The Grand Grand Canyon Trip: Travel Blog

11.07.25 // 1:32pm

Oh my god, I’m so tired!! I’m writing this blog on November 6th—I just got back from a lovely trip to the Grand Canyon with my boyfriend, Beary! I’d like to journal it a little bit so I don’t promptly forget about it, though I expect this’ll stay on the shorter side.

(Cereus from the editing process here: it did not stay on the shorter side.)

Beary got here at 10am last Thursday, the 30th. Right now, the government is in the middle of what’s ramping up to be the longest shutdown in its history, thanks to our imbecile of a president—as such, planes are experiencing monumental delays due to the lack of air traffic controllers (since they, just like TSA, are not getting paid; understandable for them not to come in). I completely empathize with and support their right to protest for their pay, but I was indeed a little nervous it would affect Beary’s arrival. Luckily it didn’t, thanks in large part to him flying to a small local airport rather than the bigger one in the area.

I immediately put Beary to work in the kitchen! We planned to go to a Halloween party with my friends the next day, and the theme was Power Point night with themed snacks to match. I made my Power Point on the Fabulous Beasts donghua, and I wanted to make mooncakes!

My presentation briefly talked about the characters in the donghua and how they related to Chinese mythology. Tuye used to make mooncakes when he lived on the moon, and, being my favorite character, I wanted to channel him!

I’ve never had a mooncake before, but I followed this recipe to a T. Unfortunately... it turned out to be way more work than I thought it would be. Beary and I spent three hours making lotus seed paste, red bean paste, and the dough—and then it took another three hours to roll them up into balls (my job, since Beary is so Goop Adverse) and stamp them into shape (Beary’s job, since he’s so tidy). I felt bad; Beary didn’t wind up having enough time to finish his own Power Point, let alone his own snack... but it was a lot of fun to bake with him! It’s been a dream of mine to get the chance to be able to cook something together—it’s so lovely and domestic. And the mooncakes turned out absolutely delicious! I wish I had gotten a picture of them... alas. After a long day of toiling over the oven, we had dinner with my mom at a local sandwich place, and it was super yummy!

The next day was Halloween! I dressed up as a slutty wolf, while Beary was a slutty vampire. I had a bit of a fashion disaster, though: I was going to put on fake claws, but I lost track of time. Beary tried very hard to help attach and paint them, but I sort of fell victim to a stress-based anxiety attack due to running late, and they popped off immediately. We also had to check in to a cheap motel that night (Beary was staying with me at the house I live at with my mother, but we wanted privacy for Spooky Reasons), and we wound up running even more late because there were a lot of people checking in. And then on top of that, the room they gave us had no power! So we had to get dressed in the dark, then ask the front desk for another room. And then my tail fell off after I tied it to my belt! Disaster after disaster! Thankfully, Beary was able to fix the tail. He was very patient with me through my freaking out, and I appreciate him so much for that.

We made it to the party about an hour late, but the Power Points hadn’t started yet, so that was really nice! One friend, Ham, did a presentation on the Odyssey and made spanakopita plus a warm “ambrosia” honey cider (while dressed up as Odysseus), Skye made bread from the WoW cookbook and talked about WoW elves, Amber made blue spaghetti and talked about the Star Wars show Andor (they both dressed up like their D&D characters—very cool!), KXL made an apple cheese tart and talked about Gregory Horror Show, and Bobfox managed to show up for a bit with cucumber limeade. We even managed to stream the whole thing for our friend Cappy who lives in Louisiana right now. It was overall a lot of fun! I was (and still am) getting over a cold, so my presentation was pretty lacking, but I still had a good time with my friends.

The next day, we went out to get boba with my mom, then later grabbed an early dinner with Bobfox at Black Bear Diner since she couldn’t spend long at the party. Then we drove out to see the Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds concert. It was pretty cute; it was a small orchestra of around 10 people playing fun renditions of classic Final Fantasy songs. I had a good time, and it really made me want to play all of the games (I’ve only really played XIV). Though it was shorter than I expected—and at one point Beary and I got shushed because we, in the Back Fucking Row, had the gall to whisper about what game a song was from. Bleh. Though we felt better once we got some pumpkin pie ice cream!

It was a nice day! I think. To be honest, I can’t remember much about the details of what we did... despite the fact that it just happened, it’s already a blur of happy memories. I really should write things down every night... probably in a personal journal. Not sure if I want to detail every factor of my life on this blog. Seems a little overkill, doesn’t it?

The next day, as soon as I woke up, I blew my nose so hard it started to bleed. I don’t know what it was about it, but it freaked me out—it wouldn’t stop for at least 30 minutes, and it kept bubbling and dripping out with my mucus. This sent me into a full-blown panic attack. (In retrospect, I think I was weirdly emotional for reasons we’ll discuss later.) Beary comforted me through it, but I was so wigged out that I couldn’t enjoy our brunch, and we wound up getting a late start on the day. We eventually did some shopping at a Miniso and H Mart, then got dinner. I think? I already don’t remember! I’ll ask Beary, but for now, I’ll move on.

(We did get dinner! We ate at a build-your-own-hotpot Korean food place called Sorimmara. It’s expensive, but their Rose Malatang is to die for. I can’t believe I forgot about it—I’m drooling just thinking about it now….)

That Monday, we packed up our belongings and headed on a real trip towards the Grand Canyon! We rented a car, since I wasn’t sure if my ancient, standard transmission Mini Cooper could make it up all of those windy mountain roads. Before truly shoving off, we had dinner at my favorite restaurant of all time, Chino Bandido. It’s about an hour away from me, so I never get to have it! They closed the location closer to me when I was a kid. I’m glad I got the chance to have it again and share it with Beary! It tasted exactly as I remembered it.

I got the jade red chicken loose, the Chinese BBQ pork in a burrito, chicken fried rice, and black beans. It was almost their 35th year anniversary, and they had a little raffle set up where you could write out your order on their old ordering menu, which was the exact menu I had to use as a kid!

Beary wound up driving the majority of the time. I do get car sick as a passenger, but I also get anxious when driving... I’m a bit of a mess. Luckily, I didn’t get car sick that drive up. We stopped at a few scenic pull offs along the way to enjoy the view—we didn’t have much of a time limit, as long as we got to the motel by 9pm.

At around 3pm, we pulled into the town of Sedona. My mom had just been to Sedona and gave it a glowing review, so I was excited to check it out (I had been there as a young teen, but I couldn’t remember a terrible amount about it). But... not going to lie, Sedona kinda sucks. It’s a beautiful town—it has a local ordinance dictating that all of the buildings have to fit into a certain aesthetic to match the red rocks—but it’s so touristy. Everything is expensive and crowded and fake and hokey. There’s a lot of nonsense about vortexes and magic crystals and aliens... people are free to believe in whatever they want, but I do think charging people hundreds of dollars for crystals that will fix their throat chakra or whatever leaves the realm of “nobody’s getting hurt” and verges on “taking advantage of the vulnerable and gullible”. But I dunno. We stopped at a crystal shop, and it was pretty, I guess. We tried to look at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, but it was so crowded and lame-looking, we decided against it. We did stop at the blue McDonald’s, though.

We didn’t eat anything here. There was a cute donut shop in the same shopping center... but it was closed. Bleh.

We then jumped back into the car and headed up towards Flagstaff. It was an absolutely beautiful ride: it’s fall, so the leaves were turning yellow and orange. We don’t really get “fall” in the desert, so it was beautiful to see! The autumnal trees banking over the roadway looked like a gate into the feywild.

We pulled into Flagstaff around 6. We were still a little full from lunch, so we decided to just get a snack—cheese fries and a chocolate-banana milkshake—at a Route 66 diner. It was yummy! I love classic Americana, so it was really cool to be able to eat at a diner actually on Route 66!

I wish they had given us a heart-shaped straw!

At around 8pm or so, we finally rolled into the town of Williams and our motel. We stayed at the Canyon Motel and RV Park—a cute, historic Route 66 motel that featured individual cabins and rooms in retrofitted rail cars. I heard about it in a Jenny Nicholson video once, and I always wanted to stay there! We didn’t stay in the train car (we determined it looked too cramped), but the cabin we were in was still very much adorable.

I wound up taking my own spider home from here, though. Found it while I was empting my bag. Horrific.

The next day, we got up early to visit Bearizona, which was less than two miles from the hotel. Bearizona is a drive-through animal park, though they also have a walk-through zoo-type attraction too. I thought it was very charming! The animals had lots of space and all seemed lively and well-cared for: we saw wolves snuggling, bears sleeping, jaguars playing, and more! Beary really loves bears (if that wasn’t obvious), so I think he had a good time. We even got to see a special backstage feeding of their giant grizzly bears! I think my favorite moment was watching the baby bears roll around.

He has a stick!

I also started my goddamn period on this day and felt AWFUL. Not to be too TMI, but I’ve been experimenting with different birth controls, and my period has been weird for the past year. Beary always makes my period start—very annoying of him. I blame my weird emotional outbursts this trip on hormones.

Anyway. Around noon, we grabbed burgers at another Route 66 diner and finally headed up to the Grand Canyon! Despite living in its state, I’d never been there before (apparently I visited it as a baby, but I of course don’t recall). It wasn’t crowded at all—I have a feeling it’s the off season, plus the current socio-political climate kind of... dissuades tourists. While the main visitor center was closed due to the shutdown, the gift shops and shuttles were open. We enjoyed some beautiful, sweeping views from different scenic pull offs. It was gorgeous! It doesn’t seem entirely real... something that huge is impossible to really comprehend the scale of. It looked like a watercolor painting.

This view is called Duck on a Rock because it looks like. Uh. A duck on a rock. Can you see it?

We briefly headed back to Tusayan in the afternoon and snacked on some ice cream as we waited for it to get dark. The Grand Canyon is a night sky park which supposedly has a great view of the stars... but the moon was almost full, and it was SO bright. It was so bright that you could still see the canyon, even at night! It was gorgeous... but I was a little disappointed we didn’t really see the Milky Way. We’ll just have to go back!

Beary took this beautiful photo just after sunset. You can still see it so well!

It was also COLD! At the edge of that cliff, it had to have been at most 40 degrees! I was freezing my butt off! Beary lent me two of his jackets, but even then, I was still shivering... so we didn’t really stare at the sky for that long. It was still really pretty though! We fled back to the motel to get warm, though we stopped at Carl’s Jr. on the way back (Williams didn’t really have much that was open past 9pm—someone ought to build an In N Out there).

We had to be out of the motel by 10 the next day, so we got another early start. We moseyed our way back home slowly: we took the scenic road down through Sedona. We looked for a fun spot for brunch... but everything was so expensive! We eventually just decided on Filiberto’s—a local chain, sure, but Beary doesn’t have fast food Mexican where he’s at, so I guess it’s a bit of a novelty. Meanwhile, I’m just wondering how people in Sedona live like this....

We took that beautiful fall road back down the mountain (as I fought off car sickness), passed through Cottonwood, stopped at a matcha cafe in my college town, and then ambled back home. We spent the rest of the day lounging around, exhausted, though we popped out for a Jack and the Box snack late at night.

Beary left early the next day—which is today, as I’m writing this, yesterday as I’m editing. I’m finishing up this blog on my phone, laying in a now-empty bed that still smells like him... I miss him terribly. I could wax endless poetic about how much I love him, but that feels too personal for a blog post. For now, I’ll just say that having him here was wonderful, and I can’t wait to go on even more adventures with him!

You know, I have an entire blog post typed up about the last trip I made with him, but I never posted it because I have yet to figure out how to get the Anthrocon pictures off of my digital camera... add that to the to-do list.

Here’s to more adventures! And rest! I now plan to sleep for 12 hours. zzzzzzzzzz