My weekend at Grand Canyon was everything I expected and more. Everybody knows that the Grand Canyon is a magnificent and magical place, so I won’t spend any more words praising it. You have to see it yourself.
But there were still couple of unexpected things. On Friday it snowed heavily and I had no idea that in April in Arizona it would look the same as in Finland at the same time. Also the fearless elks were something different. In Finland, elks are afraid of cars and people and run as fast as they can when they come to contact with humans. In the forests of Grand Canyon, elks were not afraid of anything. They kept eating while tourists were photographing them and driving by with cars. In Grand Canyon it’s not allowed to hunt, which makes elk friendly with humans. My favorite place during the weekend was Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim, which is a 70-foot-tall stone building. The four-story structure was completed 1932. From the tower, tourists can see the Grand Canyon from a higher position and also admire beautiful art work. Walls and ceiling are covered with paintings of deer and humans with different kinds of tools and arrows. For me, the paintings resembled the first humans living at the Grand Canyon.
As you know, Native Americans think of the Grand Canyon as a holy land. The Indian reservation next to the Grand Canyon was also an interesting place to visit because of the really friendly people. Navajo live near and everybody who we spoke to were nice to us and answered our questions about the land and the culture. If I have had more time, I would have hiked to beautiful Havasu Falls and spend the night there. That is something to see the next time. (I’m Hanna Laukkanen, a 26-year-old journalist, who moved from Finland to San Diego for an internship in San Diego Community Newspaper Group. In this blog I will compare Finnish and American lifestyles and try to find out a lot more about the Californian way of living. Please send me feedback at [email protected].)