Canyons and craters, grand and less so

We started towards our goal of the day, Grand Canyon, on I-40 towards
Flagstaff. Our first stop was Meteor Crater, as name implies, it's a
meteor crater 1 mile across and 300 ft deep. It was interesting enough
by itself but was almost dwarfed by the tourist attraction / museum
complex built alongside it (the attraction, as well as the whole
crater, is in private ownership).

Next stop and a slight detour away from the route was Sedona and Red
Rocks in Oak Canyon. Beautiful rock formations not unlike those around
Moab. Road there was greener than the ones in Utah and beautiful!

We reached our day's main attraction, Grand Canyon, at about 4 pm, an
appropriate time for sight-seeing and photograph-taking. But before we
could enter It, we went through Tusayan, a strange non-town just
outside the national park and home for few hotels and an IMAX theatre
(I wonder to whom it's for; the people who'd rather look at Grand
Canyon on screen less than 5 miles from the real thing).

Grand Canyon is fantastically large, but we missed a bit of the wow-factor perhaps because we had seen stuff like Canyonlands and Black Canyon already on the trip. But it grew on you as you looked at it for longer time, you have to let yourself sit down and let the grandness sink in.Since we decided not to sleep at Tusayan (which was very expensive) we aimed for Cameron, a little town on the map 50 miles from Grand
Canyon. As we approached Cameron and saw absolutely nothing we became
a bit apprehended - where were we going?

Cameron proved to be a collection of little houses on desert at the
crossroads of two small highways. We almost gave up hope of finding
lodging here (it was 7.30pm and we had been travelling since 8.30an),
when we noticed a "trading post", actually a big motel with a
restaurant and a bigger souvenier shop. The motel was very nice with
clean and new rooms. It wasn't cheap (but cheaper than Tusayan's
hotels anyway), but the strangest thing was that they didn't serve or
sell any kind of beer or other alcoholic beverages. Why? We don't know
(and did not dare to ask). We slept well there, beautifully decorated
rooms with Navajo style (pastel colours and geometric patterns somehow
appeal to the Scandinavian taste).

Miles today: 330 mi
Situation of 'heppa' (horsey) game: 20-20