, but sitting on the train waiting for the sun to come up, I made a decision to let it go:  Nothing in those suitcases was worth ruining my only train trip over.

We felt like seasoned travelers on our way home.  We knew the ropes!  We know how to flush the stool in the sleeper car, how to find the dining car (very easy, this trip, because it was the next car).

We met more people in the dining car:  

A man and his wife from the south of France, Harley riders who had rented a motorcycle for much of their tour of the U.S.  She had lots of tattoos and was very quiet, but he was quite talkative.  He was originally from England.  When they went home, their plane would land in Spain.  When I got back home, I looked up France on the map.  

A man from Malaysia with a heavy accent.  Cliff is hearing impaired anyhow, and any accent handicaps him further, but I try to "run interference" for him.  This guy was very friendly.  He said he works for Exxon.  I asked him if there were troubled times in his country and he said no, it's peaceful there.  There's a temperate climate (t-shirt year around, he said) and they get a lot of rain.  He was on his way to see a niece graduate college in Milwaukee.  When I got back home, I looked up Malaysia on the map. 

At one point Cliff and I were seated at a table in the observation car on the way from Kansas City to Williams and a couple of Amish fellows, father and son, joined us.  We had a great conversation with them, the father doing most of the talking.  I mentioned to them I had just sold my last heifers and missed milking a cow.  He made squeezing motions with both hands (as if milking) and said, "We milk cows this way."  I answered, "So do I."  

One lady across from us at a meal had spent two years in New England living with her dad because he had asked her to.  He recently died, and she was going to live in another state now.  People just weren't friendly up there in New England, she said.  

I had written down notes about some of these folks so I could write about them, but the notes are in the lost luggage.  We sure did meet some people!  Most of them seemed to be seasoned Amtrak travelers:  Some would even shake hands and introduce themselves as soon as we were seated at the table with them.  It was quite an experience for this introvert.  I'm always saying the wrong thing, which is why I often avoid conversations with strangers, but there was no avoiding talking to the folks we ate with.  I don't think I accidentally insulted anyone too badly.  I have a way of doing that, you know.  

I loved traveling by train!  On the way home Cliff and I slept like babies in our bunks, and napped several times throughout the day.  We agree that although the Grand Canyon is something to behold, and it was a big deal to see it (again, for Cliff... first time for me), the train travel was the highlight of our vacation, unforgettable in every way.  Everybody says, "Would you do it again?"

I would do it in a heartbeat, lost luggage and all!  (Amtrak didn't lose it anyhow, it was the hotel people.)  We won't be traveling by train again, because we really don't have that kind of funds, but it was worth every penny for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  What a great 50th anniversary gift to ourselves.

And I have my Kansas City Russian Jewish friend to thank for it, because he's the one who originally suggested traveling by train.   

The quality of mercy (my take on that gorilla incident)

When I first saw the news item about a four-year-old boy somehow ending up in an enclosure with a gorilla, I said, "Where was the kid's mother?"  

My husband and I kept wondering and discussing it for two days.  Why would you not watch your child in a place like that?    

But yesterday I remembered something that had happened to me:  On an spring day in 1968 as a new mother, I took my one-year-old baby boy out in the yard to play because he loved being outside; I stationed myself inside at an open window where I could see him all the time and talk to him often.  I was sitting sideways on the couch cutting out a pattern (trying to learn to sew, but that didn't work out): I would cut a bit, look up and see my baby, say something to him, and go back to cutting.  Cliff was at work.  I was keeping a sharp eye on my kid.

And then I looked up and he wasn't there.  I didn't panic.  I figured he had toddled around the corner of the house.  But when I circled our house, he was nowhere in sight.  We lived in the country at that time, with no close neighbors.  He couldn't have been kidnapped, but he was gone.  Now I panicked.  As I was heading around the house one more time, I heard the faint sound of brakes being applied in the direction of the county road down below.  When I looked toward the sound, I saw a car stopped, a lady getting out of the car, and my baby lying in the middle of the road in front of the car.  

I will never know how my baby made it to the road that quickly.  Our house sat quite a way back from the road.  Jimmy didn't even walk that well yet, but he either went down the gravel driveway or through a meadow and across a ditch to get to the road.  Either path would have been rough for him to navigate.  

He wasn't hit by the car, he was just lying there on his stomach, and the lady picked him up.  I ran to the scene as fast as I could, thanked her tearfully, took my baby from her, and hugged him as hard as I could.

Here's one more incident, from two years ago.  It was toward the end of a day babysitting Cora.  She wasn't walking yet, but she could crawl like crazy, and she was crawling around in the grass having a blast.  We were watching for her dad to come and pick her up.  In our front yard is a small lot where I kept my calves. Her daddy drove up the driveway, got out of the pickup, and came toward the house.  As I began talking to him, his face lit up in a grin.  He was looking out toward the small lot, so I turned to see what he was grinning at and there was that baby, IN the little lot with the calves.  Probably the worst thing that could have happened to her would have been that she'd eat some manure, because she was at that stage.  But how on earth could she  have crawled straight to the only spot where she could have gotten under that fence and into the pen in such a short time?

A witness at the scene of the terrible incident with the gorilla said, "Her attention was drawn away for seconds, maybe a minute, and then he was up and in before you knew it."

It's time we stop judging people for simply being human.  Let's get off our high horses and deal with something else now.

“The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."  William Shakespeare

"He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her."  Jesus