Word: canyoning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...favorite scenic attraction is the canyon, or reverse mountain, especially when it occurs on a flat surface, such as the Grand Canyon. You get the best of both worlds here: levelness, or platitude, and de-elevation. And the magnificence of the erosionary process. And when you go visit, you don't run into flinty-eyed people busily despising you for your yellow plaid walking shorts and a T shirt that says SAVE THE WHALES. TRADE THEM FOR VALUABLE PRIZES. The canyon belongs to the world. (I believe there is a separate entrance for Sierra Club members, the Ansel Adams Trail...
...walking shoes with wool socks and a pack with a bottle of water and a bag of trail mix and head down the Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim. This is a splendid experience. You pass through a phalanx of men standing on the rim videotaping the canyon, panning from left to right and then right to left, and you plunge down the trail, which is broad and not too steep and studded with mule manure, and a hundred or so feet down, once you come around the second switchback, all the hubbub of the rim vanishes...
...silent admiration of the tourists there, who step back to let you pass. And you stride into the lodge and go to your room and shower and put on clean clothes and order a hero-size gin and tonic and sit on the balcony and look out at the canyon blazing red and orange in the sunset, and you feel a moral superiority that only time can diminish. What is a vacation for, if not to make you feel better about yourself...
...Cortez the Killer - Neil Young 3. I'm Going Home - Ten Years After 4. Tobacco Road - Edgar Winter 5. Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd 6. Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon - Jefferson Airplane 7. Love Sick - Bob Dylan 8. Jam 1 - Derek and the Dominos 9. Laurel Canyon Home - John Mayall 10. White Wedding - Billy Idol
Later we pitched our tent in Chaco Canyon, just at dusk. Presently there rumbled into the campground five or six rhinoceros RVs, behemoths with generators on their roofs that hummed and groaned all night to power the people's TVs and air conditioners. They slept sealed up inside the beasts, and in the morning the rhinos rolled off single file down the blacktop, heading for Zion...