On Christmas Day, we drove two and a half hours to the west rim of the Grand Canyon, to a recreation area managed by the Hualapai Nation. It's called (predictably) Grand Canyon West. The real draw here, besides the opportunity to see stunning views of the Canyon, is the Skywalk: A U-shaped observation platform that juts out of the bedrock over the edge of the Canyon and provides stunning views of the rocks and the Colorado River.
The catch? Its floor is made of glass.
After we wound through line in the main building, which is still just plywood and raw steel beams even thought it's been open for over three years, a guide provided us with what looked like hospital booties to cover our shoes. I presume this was so we didn't get messy footprints on the glass. Then, we stepped out onto the platform.
The edges of the Skywalk, closest to the rail, were made of opaque glass and there were occasionally metal plates in the center for those visitors who needed a break, but the rest of it was crystal clear and looked out straight down to the canyon floor, 800 feet below. I took it at a bit of a fast walk so that I would force myself to make it to the outside edge, and looked out.
It was amazing. The view was spectacular, and the illusion was almost complete. If it weren't for the occasional scratch in the glass and the seams where the pieces were put together, it would have looked just like I was flying, suspended in the air over the canyon floor. Even though I knew I was perfectly safe (Just look at those fat tourists over there! If it's holding them, it can hold me!), I couldn't stop a hot little twinge in my stomach every time I looked down. Something in my brain was saying, "Hey, you're fine! It's made of a million tons of steel and anchored 46 feet deep into the bedrock, so just look around and have fun." But something in my body was saying "Aaarrrgggghhhh!!! I'm gonna fall!!!"(1)
It was totally fun.
They wouldn't let us take cameras onto the Skywalk because they wanted to charge us $30 for the photos that they were taking, so I can't share any of my own images from up there. They really have this tourism thing figured out. Oh well.
I did get lots of good pictures from a different site, Guano Point, formerly a guano mine. (Why anyone needs to mine bat shit is beyond me, but the view was great.) Because it's a point, it jutted out into the canyon a bit, and we climbed to the top of a high promontory to take in the 360-degree vista.
All in all, it was a great trip. Sure, the tickets were quite expensive and the food was overpriced and not very veggie-friendly and we had to take their shuttle bus to get anywhere, but the experience was completely worth it. The drive to get there was really dramatic too, through forests of Joshua trees, with water-carved red rocks on all sides.
Although I was hoping for a sighting of some bighorn sheep, I had to settle for a few wild longhorn steer instead.
(1) Tamar Gendler, a friend and professor of philosophy, calls this kind of experience "alief," to contrast with "belief." Alief happens when I believe one thing, intellectually (I'm perfectly safe), and yet viscerally feel that something else is the case (I'm gonna fall!). It's a great descriptor for this kind of situation, or for any other time when there's that kind of tension between the mind and the body.
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